1935. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 248–251.
[London]
Wednesday. [4 June 1845] [1]
Ever dearest Miss Mitford, I am concerned that you shd still be unsettled; & .. in the matter of the defecits, [2] .. will you let me know if I can send you anything as friend to friend ..? Will you love me enough to let me know it? It wd be a dear proof of your affection to me, .. if you wd give that proof, .. & I shd have such a pleasure .. Now, will you?
And either today or tomorrow Mr Horne’s storybook goes to you in the company of a little ginger &c, which I fancied you might like. And now to thank you for your welcome letter!——
I had heard nothing of the Tennyson marriage, & if he has found a princess dowered with ‘fine gold,’ under ‘a silken coverlid,’ [3] .. why so much the better,—at least so I hope!– She must condescend to the smoke,—& perhaps to the polka——but the smoke is said to be so essentially Tennysonian that he could’nt be supposed to rhyme without it. As to my friend Mr Browning, you made me smile a little at your anxiety about the influence of this cloud-compelling Jupiter among my clouds. [4] You seem to think that, between us, reasonable people have no chance of ever seeing the sun! Well—I will take care, as you tell me!– And then you know I have other faults besides the fault of obscurity .. (& Mrs Jameson had the boldness to tell me to my face the other day that she did not think me obscure!!) & Mr Browning may show me how to correct these .. seeing that I recognize him for a master in art, ‘after his kind,’ [5] however to your astonishment. And for my ‘Prometheus,’ if my former attempt was anything but a disgrace, as a poetical rendering of Æschylus, & if my present one is not in some degree worthier, … (for I do not praise it, mind ..) then, I am ignorant of Æschylus, & of myself, & of the first elements of poetry as an art, .. & “grope as the blind.” [6] Your Mr Blackstone [7] is probably of an elder school, & talks, as Mr Boyd does, of scanning this & the other English verse, & abjures the gross improprieties practised out of Dryden & Pope—&, in fact, that any one, .. who could praise my first translation as a poem, knowing the poetry of the original, .. shd prefer it to my new one, cd not very much surprise me. In my own mind, it is legitimately qualified to be used as a cramming book by young students,—for “this & no more!”—& is for the rest, dead, & prostrate, stiff & cold .. “corps morte” [8] in a full sense, .. & the work of a mind imperfectly possessed of its own wide-awake powers. I could not speak my mind then .. my own mind! how much less, Æschylus’s?– And now you are to forgive my impertinence, dearest dear friend, & not tell Mr Blackstone, .. to whose good opinion I am a debtor,––& not, above all things, fancy that advice of yours could ever be considered lightly by me! It is in all respectful affectionateness to you that I let you see .. what you will call perhaps my stubbornness, .. but which, I do trust, does not deserve so hard a name. Yes—Mr Kenyon asked to look at the m∙s. & looked at it,—& thought it fuller, warmer, & more spoken-out than its predecessor——although that it is covered with faults, I shall agree with everybody who ever comes to read it, inclusive of Mr Blackstone & you, to be a fact certain & sure.—— The other day I had a letter from Professor Blackie of Aberdeen [9] … oh, did I tell you that before? .. to ask first for the printed copy, .. & then for the m∙s.—promising all sorts of spiritual consolations & re-integrations—but I did not send him the new work–
Yes—I did not suppose Mr Browning to be younger,—& only observed that he did not look older, if so old as I expected——which comes, as you say, of the slightness of form & figure. You are a little wrong, I believe, in fancying that his personal friends only hold him in estimation as a poet– His poems pay their way .. which is something in these beggarly days—& my brother hears him talked of among the lawyers .. far on the outside of Mr Serjt Talfourd——and then, I really must remind you, dear friend of mine, that Pippa Passes made an impression on yourself. [10] As to Mr Horne he has never seen nor thought of asking to see m∙s. from my hand. He is too much occupied for such misdoings. Have you heard from him?—and has a note from the viola accosted the ear of your Hayward Grace? [11] I expect him to go down in a flash of lightning one of these days, with a heart ready blown to offer in his right hand, & the left hand extended for your mediation.
