1658. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 59–63.
50 Wimpole Street
July 22. 1844
My beloved friend,
I feel to myself as if I had treated both you & me very badly in not writing so many days .. & I can assure you that although you may not mind it, I do! I have been so full of business, .. & so forced to write letters in the heat of it (to say nothing of the sun’s) that I knew you wd submit to be put off, as well as other luxuries, until I had elbow room for you all. Well!—the book is being finished at last, .. that is, they have the last “copy” for the last remaining two sheets of the second volume. I have still to put the American preface to English rights, [1] for the first, .. & so, in a few days, I shall be in full blow, & shall have nothing to do but to write to you. Dreadful prospect for you!—particularly if you go on permitting yourself to be torn to pieces (like a daisy when one reads one’s fate out of it––do you know the superstition?) [2] in rural dissipation. No, my dear, dearest Miss Mitford, I certainly shd not like your hyper-joys of great ‘gatherings’ either on the grass or your drawing room. I wd rather sit in either place with just you, or one or two .... (oh exorbitant wisher!) approaching to your stature—loved or admired, if not both! I never cd understand the pleasure of society by right of neighbourhood [3] .. & yet you come to that, you know, when you associate miscellaneously, within a circle of so many miles given! Just in the contrary to this, consists our metropolitan advantage .. that we may choose our friends. And then again, if you tell me that we shd widen our sympathies & give them air, & learn to love out of every side of the heart, I shd have nothing to answer but that you are very right & wise & genial in saying so, & feeling so, & acting so! I shd have nothing to object—not a word. After all however, I shd not like to sacrifice myself to my neighbours as you seem to do, throughout the summer! It appears to me that you must be weary at nights with the top of society & the coil of nothings—& be persecuted with that sense of fatigue without a result, which is like a series of work-days without a sabbath. But we are constituted differently .. (an original remark!) & are scarcely qualified to judge, in matters of enjoyment, one for another. I only hope & pray that you may be tolerably well, .. & very happy—& that when you go to Paris (ah—it seems to set in for Paris!) you may be able to carry your mind wide awake into the new social world, without any winking of the eyelids from the whirl in the one you fly from.– In fact I am afraid of your being unwell at last, if not at first– I cannot help being afraid! In my apprehension you wd have as good chance of being whirled round on the fans of a windmill, with impunity!–
Mr Horne has appeared to wish so much to see me once, before he “goes abroad for an indefinite period,” .. & when, the other day, I wrote a final “nay,” to this wish, expressed a feeling of disappointment so far beyond what the exertion was worth, that it is possible I may see him for a few moments. I may .. I do not know– I have not quite made up my mind against it. [4] Why he shd wish it so much, is a secret of the fancy—but certainly I cd not bear, even by the prick of a pin, to vex & hurt a friend who has been so kind to me by every possible means, & for whom I must retain so sincere a regard. When I have seen him I shall be glad to have exerted myself into doing so—at any rate, it is right, I believe. As to the guitar, .. really I have not courage for it. I must wean myself more gradually out of the silence of these last years, in which I have heard no music, nor been strong-hearted enough to bear it. Music, I know, wd affect me very much, .. especially such music as you describe his to be—and it wd not be desirable, … nay, it wd be detestable .. if the interview were to close with a grand scena– Certes my dearest friend, you have a genius for making people grow old rapidly. Now I begin to think that you are in fact some twenty years younger than you call yourself. I am witness that poor Mr Horne who began by your calculation, with “forty five,” is actually sixty, [5] .. at the very verge of the years of man,—& if he did not go abroad for an indefinite period (a discreet step) his strength wd infallibly come to be “labour & sorrow” [6] before the summer was out. I, who am something of a woman in this matter of age, cry out “Fie upon you,” [7] .. & tremble in my shell. Also my doctrine is, that people have every right to be young as long as they can, either by making love or making themselves agreeable. There is no law against it, & still less any wisdom .... always saving yours!– How provoked you must be, by the way, to look so much younger this year than you did two years before! You must quite take it to heart!–
Oh—let me not forget to tell you, .. you who are the kindest & most sympathizing of friends, .. of my good news from America. My first volume, committed by Mr Mathews to the reading of certain leading critics, has had a “triumph” he says .. repeating warmer & higher opinions than I can tell you. It seems to be recognized that my advance on former attempts is great & undeniable. One bookseller at Philadelphia announced the publication,—when a Mr Cayley or Layley of New York, offered copy-money & had the preference, .. & I have a very business-like agreement, to the effect that he is to give me ten per cent on the sales, [8] he publishing the work in as handsome a manner as can be achieved in Yankeeland. Also the editor of the Democratic Review is to have the priveledge of publishing (as far as I can understand) the said work—but this part of the arrangement appears to me misty. [9] Altogether, I am quite delighted: & Mr Mathews’s active kindness for me a stranger, is really past thanking him for;—while his generous sympathy in the apparent prospect of success, is still a better thing.
