1448. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 69–71.
[London]
Thursday [30] Nov. 1843 [1]
Thank you my beloved friend for your kind care to hear of me. I am better—decidedly better—although still quite unable to swallow anything except liquids, & not very able to talk out of words of one syllable. Really this has been quite a new form of malady with me; and it has pulled me down & made Papa cry out, when he saw me by sunlight, that I was looking ‘miserably ill.’ Still the chest itself has happily remained apart from the evil,—and, in a few days more, the evil itself will have passed by I think—as the swelling & ulceration diminish obviously & almost hour by hour, and I take nourishing things, such as broth & liquid jelly, so as not to be starved to death.
And you, my ever dearest Miss Mitford, suffer incessantly!– Oh, this rheumatism! I am glad you see Mr May——as he knows your constitution too well to do you any harm on the way to do you any good. Tell me exactly how you get on.
Yes—you know me as a ‘retained’ defender general of poor Mr Horne—and certainly I pick up from the ground, with no sort of despondency, this new brief. My dearest friend, I knew, & so did Papa,—& so did we all,—that he did not precisely reside either in Broad Street, where you & I used to direct to him, or in Finsbury Square where we direct now. There has been no mystery about it,—and there is, I imagine, in it, no manner of trickery or evil. Since leaving Soho Square where he had chambers, & did reside, I think,—he has had, during the summer, a cottage somewhere in Epping Forest, & has vibrated between that & his mother’s house & the houses of friends near London,—coming into town almost everyday upon business & to receive his letters. Cannot you conceive of the case of a man, a single man, moving about so constantly, that it wd be absolutely necessary for him to name a place as a point of sight, where his correspondents might make deposit of their letters to him?– Dr Southwood Smith lived in Broad Street & was the actual resident of the house there, & guardian of the deposits. [2] Come, my dearest friend, you must undo this superfluous knitting of the brows—you must admit that if his object were to glorify himself by an apparent position, he wd adopt more glorious latitudes than those of the city, .. such as Broad St & Finsbury Square!– Probably some friend of his lives in the latter place, as Dr Smith did in the former, & receives his letters there—or he may have a room of his own, for ought I know to the contrary, for occasions.
Poor Mr Horne. Shall I begin to think that you take measure of him by a severe rule?– [3] What is he [to] do, if he is always running after his mother?—keep one foot in one place .. like a pair of compasses?—or lose all his letters by asking them to try to follow him <round & round>? [4] He is in London, I believe, nearly everyday—or every two or three days: and I am quite aware that there is great delay & inconvenience about the letters. I never expect to have a letter of mine answered by anything like return of post,—and (for instance) I shd never think of writing to him if the house were on fire. The postmarks on his letters are indicative of a very decisive universality of residence. Ah—poor Mr Horne!– I am afraid, I am afraid that he is not a favorite of yours … whatever he may be of ‘Katy’s’.!–
Of dear Mr Kenyon, who is, (& how deservedly!) I have not heard, since he took leave of me to go away to Hastings—and even if he had come back & wished me to see him, I shd have had to “say naye” [5] on account of this miserable throat which wont let me talk. When he returns he sets out again for Devonshire—but not, I hope & believe, for long. Did I tell you what Mr Moxon told him a fortnight ago—about a fortnight ago—? “In a fortnight I shall publish a work which will be singularly interesting to you & everybody. I can say no more: I am bound to a silence respecting it. Only, when it is ready, I shall send it to you.” [6] What can he mean, thought Mr Kenyon & I. Can you guess, yourself.?
Ever your affectionate
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 352–354.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter falls between no. 1446, in which EBB complains of an ulcerated throat, and no. 1451, which tells of her convalescence; the intervening Thursday was the 30th.
2. Thomas Southwood Smith (1788–1861), an ardent advocate of improved sanitation to reduce disease and mortality, was one of the persons discussed in A New Spirit of the Age.
3. Cf. II Corinthians, 10:13.
4. EBB originally wrote “up & down,” then crossed out these words and substituted those in brackets.
5. Cf. Chaucer, “The Parson’s Tale,” 590.
6. In letter 1462 this work is identified as Harriet Martineau’s Life in the Sick-Room. Essays. By an Invalid, which was published anonymously.
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