Correspondence

1676.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 86–89.

[London]

August 9th [–10] 1844 [1]

So there is no Paris! Then there is a London, to be sure! That wd go into a syllogism, & shall. There is a London, .. & there is a London to be better for your presence. You will come to London my ever dearest friend, according to your oath,—& you will spend two months here at the cheap time of year, which will straight become the dear time of year, & pave these streets of ours with the gold of Whittington’s vision. [2] After Michaelmas, you will come! And next year you & I will go to France together. Oh, of course we will! We shall see, & we shall talk—& when we talk we shall do everything double. And the Michaelmas goose shall be a layer of golden eggs; [3] & we will say [‘]‘Heaven preserve it” [4] with Tennyson! What “shalls” & “wills”!!

By the way Tennyson is in town,—for I have just had a note from Mr Moxon who says that he is going to send him, from himself, a copy of my book. And my book is not to be out until tuesday—but I am to have six copies tomorrow, one of which will go to you forthwith! As to Tennyson, I have been ebbing & flowing about sending him one, .. but ebbed at last. I had no pretence to be so forward. You know there has been some slight intercourse between Wordsworth & myself, .. so that I cd dare it there—but with Tennyson, .. to whom moreover I wrote once to send some American papers by American command, [5]  .. I am the more shy, from a fear that upon putting the two advances together, he might take it into his spherical head, I had determined to force his acquaintance. Now he is very reserved, .. and I am tolerably shy too—& I cd not bear the idea of his thinking such a thing even for half an hour. I never said a word about him to Moxon—& all at once his intention puts an end to my difficulty, as I have told him now. Poor Mr Tennyson is very unwell indeed, I understand—has been suffering a course of hydropathy,—& been the better for it, .. but relapsed. [6]

I am grateful from the bottom of my gratitude, to your pair of booksellers, [7] who deserve to be canonized for the fulfilment of their mission towards you. Ah—and so, my dearest friend, you wait for the booksellers to “put you in good humour with your stories”. Nobody can put you in good humour, but the booksellers!! Very well! or very ill! I scarcely know which to say. Whichever way it is, blessed be these booksellers! and may the odour of sanctity [8] & foxtail (you know that ancient sign upon the leaf, precious in the eyes of the bibliophilist?) [9] breathe from out of them, day & night!– May the dust lie lightly on their book-shelves, & the gold heavily in their purse, .. & their advertisements all talk like Robins’s, [10] to the credence of the world! I shall honour these booksellers evermore. Well—and do tell me what Mr Howe shall at last propose to you. Yes. It sounds like editing,—but I want you to write! oh—I want it so much! Presumptuous & vain wish, for me who am no bookseller!—you will be in good humour neither with your stories nor with me, for daring such a thing!—will you? There is no hope of it.

Perhaps your “letters” have been heard of—or perhaps it is another annual– Only annuals are mortal, & proved so. Or perhaps it is a new magazine. Only that wd not be “light work.” Or perhaps it is an illustration of engravings, after the manner of the annuals .. either in prose or verse. Just as Flush cracks one nut after another, do I guess .. guess .. & there is not a kernel—none at least that I can see. Do tell me. The tales for children, or rather for young people, wd be admirably done by you,—and the exquisite purity & freshness of your own ordinary bearing are such, that it wd not be necessary for you to assume another attitude before the public than your Village one—it wd not be necessary to stoop or strain or affect a veil or a didactic gesture. You are like Nature herself who never stoops to a child, yet is high enough for a wise man. Do you remember, by the glance you had, my lovely little cousin Lizzie Barrett, .. with her golden hair & delicate features, .. almost too like a sylph to be such a dear child as she is? She asked me to “let her see Miss Mitford,” & I “let her see” you one day when you were here, .. one evening .. do you remember? Well—that child is only ten years old, [11] & not remarkable in any way for precocity, .. simply an intelligent child, fond of reading—and she delights, quite delights in your books! She wd single out your books among fifty story-books, & read them in preference, .. & take the right sort of pleasure in them too! I think you wd be very successful as a writer of books for the young. Do you remember a little work of poor Miss Landon’s, called “Recollections of childhood”?– [12] I liked it much! And I cannot help thinking & saying that if you were to put together as a piece of auto-biography, the reminiscences, (some reminiscences), of your childhood, & school-days, that it wd be a precious thing in general literature, as well as to youthful readers & be caught at eagerly by all sorts of hands, dimpled & wrinkled. How little trouble such an undertaking wd give you, is obvious,—& if I had the advantage of being a bookseller, I shd really urge it very gravely & earnestly upon you. As it is, I have said more than enough. I begin to be frightened. I run away without looking behind me.

