1567. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 253–257.
[London]
Wednesday. [13] March. 1844. [1]
My dearest friend I return Mr Reade’s letter which amused me more perhaps than it shd have done, as representing a human being bound, so, upon the agonizing wheel of an extreme & incessant vanity. [2] If I envied him for his hypothetical immortality, I shd in any case pity him for his inability to sympathize with the triumphs of the genius of his times, & to taste of the exquisite pleasures of admiration. For the rest, I could not help being greatly amused by the parallel of Moliere & his contemporaries! [3] Did you not laugh out when you read it? And do tell me whom he can mean by the poet “with the little isms”. Surely he cant mean that Wordsworth has “little isms”? Yet he must mean Wordsworth, I think!– He must admit Wordsworth to be a poet, as well as he does, him of the ‘porcelains.’ [4] Leigh Hunt he never expected to see “elevated”!! .. but then he never read Hazlitt’s ‘Spirit of the Age’ which did “elevate” him, precisely in the same way, long ago!—— [5] Not that I think as much as he seems to do inwardly, of this species of factitious & ephemeral elevation. The poet elevates himself, & is in reality either above or below the help of adventitious criticism. His motto shd be ‘Fac’ [6] and his destiny is in his own hands, to make or unmake. My own feeling about Leigh Hunt is, that he is a poet in the intense sense—and that as a writer of essays, he is as little likely to die. Do you know his exquisite essays of the Seer & the Companion? I must make you know them, if you do not. Then his poetry—his “Story of Rimini,” [7] —& the minor poems of major beauty & glory—how can we reject these things from our admiration?
Have you seen Mr Horne’s book? It has very much interested me; & some of the papers are full of subtle & weighty criticism & philosophy. There is a paper on Dickens almost disproportionately minute & searching in its observations, considering the general character of the work,—& presenting a study in composition to any reader who happens to be a writer. It is the most elaborate & complete estimate of Dickens I have read anywhere. The paper on Taylor, convicts the “poetry of the understanding” theory, [8] as from the mouth of Orion himself. The latter pages of it will raise a cry of transcendentalism; but are to my mind as true in their philosophy as they are poetical in their imagery. Altogether the book is well worth your reading: & you will find yourself named in it as the head of your class in the prose pastoral, [9] with appropriate reverence. My name you will observe from the advertisements to be in a too prominent position—but from the plan of the book, the later comers stand up straightest, to be ‘shown’. Mrs Norton & I are fastened up in a gold cage together—and, (to speak of myself,) poor Mr Horne has fretted himself evidently to make out a list of most detestable accomplishments, to be fastened, on a slip of paper, to my right foot. The fact is, that the intention to be personally complimentary is so much too obvious, that it overreaches itself & falls over. I see as plainly how it is, as if I cd see it with my bodily eyes. He is a most upright, honorable man, and generous & kind as well as truthful. He was in a straight how to speak what he considered the truth about my poetry, & at the same time to place me in a glorious light, so as to please me. Or perhaps he was not intimately acquainted with the poetry, but had certain floating general impressions about it—and then he was in deplorable haste, with a ‘head going round’ as he described it to me. So he has exalted me personally with all manner of devices, .. & with the aid of “charming notes to fair friends,”—& Hebrew roots & Plato enough to frighten away friends fair & brown. [10] I cd not help laughing as I read it all—and I have expressed to him, what I sincerely feel, my gratitude for the kindness which is so obvious in it. At the same time, my inward feeling is, that one paragraph of honest criticism, accompanied with whatever severity, would have been more really flattering, & a thousand times more welcome to me as well as beneficial, <…> [11] than all these pages of personal compliment. I am disappointed moreover on the point of his own personal view of my poetry. I had an impression,—derived I find, upon consideration, from very vague sources, .. & principally from the fact of his having once asked me to write a work in common with him, [12] —that he thought better of it than I perceive plainly now he ever cd have thought. And this being a disappointment to me, because I have a high opinion of him as a discerner of poetical spirits [13] & as a critic in the highest school of poetry, .. this paper, which everybody will think me vainglorious about (for it is abundantly flattering) has in fact been the means to me of a deeper humiliation than any criticism, .. professing to be such, & bearing reference to my poetry, .. which ever came under my observation. Oh! but not for the world, wd I have poor Mr Horne know that! He wd be quite sorry if he knew it—he, who has done everything a man cd do under the circumstances, to give me pleasure. The bird in its golden cage is ungrateful—as birds generally are in such positions!
In respect to the elegy, [14] I absolutely agree with you. It will probably be published more publicly by this private printing, than it wd be, if given away openly like other publications. I was much more touched by his note, .. his thought about Mrs Walters’ reply, .. a thought so full of natural pathos,—than I was by the intention to write & print an elegy. It appears to me early for anyone struck by such a blow, to be able to throw the pang of it into verse. After a time that power comes—but a great grief is incapacitating, during the period of its operation. I believe so, at least. I shall be much interested in hearing (if you wd tell me) how Mrs Walters received the intimation of his attachment .. & I wish you wd tell me whether he has the impression that his attachment was perceived or returned by the object of it. Will you tell me this? Did he ever say a word to her? did he intimate it in any way?– I pity him from the bottom of my heart. And as to the difference in age, it does not discomfit my imagination. I can understand it all. Youth is not, in fact, perhaps, quite as much a matter of years as we think it—and also Love is not quite as much a matter of the senses as we think it.
