1930. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 241–244.
[London]
Monday. [26 May 1845] [1]
Ever dearest Miss Mitford, Your letter is thrice welcome—or rather four times,—because thrice welcome it wd be under any circumstances—& I wanted to know this time, how you were, & whether all the diablerie performing about you of late, had done any harm to your spirits. What a capacious idea of thieving that girl must have had!– And how strange it seems that all this wickedness, which must have taken its time in ripening, should have continued without a suspicion on your part!—only I am foolish for saying so, because you could’nt suspect a person & live with her,—I know you could’nt. Association brings trust with you—& you cannot help it. As to the unfortunate sinner, although it makes one’s blood run cold to think of her blasphemous lie, yet I can understand something of the madness that drove her to it,—the protest against humiliation & disgrace, in the presence of the mother of the man she loved! It is comprehensible—is’nt it? God was less to her, at that moment. But how awful to stand by & hear!–
And as to the prosecution, you are surely, surely right about it, & will not have to regret it—it will be a “twice blessed’[’] [2] mercy, .. to giver & taker. But can you not recover many of these stolen goods? all the linen for instance, & things of the sort which cd not easily be made to vanish into the earth—? Do tell me. Tell me too if you have a clue to a maid yet? & if you wd like me to enquire for one here? I know of one young woman who wd take ten guineas a year, & who is skilful enough in dressmaking, I fancy—but you will tell me.
Ah—Mr Haydon!– His letter made me more than smile. Is’nt it excellent, the indignation at the “great fact” of a poet who has ‘thoughts too deep for tears,’ [3] condescending to put on another man’s “inexpressibles”? It quite tickled my fancy .. to use the common phrase. Also, it was not unamusing to know that He of the Lakes did really come plump down on both his knees before our queen’s fair majesty, & that a lordling or two were found ready to pick him up. I never heard that particular. And now only fancy what harm Mr Haydon does himself by talking after this fashion at Mr Serjt Talfourd’s & elsewhere—think how he kills himself by it! And after all, it is’nt consistent doctrine for a man who talks of the “divine right” by the hour—now, is it?
I am writing to you in a pre-occupied mood today, my very dear friend,—for my aunt Hedley is to be here tomorrow or the next day,—& I dread it through all my being. I shall see everything over again,—& feel it. [4] I love her,—but would give .. oh, so much! .. to be able to defer this meeting. I am a coward, you see—& rankly so. I have a dread of mental pain, which grows & grows in me, to my own consciousness—& really I fancy sometimes that I cd be content to be separated from all life & its emotions, so as to avoid the pang of all. This is morbid—but then, I am morbid altogether—and this east wind has shaken me, & ‘jangled’ my nerves—& this expectation about the Hedleys, which has been on the fringe for several weeks now, creaks at the least breath. Oh—I shall be better after I have seen her, you know! It is nonsense—foolishness .. weakness, at best.
Mr Kenyon has not returned yet,—but will, I suppose, at the end of this week, or the beginning of next––and oh!—did I tell you in my last letter that I had seen lately (now I beseech you to keep my counsel & not tell Mr Horne—& not tell Mr Chorley!) Mr Browning? [5] He said in his courtesy more, in the way of request, than the thing was worth,—and so, I received him here one morning, & liked him much. Younger looking than I had expected—looking younger than he is, of course—with natural & not ungraceful manners,—& full of his art, which he is destined, I believe, so worthily to sustain. He is kind enough to promise to read my new Prometheus for me,—& we shall be good friends I hope. [6] You & I differ about his genius,—& also on the dignities of pen & inkishness in general—but a poet is something after all, ..... even if (to quote from Mr Haydon’s idea of the profoundest degradation) in another man’s inexpressibles!– Alfred Tennyson is in London, or has been lately,—& likes it beyond all places, I understand—his soul rejoicing in Polka & Cellarius—& in going home to smoke,—& otherwise professing an intention of writing no more, because he has written all he has to say. [7] Do you like that? No—no—no!– I do not like it for one—I even like it so little, do you know, that I feel quite sorry to have told you.
Thank you, thank you, for letting me see the pencilled lines by poor Clare!– [8] How strangely melancholy, that combination is—of mental gifts & mental privations! Poor Clare!–
I know Bamford’s ‘Life of a Radical,’ [9] which contains some of his verses—but there seemed to me to be more poetry in the prose. It is a vividly interesting autobiography which I shd have mentioned to you long ago. Spenser Hall [10] I do not know, except in the mesmeric association—but of course it makes me proud that a man such as you describe him, shd have been struck at all by my ‘Geraldine’.
Well—I must end here!– I love & think of you my dear, dear friend!
Pray for your
ever affectionate
EBB.
You know as to seeing Mr Horne an older friend, why he has never asked—since he “had no time”. Dont tell anybody.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 112–114.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by Kenyon’s absence from London, as mentioned in letter 1923, and also by RB’s visit on 20 May.
2. The Merchant of Venice, IV, 1, 186.
3. Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” line 204.
4. See letter 1935, note 12.
5. EBB had told Miss Mitford, in letter 1865, that she intended to see Chorley “in the summer”; and in no. 1916, she told RB that she was “‘fast bound’ to see one or two persons this summer.” Presumably Horne would have been included with Chorley and RB since she had agreed to see him the previous summer.
6. RB had been encouraging about EBB’s revised translation of Æschylus’s Prometheus Bound (see letter 1862) since she first mentioned it to him. For an example of his comments, see no. 1937.
7. EBB had made similar comments about Tennyson to Westwood (see letters 1864 and 1924).
8. John Clare (1793–1864) an impoverished poet who wrote Poems, Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1820) and The Shepherd’s Calendar (1827), was at this time in the county asylum at Northampton where he had been since 1841 (DNB). Miss Mitford mentions the “pencilled lines” having been sent to her by a poet friend who had visited Clare in the asylum (Mitford, pp. 123–124). “Poor Clare” is perhaps an oblique allusion to the Poor Clares, an order of Franciscan nuns known for their austerity and their reverence for nature.
9. See letter 1891, note 5.
10. Spencer Timothy Hall (1812–85), known as the “Sherwood Forester,” was an author of verse and prose, which included a volume “descriptive of his birthplace, called The Forester’s Offering.” He was also involved in phrenology and mesmerism, and the results of his experiments with mesmerism were published in a book entitled Mesmeric Experiences (1845) (DNB).
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