1869. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 131–132.
[London]
Wednesday. [19] March. 1845. [1]
Is it possible, my dearest friend, that I can have worn my memory so loosely on my sleeve, as to have forgotten your command about returning the American letter? Try to forgive me for it—I am ashamed. How the weather is stroking & smoothing the ruffling of our souls, with invisible hands of softness, .. as if we were all ‘white cats’ & only wanted stroking .. not feeding.! [2] Do you not feel as if the countless crocuses, or rather violets & lilies, within you, were all springing, & unfolding? I do. I have been better already, these two days. Yet my heart is not as still as it ought to be—it cannot recover the reins so quickly.
I saw dear Mr Kenyon yesterday, & we talked of you as we are a little apt to do; & he talked besides of paying a few days’ visit to Mr Eagles before long, .. which I was selfish enough to like less to hear of. I miss him so!
Mind you read Andersen’s ‘Improvisatore.’ [3] I have just finished it,—& am charmed,—though of story, there is none, & of character, not much more. But the sense of inner life throughout it, & the exquisite visions & breathings into Italy, quite take away one’s breath for pleasure. And then, there is a memoir of the author which interests one in him, for a beginning. He is a real poet, .. this Andersen,—& worthy of being a countryman of Hamlet … the Dane par excellence.
Did you see in any newspaper the account of the late catastrophe in Paris, the death in a duel, of one of the writers for the Presse newspaper, of which it appears M. Emile Girardin, the husband of Delphine, is editor. He, & Balzac & Dumas & Mery [4] were chief mourners—& Girardin spoke a funeral oration, in which he eloquently lamented the deceased as the youngest amongst them, .. being under <***>
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 94–95 (as [26] March 1845).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by internal reference to the newspaper account (in The Times for 15 and 18 March) of the duel in Paris.
2. Presumably, EBB alludes to La Chatte Blanche, a seventeenth-century fairy tale by Mme. d’Aulnoy, of which numerous translations in English have appeared, particularly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
3. See letter 1861, note 7.
4. François Joseph Pierre Méry (1797–1866) was a journalist and author of “La Némésis,” a weekly newspaper column, as well as poetry and drama. His participation in the funeral of Alexandre Dujarier was reported in The Times for 18 March. Dujarier, manager of La Presse newspaper, which was founded in 1836 by Émile de Girardin, had been killed in a duel with M. de Beauvallon (see The Times for 15 March).
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