1364. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 297–299.
[London]
August 30. 1843.
My dear dear friend you are too kind to me & unkind to yourself—& your candour was a part of your kindness to me. It was agreed that you should speak out your whole impression. That I shd be vexed by the character of your impression was not your fault, neither perhaps was it mine, but the natural crisis of circumstances—and you had more reason to be vexed, considering everything, than I myself had.
The libation poured upon the bare head made me smile to hear of! Altogether .. I am reminded a little .. although I hesitate to say so plainly … of Miss Edgeworth’s admirable story of ‘L’Amie inconnue.’ Do you remember “my Araminta” how she smelt of brandy?– Ah no, no! It is not so bad. Still there is something in the attitude & gesture of my vexation which irrepressibly reminds me of the discomfiture of “my Angelina” as she caught the first silhouette view of Nat upon one knee before the most unfortunate of women!– [1]
After all, to be “an abomination like Charles Lamb” is pardonable in my eyes,—and we must, both of us, pardon much to genius in the way of conventional deficiencies & ungraceful manners. [2] Talking of Mr Eagles, my dearest friend, I pray you to remember that he is legitimate ‘Pen & Ink’ just as Mr Horne or another. He writes regularly for Blackwood & adds to his income by it. All the critical papers upon Art & exhibitions, on Sir Joshua Reynolds & the rest, are his—there is seldom a number without an article by the sketcher. And by the way, I hear that he writes very rapidly & very carelessly, .. not only sending the original rough copy of his prose papers, but forgetting to read it over until the readers of Blackwood may do so at the same time. That, I venture to call a blameable car[e]lessness. Because a respect is due to the public,—and the consideration of the weight & tendency of every accidental word should help to enforce that respect.
Dearest friend, think of two of my brothers (Stormie & George) going off to Ostend yesterday on their way up the Rhine to Geneva, with a plan of returning home viâ Paris at the end of six weeks?– It seems to me like a dream—so suddenly was it all arranged, & so uncertain am I whether to be glad or sorry. I ought to be glad, & acted as if I were glad—interfering a very little in the diplomacy to help Papa to be inclined to it. But it was, in fact, when everything was arranged, a hard struggle for me to keep the tears down & bear to see them go away,—& this, exactly because I had intermeddled with the matter .. I who own a fatal star!– And now I shall not be quite easy until I see them again. They made vow upon vow to write from Ostend .. but I am frightened & dream dreams & see visions [3] & shall not be easy until I see them. After all it is right that they shd go: the pleasure will be great—the refreshment from the dust of the Law .. the change from domestic monotony,—will be good for one & the other of them: & it was very good & kind of dearest Papa to let them enter upon their wanderings brightly & freely in this break of professional life. It will do both of them good, I say over & over to myself!– May God grant it!–
Before George went, he did what he could about your Mr Illingsworth. He travelled down to Gray’s Inn Square & heard there that Mr I. lived there once, but ten years ago, & had removed from thence to Pentonville … in what part of Pentonville deponent cd not say. George enquired about the clerk, who had also removed … to the workhouse—went with enquiries to the workhouse, & was informed there that the said clerk had died in the spring & left no sign of his master—consulted the Lawyers’ directory, & cd find no such name as Illingsworth or Illingworth among practicing attorneys!– ‘If he is alive,’ said George to me, ‘he must have given up business, & we have no means of tracing him!’
This is all I have to tell you, & I mourn that it shd be so little satisfactory. Is the girl ‘Lucy’ in the house with you? [4] Surely there must be means of getting at her father’s address if not at his heart.
My dearest friend I am grieved that you shd have this new vexation about money, & cannot find the thread although I grope for it. May it not be that your friend in telling you that the sum is ‘otherwise disposed of’ may refer simply to the sum for next christmas & that subsequently you may receive the annuity as usual? I have hope it may be so. She may think that you are not, from the circumstances of the subscription, in immediate want of money, & may suspend the annuity without intending to withdraw it finally. Did she subscribe largely in the spring? In any case my very dear friend, you would save little, as far as I can make a calculation, by going into lodgings or taking another house than the one you occupy. You give only thirty pounds a year I think,—and your garden is rent free: can anything be much cheaper? If you are extravagant at all, it is not in the house, but peradventure in the hospitality of the house,—your Penates being given to cut bread & butter with too nimble hands. Is this not so?
Whenever Mr Kenyon comes to see me it is always to ask about you—he looks up at your picture & says “That forehead,” [5] & straightway we talk!!– I told him the other day what you said of October. Do you say still “October,” & not ‘September,’ & not ‘August’? How many more Mr Benomis [6] & amis inconnus [7] are you looking out for before you can move?
I have had another note from poor Mr Horne. I have not yet fallen into the proper key for writing to him. He tells me that you read my House of Clouds to him—“and with what a melodious feeling she reads poetry”! Ah!—but there was a melody of kindness underneath which is audible also to me!– He praises your Flush as the most benevolent-faced of all unsouled beings! Certainly you delighted him. He could not write, he says, or do anything except enjoy!–
I shook my head over it all & answered silently .. “You never, never, never shall go there again!– You have had your last joy & your last bath there.”!
With which savage sentiment I conclude. Tell me, if you can, that you are better.
Your EBB–
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 289–291.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. In “Angelina; or, L’Amie Inconnue” (Moral Tales for Young People, 1801), Miss Warwick, who had adopted the nom-de-plume of Angelina, sets out to track down Araminta, an unknown correspondent whom she had come to idolize. After much travail, she finds her Araminta, Rachel Hodges, engaged to an uncouth character by the name of Nat; “her voice is so loud … and her looks so vulgar, and there is such a smell of brandy.——How unlike the elegant delicacy I had expected in my unknown friend” (p. 102). In several ensuing letters, Horne is referred to as “Araminta,” reflecting the disillusionment felt by both EBB and Miss Mitford after his visit to Three Mile Cross.
2. Charles Lamb (1775–1834) had a painful stutter that made him uncomfortable with strangers; “where the society was unsympathetic, the wine often set free less lovable springs of fancy … He would take up a perverse attitude of contradiction, with too slight regard for the courtesies of human intercourse, or else give play to a mere spirit of reckless and not very edifying mockery.... to those who did not know him … Lamb often passed for something between an imbecile, a brute, and a buffoon” (see Charles Lamb, by Alfred Ainger, ch. 5).
3. Cf. Joel, 2:28.
4. Apparently the daughter of the Mr. Illingsworth whom George Moulton-Barrett had attempted to locate.
5. Kenyon had compared Miss Mitford’s forehead to Coleridge’s (see letter 828).
6. Benomi had been secretary to Bishop Baines (see L’Estrange (2), III, 175); later letters show that Miss Mitford had invited him to Three Mile Cross following the bishop’s death.
7. “Unknown friends.”
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