1611. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 314–317.
[London]
May 20. 1844
Angry, my beloved friend! I, angry!– Be sure that unless you go to Jersey, .. in which extreme case I cd answer for nothing .. there can be no chance or possibility of my being angry with you. Why your coming at all to London, was a mere act of grace! and if you wd not come at all, I shd dare to express only disappointment & nothing beside, be sure, be sure! And then, as to being ill .. why I have not been ill .. though I have been tired into looking so & feeling so twenty times. The cause of my silence was … yours. You wrote me about three lines with Mrs Niven’s letter, & dignify them by calling them your “last letter,” when I do assure you my dearest Miss Mitford, no modest person under sun wd venture to call them even a ‘note’. Now I had written two letters to you, .. not very long perhaps, but long in comparison, .. & the last of my letters crossing your no-note, I took it into my head that you wd certainly write, & I have been waiting for a real letter from you ever since. If I had not heard from you today, I shd have written I think,—for I had arrived at the point of imagination, which always turns ill with me, & was beginning to select out of all possible evils the worst, for the cause of your silence. Well—I am delighted that it is my fault at last. That is the most satisfactory of catastrophes to me. Only I am not ‘angry’ at the change of plan about London,—“of all the birds in the air” [1] I am not such a goose. Come when you will, it will be holiday time with me,—& the sooner or later depends on my good or ill fortune. In the meantime I am delighted that you like your maid—although I cannot help thinking the deafness & ill-health serious drawbacks. Poor Wilson .. & I say “poor Wilson,” because I take her part against myself .. has really no obvious one,—except not being Crow, .. & wanting a little in vivacity. It amuses me too to see how she exerts herself to be talkative & cheerful, having heard that I like it—and I was rather touched yesterday when I started as she came into the room, & said, “Really I thought it was Crow,—” & she answered, .. “ah no! I am afraid, it is nobody equal to Mrs Crow.” There is great softness & kindness & humility in her, .. & I feel that I shall like her ‘better & better,’ as my sisters say I shall. Crow has gone to Lincolnshire to her mother at last & will stay there until after her confinement,—& the going away (since it was to be) is well over for me. The whole business has been full of pain to me—more painful than perhaps it shd be. There has been a mixture of feelings—and that she was associated with the most fatal time & deepest suffering of my life, [2] had its full part in the grief of seeing her leave me. Also it seemed to take fresh measure of my prison & to count the locks upon the doors. But this is being too querulous—even to you, .. to whom I am apt to speak out my daily “groans” as they occur——. <…> [3]
You say a great deal too much of the proof sheet, [4] —& indeed I quite expected you to think very ill of it. In the first place the idea of “organic & inorganic natures” is quite too much for a first shock upon your views of the Drama [5] —and I may say that the poem, as a whole, is a shade less cold & shadowy than such an introduction might seem to indicate. I gnashed my teeth [6] afterwards over my own imbecillity in letting you take away that proof. Well—you are far too good & kind, as you always are—only I required no more proof of it, & need not have elicited it by ‘proofs’ of my own. The first volume is just done printing, and I have sent much more than half of it, together with a m∙s. preface far too long, to America, .. Mr Mathews having the goodness to undertake to superintend the publication at New York. Oh no—my dearest friend,—you exaggerate about the idoldom, which made me laugh—but that there is some kind feeling for me in America it wd be ungrateful to doubt—and I am grateful, among others, to your Professor [7] & to Mrs Sigourney. Talking of kindnesses, Mr Horne was so very kind the other day (hearing through Mrs Orme an aggrandized report about my “killing myself with a book”) as to propose to do all the correction of the press for me, root & branch. [8] Very kind—was it not? Only it cd not be accepted,—because I re-write and re-correct down to the very edge of the revise—adding new, & changing old,—in which, in fact, lies the fatigue to me.
