1865. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 126–127.
[London]
March 18. 1845
Ever dearest friend– How my Love for you has been pulling at my sleeve these two days, to write .. & write! But I have been so low, & weary, & tired of life. [1] It is as much as I can do to stand up against this bitter wind, without smoothing down my petticoats!– Still—I am not ill in the strong sense .. mind! I am weak—my heart is disordered; & I feel all day long as if I were lying on the edge of a fainting fit—do you know what that is? Yesterday, I went to bed at four oclock—& even the ninth volume of the ‘Juif’ [2] would not animate me as it should.
And now .. in à proposity be it spoken—your ‘Ecole des Journalistes’ disappointed me. That is—you did not praise it as a drama,—but it really was twenty times worse than I expected. Jules Janin may wind his compliments as he will & can, but there is nothing in that work to hold them—it is insufferably feeble & empty—a complete void. But the letters did interest me!, [3] although you know, I differ from you & take the Jules side of the argument, .. I think him right, and Mdme Girardin & her advocate wrong—& I think also that he is nobly right & that she is ignobly wrong. When she libels the Journalistes she dishonours all the great writers, her contemporaries, who because they are not journalists only, who because their genius is essentially of a nature to outgrow the temporary medium, have not the less on that account made use of it, & are not the less journalists certainly. In every profession there will be to a certain extent, a populace—but it is precisely the populace of it which does not fairly represent it. Altogether I have kept fast to Jules, & I commend him––except indeed where he proves himself mortal by his disrespect to Balzac. How is it possible that Jules Janin can in his secret soul depreciate Balzac,—can it be possible? If he had recognized the power, & then blamed him for the sin of Mdme de Girardin, I should have applauded still. You know that I do attribute to Balzac, great writer as he is, a want of patience & sympathy towards his brethren in letters,—& thus I could hear this attributed to him by another, without wincing. But to deny his genius in the production of the Illusions perdues, is past bearing, & beyond wondering at!– What can Jules mean by it?
Do you know ‘Le maçon’ by Michel Raymond—? [4] It is not as vivid as most of these books from France,—nor as passionate,—but it is interesting as a picture of the life of the people in Paris & I have read it with pleasure.
Oh yes—to be sure the French conception of English manners is something marvellous. I think it is in a novel of Madme Bodin, [5] where the daughter of an English nobleman marries the butler of a neighbouring establishment, who having made up a little money ‘at service’ & inherited some land in Ireland, instantly becomes Sir Ralph as a matter of course, & is visited by the whole aristocracy. One laughs at first at these absurdities, but at last it grows to be too much idiocy for even laughing at.
Ah—Mr Chorley. But you know, I cannot exchange him quite for Mr Browning. Mr Browning & I have grown to be devoted friends I assure you—and he writes me letters praying to be let in, quite heart-moving & irresistible. In the summer I must see him—& Mr Chorley too. I shall like to see both. And then for Hyéres [6] & everybody!–
You see what Mr Chorley says of Paracelsus! You see it is not merely a dream of mine!—he is full of genius. [7]
And then he writes letters to me with Attic contractions, saying he ‘loves’ me. [8] Who can resist that—?–
But do not talk of it if you please, although it is all in the uttermost innocence, .. as testifies the signature
of your most affectionate
EBB.
Yes—Meneval’s work is at Rolandi’s. [9] I see it—& I see Esther [10] par Balzac—in the catalogue—as a new work. Do write to me dearest friend.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 91–92.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Cf. Hamlet, I, 2, 133.
2. EBB had begun reading Sue’s novel in 1844 (see letter 1739).
3. We take this to refer to the letter from Jules Janin to Mme. Girardin, published in the 1840 Brussels edition of L’École des journalistes. In a letter to Charles Boner (28 February 1851), Miss Mitford wrote that she had read l’École des journalistes “in a Bruxelles edition with several feuilletons about it appended thereunto, especially a letter to the authoress by Jules Janin, one of his best” (Mary Russell Mitford: Correspondence with Charles Boner and John Ruskin, 1914, p. 179). Janin concludes his letter by comparing his response to Mme. Girardin’s L’École des journalistes to the “l’indignation que m’a causée et que me cause encore, quand j’y pense, cet insipide roman, déjà oublié par tous, excepté par moi, de M. de Balzac, les Illusions perdues, où la conviction manque tout autant que le style” (p. 224). Mme. Girardin responded to Janin indirectly through an “advocate”: A. Granier de Cassagnac, whose reply to Janin’s letter also appears in the Brussels edition. See also letter 1845, note 4.
4. As previously noted (letter 1774), this novel was written by Raymond Brucker and Michel Masson and published in 1828.
5. Probably Scènes de la vie anglaise (1836) by Jenny Dufourquet Bastide (pseud. Camille Bodin, 1792–1854).
6. See letter 1856.
7. Since there is no evidence of a review of Paracelsus by Chorley, it seems reasonable to infer that his opinion of RB’s poem must have been expressed in correspondence with EBB which she may be sharing with Miss Mitford.
8. See letters 1811 and 1862.
9. Presumably the memoirs mentioned in letter 1850.
10. Esther heureuse (1838).
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