You will see that I am not so depressed, without my saying it—& indeed the meeting with Mrs Hedley is over, .. & I was able to cry well & be quiet afterwards, .. & now I shall enjoy her presence & society. [12] The worst of me is, just now, that I have left off sleeping ‘for the nonce’ .. & without Frederic Soulié[’]s expedient of sowing up my eyelids, I really cant see where it’s to end. Oh—but that is jest—& you are not to mind it! I have not murdered sleep [13] .. & shall be in a deep doze before long, there’s no need for doubting. And in other ways I am growing better & stronger as the sun shines, & walked into Papa’s room yesterday, & shall try to get out in the carriage perhaps before the century ends, .. & people begin to say that I look better. From Mr Kenyon I heard the other day, & he returns about the sixth. And the Hedleys are at St James’s Hotel for three weeks or a month,——so that I talk of my ‘visitors’. No—Lizzie is a Barrett, the daughter of a cousin of Papa’s—& as her father is in the West Indies & her mother, insane, .. poor little creature, she is next to an orphan, .. & we are not likely to lose her. [14]
That dreadful, dreadful event at Raggetts’s! [15] did you read of it?– It was brought near to us by the body of the unhappy Mrs Round being carried to her sister’s house, Mrs Green Wilkinson’s .. our opposite neighbour, .. in a shell three days ago——just the poor, charred, mutilation of a woman, .. they say … “very little of her,” .. to quote the ghastly naked phrase, .. & the hands not to be known from that black mummied hand three thousand years old, which my brothers brought from the sepulchre of Ægyptian queens, & which I refused to look at a fortnight since!– Yet on the evening of the morning when the shell brought these poor ‘remains’ to the door opposite, a box remained engaged at the Opera in her name!—— What an antithesis, altogether! And is’nt it dreadful to consider what the poor daughter must feel now, .. she in her distraction, having actually left her mother on the stairs—mad through terror, I suppose! but what a memory to have to live with!—that desertion!– Better that she had died, a thousand times, than live with such a recollection!
Not a word more. Love me my beloved friend! And write & say if I can do anything, supply you with anything[—]gowns .. collars &c—now do!–
Am I not your own affectionate
Ba—?
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 114–117.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by the fire in Raggett’s Hotel on 27 May 1845.
2. Sic, for deficit.
3. Cf. Tennyson’s “The Sleeping Beauty” (1830), line 9. Tennyson did not marry until 1850.
4. For other mentions of the fault of obscurity in the works of both EBB and RB, see letters 1877 and 1907.
5. Genesis 1:11.
6. Cf. Deuteronomy 28:29.
7. Frederick Charles Blackstone (1795–1862), Miss Mitford’s friend and a correspondent of Thomas Arnold, was the Vicar of Heckfield; his grandfather was the famous judge Sir William Blackstone.
8. “Dead body.”
9. John Stuart Blackie (1809–95) was appointed as the first regius professor in the chair of humanity (Latin) at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and later held the Greek Chair in Edinburgh University. In 1850 he published verse translations of Æschylus which he had begun in 1838 (DNB).
10. See letter 1819. In no. 1837 RB tells EBB that “if they [the public] had taken to my books, my father and mother would have been proud of this and the other ‘favorable critique’, and .. at least so folks hold .. I should have to pay Mr. Moxon less by a few pounds.” EBB’s comment in defense of the sales of RB’s poetry is also interesting in light of DeVane’s statement that Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day (1850) was the “first of Browning’s books, except for Strafford (1837), to be published at the expense of the publisher” (DeVane, p. 194).
11. We take this to be a reference to the Hayward mentioned in previous letters (nos. 1715 and 1788); however, we have been unable to identify further who this person was, or what Horne’s interest or involvement was.
12. As previously indicated (letters 1923, 1925, and 1930), EBB had been anxious about Jane Hedley’s visit because she had not seen her since Bro’s death in 1840; she had had a similar experience when she saw her uncle Hedley in 1843 (see no. 1292).
13. Cf. Macbeth, II, 2, 33.
14. Georgiana Elizabeth (née Barrett, 1833–1918) was the third child and only daughter of George Goodin Barrett (1792–1854) and Elizabeth Jane Turner (1800–86). She married EBB’s younger brother Alfred in 1855. EBB and other family members objected to the marriage because of the mental instability of Georgiana’s mother.
15. A fire broke out just after midnight on Monday, 26 May 1845, in the Raggett’s Hotel, Dover Street, Piccadilly. Five persons died including Mrs. Round, wife of the M.P. for Maldon, as well as Henry Raggett, proprietor of the hotel, and his daughter. The account of the incident in The Times (28, 30, and 31 May 1845) explained that Mrs. Round slipped on the landing, and her daughter, assured that two men were going to rescue her mother, escaped. However, Mrs. Round was not rescued, and there was some difficulty in identifying her remains. Mrs. Wilkinson resided at 39 Wimpole Street.
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