By the way, .. you do not tell me a word of Mrs Walter’s reception of the elegy,—& I am interested in hearing. Ah, if you write so very seldom & scantily, .. at last you will have “too much to say” to write at all!!——
I heard the other day “Sydney Smith’s last,” which sounded to me horribly droll– He said gravely, that “the strongest argument in favour of uninterrupted Apostolical succession which occurred to him, was the extraordinary family likeness between Bishop Philpott & Judas Iscariot.” [9]
Mr Kenyon has returned, .. having been to see Southampton & Nelson’s Victory, [10] & Stonehenge, & Bath & Bristol, & the Wye, & Malvern & Oxford, & so coming home again! No time for Devonshire! and for a week’s tour, the travellers did a great deal as it was. Talking of travellers, your Mrs Niven’s letter found me thankful to you for sending it. Only I do not believe in the certainties of people who write from Naples & talk of where they may be in the middle of such a future month. She is as likely to be in the Black forest as in London in June,—& to judge of her from myself, more likely. Therefore I thought it quite unavailing that you shd change your plan in order to keep such an hypothetical tryst with her. Also,—how soon, .. for her to think of returning to England! I wonder Agnes [11] did not double her conjuration, & lengthen the pilgrimage she induced!– How I shd like to wander for years on the continent—oh, how I shd like it! How it wd open a new spring of life—quicken the impulses of life,—& drive up one’s ideas like a fountain of life! [12] I feel the pricking of a gad-fly every now & then,—just like Æschylus’s Io [13] —& wd fly .. fly .. fly .. along the surface of the earth! The traveller lives life twice over, be sure! that is, I am sure.
Yes, ‘Jean Cavalier’ has fine things in it,—but to my mind, is, as a work of genius, inferior to Mathilde & the Mysteries. [14] But then, I am not fond of the historical romance, as a Genre. Have you read much of Balzac? To my apprehension, Balzac is a writer of extraordinary power, & as a describer, .. take him from his descriptions of old houses, upwards, .. he is unrivalled. He has a Dutch hand, and an Italian soul—finishes, to the very down on the wing of a butterfly—yet comprehends wholeness & unity. You touch, taste, & handle everything he speaks to you of—yet he can write withal such eloquent sentiment & passion, as to have produced (in his ‘Lily of the valley’) one of the most perfect of the “Nouvelle Heloises” of the day. [15] An eloquent, powerful book, that ‘Lily’ is,—although it will not please you, perhaps, as it did me. Still there are other books of Balzac which will & must—& I must ask you to make way through them.
Poor Flushie misses Crow dreadfully—& you wd smile to see the utter disdain with which he looks at Wilson when she desires him to do anything—as if to say .. “Obey you [16] indeed!” Arabel was obliged to tell him to “go to his own place” at bedtime—otherwise I believe he wd have sate up the whole night for the mere pleasure of resisting an unconstitutional law .. so considered. He wd not even take his favorite cake from her hand—looking at me, that I might give it to him instead! She told me that when she saw Flush down stairs, he was “very kind” to her,—& she cd not make out how it shd be otherwise in this room—“just as if he did not like to see me here.” Which I believe to be the simple truth.
May God bless you my dearest friend!
Pray dont have too much to say to write to me,—because that is an obstacle which will grow larger & larger every day until at last it will be infinitely invincible. In true affection
Ever your
EBB.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 412–415.
Manuscript: Eton College Library and Wellesley College.
1. Cf. Matthew, 8:20.
2. Crow joined the household in 1838, and so was with EBB in Torquay at the time of Bro’s death in 1840.
3. Nearly half a line obliterated by EBB.
4. Of “A Drama of Exile.”
5. In addition to human characters, EBB peopled her poem with angels, spirits and visions, and obviously fears that this will not accord with Miss Mitford’s view of what is appropriate.
6. Cf. Matthew, 8:12.
7. Presumably Andrews Norton, one-time Professor of Sacred Literature at Harvard, to whom Miss Mitford had wanted to send a copy of Orion (see letter 1297).
8. Cf. Malachi, 4:1. See letter 1609 for Horne’s offer.
9. Sydney Smith (1771–1845), Canon of St. Paul’s, was known for his witticisms and social charms (DNB). Henry Phillpotts (1778–1869), Bishop of Exeter, was “publicly accused of having changed his opinions to win preferment, and of having scandalously accumulated benefices in order to fill his pockets” (DNB).
10. Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, in which he received his fatal wound.
11. Mrs. Niven’s daughter.
12. Cf. Revelation, 21:6.
13. The priestess Io, seduced by Zeus, incurred the wrath of Hera, who changed her into a heifer pursued by a gadfly. Æschylus tells of her wanderings in Prometheus Bound, as does EBB in her translation thereof.
14. Sue’s novels, previously mentioned in letter 1539.
15. Balzac’s Le Lys dans la Vallée was published in 1835; La Nouvelle Héloïse by Rousseau in 1761.
16. Underscored three times.
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