1585. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 281–285.
[London]
Friday. [29] March. 1844 [1]
The orientalisms, my beloved Miss Mitford, at the end of your letter, should have drawn a quick answer from me, if but in the way of protestation. You know my thoughts however, as well as if I had written them out at once—& you will not think that I read all those words, in any other understanding of them, than as the eastern idiom of your generous affection. In the meantime you wd not be the best estimator of me in a new ‘New Spirit of the Age’ .. you are too dear a lover! Only I do not choose that you shd usurp upon my real palpable honors, even in a letter between you & me—the honor of our friendship being my [2] honor & not yours, .. whatever the exaltations of your affection may dream of it. No—no!—leave me my thunder .. my honor. You, who have so much otherwise, can spare me that!
Mr Horne had the goodness to tell me that the article in question about me, was put together in great haste; & that, from an accident to the sheet, he was forced to give an extract, snatched in haste, instead of other matter. [3] The mention of your name at all in connection with me, is, really & truly, the most specific honor done me in the whole [4] —altho’ (in haste or not) he has evidently worked hard to praise me .. nobody can say otherwise. What I have been a little on thorns about, is, that some critics, having a mind to be ill natured, might sieze upon this unfortunate “fair shade,” herissée [5] with Greek & Hebrew, & make an example of it. I laughed at it myself– Why not others do the same? I too, .. who really have a species of scorn for the love of dictionaries, & the pedantries relating to them,—& see no sort of superiority in the attainment of all the languages of Babel! [6] Well—I am a little, little bit vexed about it, there’s no denying. But it was well & kindly meant—and he could not guess, when his head was going round with haste, that I shd have infinitely preferred, .. some three lines of honest & impartial judgement slipped in between Mr Marston & Mr Reade. Only he did not think well enough of my poetry, in an abstraction from my personality, to dare to speak of it plainly & ‘apart’—being both a sincere man & a kind man. In many ways I have a high opinion of Mr Horne. Whatever faults he may have, .. & which I myself have not indeed had an opportunity of discovering, .. of his integrity as of his sensibility I think highly—and of his genius, very very highly, as you know. I am sorry that he shd have approached Mrs Walter with this vain expression of feeling [7] —and I do fear with you, that there can be no doubt about her being annoyed by it. She might, you see, naturally feel jealous for her poor daughter’s delicacy, both as a mother & as a woman!– She might feel .. “he had seen Katy only three times, .. & does he imagine that she responded to the first signification of his attachment, & went down to the grave with his handkerchief in her hand?” Women choose to be wooed, ere they are won: and there are not many women who wd confess, … without a sort of repugnance, .. even to the man they loved,—that they had loved him from very early days of their acquaintance with him. Now I do not mean to say that Mrs Walter anticipates Mr Horne’s taking for granted in his elegy, Katy’s recognition of his affection—but she may fear justly lest there might appear in it, that she, Katy, had been passive to his attentions. Also, as a woman shrinks from attentions where the man who offers them is not beloved by her, .. so might the retrospect of those attentions offered by one whom Mrs Walter believed to be distasteful to her daughter,.. be singularly painful to herself .. the mother feeling the more vitally & sensitively,—for the unconsciousness, dumb & deathful, of the child. I am afraid she is pained & annoyed—& I am very sorry indeed for it. But you cd not help it, my dearest friend—you, with your cordial feeling heart, could not help it—I see you could not. What he shd have done,—if he had made up his mind to write & print the elegy, .. is to have done it silently, quietly; & without any names, or circumstances, which could fix the place or person. It shd have been sacred to his own thoughts & tears—and to Katy’s memory in connection with them. My opinion is that he had no right & that her family have no right (whatever may be their disposition) to connect his affliction, with Her, [8] —in the minds of twentyfive persons, or five persons, or any persons at all, except the person suffering the affliction. Do you agree with me? It seems like a ruffling of the pure whiteness of her shroud, to consent to such a thing, when she can make no sign herself.
Ah my dearest dearest friend, how I feel for you .. learning at last to what an extent you had wasted your heart & generosity! Not that I am surprised. I am not a bit surprised. The woman who cd act as she acted, I felt could be only morally rotten all through, & unworthy of the pity & tenderness you extended to save her. Wretched woman! And now I have a shade more hope about the Jersey plan .. because my strong impression is, that it was a good deal more for her than for yourself, that you planned such an elopement. [9] I take breath now, & trust a little to my exertions & Paul de Kock’s naughtinesses, for keeping you in England at least. And by the way, I heard the other day of the “proverbially rough passage” and of the ‘sixteen hours’ of good tossing, suffered in the course of it. How cd you bear that? It wd be a round about way of getting to Paris, I fancy, when you might cross to Calais in two hours,—& stay there or at Boulogne, till you had put your French into Parisian order. We were seven months once at Boulogne, [10] for masters, which are excellent there; & for the acquirement of that habit of talking French, which comes at a call.