Talking of kindness always reminds me of dear Mr Kenyon—so I will tell you that he has gone into solitude at the back of the Isle of Wight .. by a tether of ten days. May the winds blow freshly on him—the best wish I can think of, who just now am gasping for breath, with the thermometer of this room (window & door being open) at seventy five. Oh, the heat! And oh, the writing—say you!
I had a letter from George this morning, dated Worcester, & he talks of Miss Jane Porter having been there lately in search of military antiquities. She wandered over the field of battle, under the convoy of the best inn’s waiter!
Now, I deserve a letter,—dont I?—if you write to say only “Dont teaze me.” I grow jealous of those people who come to drink tea with you, & wont let you write long letters to me—and thereon hangs my philosophy!
I have been reading for the second time, that interesting memoir of Mrs Hemans by Mr Chorley—full of interest certainly. [10] Still I stand by my position, that she was too conventionally a lady, to be a great poetess—she was bound fast in satin riband. Her delicacy restrained her sense of Beauty—and she had no reverence for Humanity, through the morbid narrowness of her sympathies. I took up Blanchard’s memoir of LEL [11] just after Mr Chorley’s book, & was struck by an undefinable vulgarity spreading all through it, in obvious contrast to the refinement of the other work. Do you remember enough of the two, to think with me?
Oh yes, yes!—Beranger! But I do not agree with you that Hood wd under any circumstances have been a Beranger—he wants impulse .. which is the French poet’s peculiar charm.
How I shd like to see some more of Miss Jewsbury’s letters. [12] There is more individuality & power in those fragments of letters, preserved in the Chorley Memoir, by very far, than in even Mrs Hemans’s own. I admire them exceedingly.
May God bless you, ever dearest Miss Mitford!
I am your own
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 423–426.
Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library and Wellesley College.
1. The preface EBB wrote for the American edition spoke of her “love and admiration” for the American people and of their “words of kindness and courtesy,” with particular mention of Mathews.
2. A reference to the plucking, one by one, of a daisy’s petals to the chant of “he loves me, he loves me not.” EBB mentions performing such a trial in 1831 (see Diary, p. 29).
3. EBB had always been averse to the routine visits that formed an important part of the social round, especially in country circles. She described “going out” as “the greatest bore in the world” (Diary, p. 144).
4. Letter 1655 contained EBB’s excuses for not seeing Horne; his disappointment caused her to reverse her decision, but he did not take advantage of her belated invitation (see letters 1659 and 1671).
5. Horne was 41 at this time.
6. Psalms 90:10.
7. Cf. Hamlet, I, 2, 135.
8. EBB had difficulty with Mathews’s handwriting; his letter (no. 1640) contained details of the publishing arrangements and explained that Henry G. Langley had undertaken publication.
9. Perhaps EBB’s confusion was due to the fact that Langley was the publisher of The United States Magazine, and Democratic Review, but O’Sullivan was the editor (see letter 1640).
10. EBB had commented on his Memorials of Mrs. Hemans at the time of its publication in 1836 (see letter 538). Her copy of the second edition (1837) formed lot 737 of Browning Collections and is now at Yale (see Reconstruction, A646).
11. Life and Literary Remains of L.E.L. (1841). EBB’s copy formed part of lot 813 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A257).
12. Maria Jane Fletcher (née Jewsbury, 1800–33) dedicated her Lays of Leisure Hours (1829) to Mrs. Hemans. She also wrote Letters to the Young (1828) during a long and serious illness.
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