The hope of seeing you & Flush is like a second sun in the sky to me– I am delighted beyond what I can say. Oh—come, come! Will you sleep here? or is it a pleasure of hours alone? My dearest dearest Miss Mitford, do come!– As to the Oconnell dinner, [15] I do not lament your absence at it, .. I shd have been dreadfully jealous to have been cut off from you by Oconnell .. before Jersey.!
That Jersey!
I send you a note from Mr Kenyon touching on it; & also the letter to which he refers, from Miss Martineau, [16] which will assuredly interest you. Surely there is a reason for hope in the fact that a clever medical man does not see a necessity for despairing. However hopeful he may be by temperament, certain physical necessities wd constrain any man of knowledge, not to say intellect, into the melancholy of certain conclusions. It cannot, for instance, be considered a case of cancer––do you think it can? [17]
Oh yes .. bring Flush! I do long to see Flush—and I think, that we might keep the father & son from an “Unnatural combat,” [18] —do you not? My Flushie, though a coward, is a positive exclusive, & is highly offended at the very notion of another dog treading upon his footsteps. Still, you have influence upon your Flush, .. & I have a sort of persuasiveness with mine: & together, we may find it possible to keep the peace. I long to see them together, and to compare them in feature & colour.
I meant to send you Zizine & I have sent instead Moustache, as representative of Paul de Kock. And now it has come into my mind, that there is a good deal of offensive matter in this Moustache, & that after you have read it, you will do well to throw it into the fire. He is intolerably coarse, even indecent, generally—but his pictures of certain positions of society are so fresh & vivid, that the paint smells in them. As to “Mathilde,” I do not remember much, if anything, in it, which is at all tainted,—and with less that is striking & wonderful than the Mysteries, [19] it evinces to my mind, more sustained power, & presents a more consistent expression of the social crisis in France. I am delighted that you like what you read, & I aspire to your being pleased on a large scale by the whole. Ah, dearest dearest Miss Mitford! If the French books were the only temptation to Jersey, I think we might make a compromise on that point!– I think, if you & I conspired to pollute you with these books, we might manage the pollution without any scandal to either of us.
Books of imagination are quite a necessary of life to me, and these wicked Gallic geniuses have been with me a good deal of late, instead of sun & air. They light me up, & make me feel alive to the ends of my fingers. You know Mr Kenyon says of me that my “sympathy with power makes me very immoral.” And he wd say it more, if he knew what we know! you & I!–
“And so no more at present!” I have written so much that I shall have to go like Her Majesty, in two or three carriages today, [20] I see. Return Miss Martineau’s letter at your leisure—& tell me, my beloved friend, how your rheumatism is! The weather is very trying! So changeful—and such occasionally keen winds.!
Ever your own
EBB.
Think of Mr Horne stating it as a fact that Miss Martineau’s book is dedicated to me! [21] I am vexed by it.
I cannot send you Miss Martineau’s letter for a few days,—Mr Kenyon having just come to ask for it to show to Mr Crabbe Robinson!
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 394–398.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter is postmarked 14 March 1844, a Thursday.
2. As a punishment for attempting to seduce Juno, Ixion was banished to hell, where he was tied to a perpetually revolving wheel.
3. See letter 1562.
4. Reade had referred to Tennyson as the “porcelain poet” (see letter 1562).
5. Hunt was one of the personalities dealt with in Hazlitt’s 1825 book, The Spirit of the Age.
6. From facere, “to make, to do.”
7. The Seer; or, Common-Places Refreshed (1840); The Companion (1828) and The Story of Rimini (1816).
8. See A New Spirit of the Age, II, 283 ff.
9. Op. cit., II, 19.
10. Cf. Pope, Epistles to Several Persons (1735), II, line 4. See A New Spirit, II, 135.
11. EBB has obliterated about half a line here.
12. “Psyche Apocalypté.”
13. Cf. I Corinthians, 12:10.
14. Horne’s elegy on the death of Miss Walter, no copy of which has been traced.
15. The Times of 13 March reported a dinner given for O’Connell the previous night “to show … the admiration entertained by Englishmen for his constant and consistent advocacy of the rights and privileges of Irishmen” (p. 7).
16. As the final paragraph shows, EBB was not able to enclose this letter, as Kenyon borrowed it.
17. Despite a history of ill-health, Miss Martineau lived until 1876.
18. Coleridge, The Piccolomini (1800), V, 6, 67.
19. See letter 1559 for a previous mention of these books.
20. As the Court Circular contains no specific reference to any such outing, this is taken as a general comment about the size of Victoria’s usual retinue.
21. See A New Spirit, II, 80. This assertion was omitted from the second edition.
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