I knew, I knew .. about Paul de Kock! I saw “as from a tower”, [11] precisely how you wd like him. But then really, he is very bad—he is very nasty—he splashes the dirt about him, like a child in a gutter, .. laughing for joy of the mischief. Twice I tried books of his, & sent them back again, .. feeling them to be too bad to read. The third time, they sent me a book of his in mistake for another which I had asked for—& I went through with it,—& saw so much (getting used to the filth) to like & recognize for picture & faculty, .. that I took courage,—& have read most of his forty or fifty volumes, I do believe. That he is an open, joyous, inconsequent writer, meaning neither harm nor good, nothing but fun,—& having a naturally amiable sympathy with the low ends of human nature, .. is abundantly true of him. Also he has great power—& is wonderfully distinctive as a writer of character, & of what Ben Jonson called “humours”. [12] Eloquence he has not—never thinks of it—he likes a practical joke better than all the oratory of the tribunes. Nothing delights him so much as to get all the persons of his drama down on the floor together, producing an exchange of wigs. Something too much of that! [13] —but it shows the animal spirits of the man. Next to saying anything nasty, he likes the practical joke—but if he can combine the two, it is the very triumph of his art. Nevertheless, I knew that you wd like him, .. for his power in character, which is wonderful .. & graphic expression of a certain phasis of Parisian society, .. & general joyousness. He does not, I confess, suit me particularly, altho’ I can see his power. I like the Balzacs, Victor Hugos, Eugene Sue’s, George Sands; & the other kinds of serious, passionate, eloquent wrongness. They purify the air from its vice, by the fire of their earnest genius. And do you not believe, .. you, my dearest friend, who have written tragedies, .. & yet cry out that all literature shd be joyous,—& that we shd keep our tears for our lives, & not shed them upon books,––do you not believe in the purifying power of pity & terror? Why the tradition of it, is as old as Aristotle; [14] & the influence of it, day by day.
No—I have nothing to complain of, in losing my dear Crow. And yet I may tell you what I have not told & do not mean to tell to Papa (because I know he wd be angry, & I cannot bear to see him angry) that she has for some time been married privately to the butler, who left us fortnight since. They married—and determined to stay with us (the marriage being known to nobody) as long as they could. The limit is now touched. She confessed her marriage, .. seeing me in tears at the thought of her resolving to leave me. Poor Crow. Yet she shd not have married so—it was imprudent, & might have led to inferences most painful & prejudicial to her. William Treherne is honest, & good in the common way … not remarkable for an amiable & good nature, as she is—but quite above all aspersion .. vexed as I feel with him for his robbery of her from me. His temper is not worthy of her’s—nor are his mind & heart so finely tuned. But he is a handsome young man, as perhaps you observed,—& so,—triumphed over her other lovers, and also over her love for myself. They have taken a baker’s shop in Camden town, .. at the distance of half an hour’s walk from this house,—and we are to give them our custom,—and I do hope & trust they may not fall into adversities. Henrietta has engaged a young woman [15] whom I have not had the heart yet to see, to fill her place,—& who came from Northumberland with our cousin Mrs Barrett, [16] & is said to be gentle-voiced, & of a bright & kind countenance. I am ashamed almost, to say, how I care for such things .. & what power a boisterous manner or gloomy temper wd have to discourage & depress me, feeble as I am in body & nerves.
Is it true that Flush has broken his leg? You never told me.
When do you come? Oh, I shall be so happy, so very glad & happy, to have a vision of you, my dearest dearest Miss Mitford! May God bless you always.
Your attached
EBB.
I am so glad you have the other books to go on with, until I shall be ready.
You will agree with me, I am sure, that it is undesirable for this new French literature to be read much in England, I do not say, by “young ladies” only, but by ladies & gentlemen young & old. Its influences are not good or healthy—except to that small class of persons who can abstract the art of books from their moral expression, & take pleasure & secure impunity in the abstraction. You & I who read all sorts of books, are none the worse for these .. but you are the only woman of my acquaintance to whom I shd dare talk of them, or shd feel justified in talking of them. Is it not right? You know, there is such a flood of them—such a pestilent flood!——
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 400–405.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Day provided by postmark.
2. Underscored four times.
3. See letter 1557 for Horne’s explanation.
4. For details of this reference, see letter 1577, note 12.
5. “Hérisée: armed with; bristling.” Horne, in A New Spirit, had called EBB a “fair shade,” and referred to “a few elegant Latin verses, and spirited translations from Æschylus” and to her reading of “Plato … and the Hebrew Bible” (II, 132–135 and our Appendix IV, p. 342).
6. Cf. Genesis, 11:7–9.
7. i.e., his feelings—apparently unrequited—as expressed in his elegy for her dead daughter.
8. Underscored three times.
9. EBB refers to Miss Mitford’s maid, K.
10. EBB and her family settled in Boulogne for a protracted stay in 1823–24.
11. We have not located the source of this quotation.
12. Mediæval physiology held that man’s physical and mental constitution was determined by the combination of the four cardinal humours, resulting in a disposition described as sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic or melancholic. Jonson, in his comedy Every Man in His Humour (1598), based the plot on the development of this theory.
13. Cf. Hamlet, III, 2, 74.
14. Aristotle’s concept of tragedy was that it “represents men in action … and through pity and fear it effects relief to these and similar emotions” (Poetics, VI, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe).
15. Elizabeth Wilson (1820–1902), who later (1855) married the Brownings’ manservant, Ferdinando Romagnoli, remained in EBB’s service until 1857, when she rented a house next door to Casa Guidi and took in paying guests.
16. Susanna Maria (née Bell) had married Samuel Goodin Barrett in 1835. He was in a legal dispute over the will of his uncle and was in danger of arrest, so his wife and children were taking refuge with the Moulton-Barretts. (See letter 1464 and SD1202.)
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