I send you my book—sent it an hour ago, [13] —& now go on with this letter which I began yesterday. Ah poor Mr Horne! How austere you are to him! I must take his part if only for the love of contradiction, as well as for the love of him. So, to begin with the preface, [14] you are certainly austere about it. May the sweet saints save my book from finding you in such a high critical humour as your judgment of it seemeth to me to express. “Weak”—! no, no—surely not weak. Blame to the utmost the injudiciousness of turning upon his critics, .. decry the impolicy & folly of it .. lament the doing of it with every possible emphasis, and I will add mine, to stamp every word you say into Italics. But if the thing were to be done .. if you concede the point of reply, .. & of personal rebuke to every critic, .. why I really am of opinion that it cd scarcely be done better, more forcibly & at the same time more temperately, than he has done it. I think it clever in its way—& for myself, have had considerable amusement from many things in it. Papa took it away with him last night, & likes it, he says, even better than I do … & I suspect,—because he is beginning, unconsciously to himself, to bristle up into a preparation for occult, misgiving wrath against the critics, who may perhaps use their power of thunder against me!– He says, .. “Very rightly done!—quite what he shd have done! Done like a man, & like a gentleman.”

Ah—if after all Kate the Second,—(Catherine the Second, is an awful suggestor though, of private murders!) gives her hand to our poet, there will be an answer to many of your epigrams. [15] Well—but after all, mind I do not take his part on the point of his omnamativeness [16] —on that particular point, I give him up to you, as something worse than “weak”. There is no excuse for him either in my head or heart. I am vexed & angry to think of it.

But he is less selfabsorbed than you & Mr Merry think. You can neither of you persuade me that he is not kind & generous, & appreciative of goodness & genius everywhere. He is as superior to Mr Reade as .... the distance is beyond any measure I have in my possession. A gifted, generous, benevolent, disinterested man, I am convinced he is. If he spoke ill of me, I shd think it all the same,—the evidence which has reached me from him, of those qualities, is so full & satisfying to my mind. Now am I not the most obstinate of women? yes, & the most forgiving? for I was in a fever for three days, expecting him every hour of every afternoon,—& then he told me that he wd write to me from Prussia!– [17]

Do you know anybody who has any sort of influence with our Sanatorium here, or the hospital for the reception of consumptive patients? Miss Martineau is much interested in a young man, [18]  .. a young author she says,—who is at once proud & poor, & has broken a vessel on the lungs,—& she has written to me to enquire if I or my friends have any influence which might avail for him. Will you consider whether you can do anything? I need not say another word, I know—if you can.

I have much to say to you, but must end for today!

May God bless you my beloved friend!–

Your EBB.

Oh—you will see the dedication. That was a secret, till Papa saw it this morning. That was my secret,—my gunpowder-plot. And he was so pleased—& touched!—only he could not be as pleased, as I was to do it … of course! [19]

Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 432–436.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Inclusive date supplied by the text of the letter.

2. Richard Whittington (d. 1423), three times Lord Mayor of London, was portrayed fancifully in ballads and puppet plays as a poor orphan from the west of England, who made his way to London, and success, on being told that its streets were paved with gold.

3. Cf. Æsop’s second fable, first translated into English in 1484 by William Caxton.

4. Cf. Macbeth, IV, 2, 72.

5. In letter 1155, EBB had told Mathews that the newspaper reviews of Tennyson’s 1842 volume of poems had been forwarded to him, as requested in letter 1103.

6. In a letter dated 29 July 1844, Tennyson wrote that “In the first stages of Hydropathy (under Dr. Jephson) I found it quite impossible to write … and now I am not much better” (Tennyson, I, 226).

7. The editors of EBB-MRM suggest Howe, Leonard & Co., Auctioneers and Commission Merchants of Boston, who advertised in The Athenæum that they took consignments of old or new books for sales at auctions.

8. EBB refers to the ancient belief that the bodies of saints, or saintly people, give off a pleasant odour at the time of death.

9. We have been unable to find an explanation for EBB’s reference to the “foxtail” as an ancient sign; it has been suggested that she is referring to a watermark or some type of printer’s device.

10. George Henry Robins, known for his advertisements, had been involved in the sale of Bertram House, Miss Mitford’s family home (see letter 981, note 12).

11. Georgiana Elizabeth (“Lizzie”) Barrett, (1833–1918) was married to EBB’s brother Alfred in 1855. At the time of this letter, she was eleven years old, not ten as stated by EBB.

12. Perhaps Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836), a collection of stories for children.

13. See the following letter.

14. EBB is referring to Horne’s reply to the critics in the preface to the second edition of A New Spirit.

15. Perhaps a reference to Catherine Clare St. George Foggo, called Kate, whom Horne married in 1847. The first Kate would presumably have been Katy Walters who had died earlier in 1844. EBB’s parenthetical comment about “Catherine the Second” undoubtedly refers to the empress of Russia known as “Catherine the Great.” We cannot clarify the reference to Miss Mitford’s epigrams.

16. A gibe at Horne’s numerous amative pursuits.

17. See letters 1659 and 1661.

18. See letter 1674, note 7.

19. The dedicatory volume is still in family possession (see Reconstruction, A349). In addition to the printed inscription, EBB has written: “To my dearest Papa, with grateful affection from his own Ba. August 1844.”

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