2076. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 142–144.
[London]
[27 October 1845] [1]
I upbraid myself for not writing to you my ever dearest Miss Mitford—but I have had no heart to write .. no heart .. it is just the word!—for mine has been tossed up & down by sadder thoughts than the mere non-recovery of health could bring me. Let us leave the subject—I cannot talk of it. I should have gone infallibly, if it had not been for the apprehension of involving others with me in a series of difficulties .. which, (as to them), would have constituted my condemnation in my own eyes. As for the good to be derived, I see it as you see it—& perhaps everyone else sees the same. It is not the sight which is awry—not the power of seeing– I want only the sun—I faint here for lack of the sun: & it is proved to me that I should be in as good health as the rest of the world, if I could have the two things together, warmth & air. But this shutting up you see, which is necessary to prevent the tendency to organic disease of the lungs, shatters the nervous system—& the alternative of either evil is inevitable while I live in this climate. I feel like a bird in a cage .. inclined to dash myself against the bars of my prison—but God is good, & counter-motives have been given to me in moments of the greatest bitterness, sufficient for encouragement. So I live on—“’bide my time”—only without the slightest expectation, my loved friend, of the results you speak of from the quarter you look to—no!– In fact, nothing should ever induce me to appeal again, on any personal ground whatever, to that quarter. It is from no want of frankness <.. this reticence to you!> [2] —& you will be the first to understand the respect of my silence. So let us leave the subject for what is pleasant—for I shall see you .. shall I not? Any day, this week even, I shall be delighted to see you—any day after tomorrow, tuesday. Begin from wednesday, & go on. Only it is too bad to think of bringing you so far through the cold—but I let your kindness have its way. Only, again, I suddenly think that you may be retained by prudential motives—because one of my brothers has been ill with fever of a typhoid character (not absolutely typhus) & though now convalescent, & able to leave his bed & take soups & strengthening things, I know what a sound typhus must have <in> your ears. Yet the medical men have been of opinion throughout that no harm was to be apprehended for visitors at the house—& my other brothers who sate up, night after night, with the poor invalid, hav<e> been & are perfectly well—— I tell you in any case.– Judge for yourself .. & in the case of the least fear, do not come. You will find me (if you do) still off the sofa, & able to walk about—only not looking quite as flourishing as I really did in the summer—a little fagged (as must needs be) with all the heart-bruising!– And I shall struggle not to sink this winter,—& if it is a mild winter .. ah, well! all this is with God. And the wound [3] is apart from it, .. <.. apart from the mere health,> [4] & to be unaffected by it. May God help me! my reeds have run into me from all sides almost .. yet still I cling!–
Every day for a week I have reproached Wilson at set of sun for forgetting to send you oysters—but what with illness in the house & change of servants, her memory has really been overburdened. You shall have them today or tomorrow.
Balzac’s ‘Paysans’ [5] in its one volume, (for I have seen only that one volume) is another proof of the pressure of the times towards sympathies with the people. And a new work by George Sand ‘Le meunier d’Angibault’ goes the same way, but with diminished power certainly. [6] Her hand grows cold when she extends it from the chair. And he––why he is Balzac still in ‘Les Paysans’—but story there is none, & so no interest—& no unity, as far as that first volume indicates: & I found it rather hard reading .. despite the human character, & the scenic effects. As to ‘Le Juif’ I have done with him, & am not sorry to have done. [7] The last volumes fall off step by step. Now is it not true that when people determine professedly to be didactic, immediately they grow dull as school-masters? it seems so to me.– V Hugo is a true poet.
Mr Horne is busy, it appears,—but I had a few lines from him the other day. [8]
Well—you will write in any case–
And I am ever your affectionate
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 142–144.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to “tomorrow, tuesday” and by Miss Mitford’s visit of 31 October (see letter 2080).
2. Bracketed passage is inserted above the line.
3. i.e., of her father’s opposition to her travelling to Italy.
4. Bracketed passage is inserted above the line.
5. The first part of Balzac’s Les Paysans had been serialized in La Presse in December 1844; however, because of a dispute, and eventual break, with Girardin, the founder of La Presse, the completion of the novel was published posthumously.
6. Sand’s novel was published in three volumes in 1845.
7. EBB had begun reading Sue’s novel a year earlier (see letter 1707), and she mentioned the “ninth volume” the previous March (letter 1865).
8. Horne’s energies at this time were occupied with the completion of Ballad Romances. Early in 1846 he would leave for Dublin as a correspondent for Dickens’s The Daily News.
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