1415. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 17–18.
[London]
Monday. [30 October 1843] [1]
My dearest friend you are wondering perhaps, what has become of me. I am taken with a silence .. an extraordinary complaint for one of my sex .. & dispositions, you will say. As it is, I write in the greatest haste in the world; & with the intention of a bare expression, as the postman “comes up this way,” [2] of my tiptoe expectation of waiting for the sight of you. There will be a letter tomorrow I suppose,—though I by no means deserve any!—but there was no letter today & no Reading newspaper,—& people sometimes having their deserts in not getting anything, (as is proven thereby) I may get nothing peradventure even tomorrow.
Will you come? will you come? And Mr Kenyon is away, .. at least talked of being away when I last saw him. Still you may bring alms to me, & to Mr Chorley—for of course you will desire him to meet you here, & any other person you may wish to see. After all, I positively doubt whether I shd be glad or sorry. If you come as you say for a day, you will tire yourself perhaps into an illness,—and then, how shall I feel? I cd give you up sometimes for the winter, at a word. And then again I wdnt give you up at an oration of three hours– So it is with me!
I am glad & triumphant that Mr Horne is rising—and the sinking of the other gentleman does certainly not surprise me, though I know nothing of him except his verses. [3]
You shall hear again tomorrow,—if I do not hear that I shall see you directly .. I have had so much writing to do for this week past that I am quite thrown out of my usual priveledge of writing to you, my dearest Miss Mitford,—but it shall not be so. Thank you for the interesting letters– I will ask about Mr Robinson, [4] but I fancy he is not gone.
Ever your affectionate (in the greatest haste, & one word tumbling over another)
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 334–335.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to “so much writing … this week past”, i.e., her papers on Wordsworth and Hunt; and to Miss Mitford’s impending visit to London.
2. Cf. Coleridge, Christabel (pt. I, 1816), line 22.
3. Not identified. It seems probable that Miss Mitford had referred to an incident during Horne’s visit to Reading for the dinner on 24 October.
4. Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867), journalist, editor and diarist.
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