Correspondence

2165.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 297–299.

[London]

Wednesday. [?7] [January 1846] [1]

Our letters appear to have crossed, dearest friend, yet I cannot but thank you for this of yours, which has made me anxious as well as grateful,—through speaking of your illness. Why how ever did you bring on fever? Did cold do it, or what? It does not sound like a fatality which belongs to you!– Tell me how you are—write soon to tell me. May it be that you are nursing your invalid to your own injury? or have you walked too far? or talked to too much company,—or sympathized too much in Mr Chorley’s play? [2]

As for your invalid Mr May, I earnestly hope that all may end well—but I fear. In the meanwhile, do not you wish me under anybody’s care except Phœbus Apollo’s: [3] —I only want sun & air, to be strong—& the month of May (if that is what you mean) would do me infinite good. For the surgeon .. ah, do you think I do not know everything which may be done by surgeons & physicians in the whole class of cases to which mine has belonged? And, dearest Miss Mitford, how have you known, I am impertinent enough to ask, whether my case was treated differently, or not, from the case of your patient? You have seen me shut up. But what preceded it, was a different process—and every sort of process has been tried upon me, I do believe—inhalations, excavations, execratations [sic], .. very nearly down to inhumations!– I had the strengthening & exercising system till I was all but dead with it. It is the fashion to strengthen for pulmonary fever .. but some persons cannot bear it, & I was one of them: & it was with the most lingering regret that Dr Barry [4] admitted at last the necessity of recurring to rest & the cloister. What did me the most good as a direct remedy, was an open blister which I had for a year at a time, & which certainly was the means of stopping the bleeding. I was made weak, you know, not so much by the complaint, as by the great nervous shock [5] —you remember. But experience has taught me that the least slackening of the restrictions as to warmth & rest, cannot be borne with impunity—experience proves everything. And I am confident that in a warm climate, that is, in a mild climate, I should be as well and strong as nine tenths of the rest of the world. The mild winter has left me upright—& I have not a single bad symptom at this moment. Still, I know the truth of the medical oracles I heard last summer—“Remember that you may be quite as ill as ever. It depends on yourself & the precautions you take.” Within these four walls, I suffer simply from the confinement acting on the nervous system, but if I went out in the winter, here in England, why you would all see. It seems to me that it would be wise in your patient to get nearer the sun. Where the respiratory organs are affected, what does reason say? The remedial agent must surely be air rather than medecine. The inhalations touch the disease nearest, of all medicines, but the fatigue of inhaling, to delicate lungs, is a point scarcely sufficiently considered, it seems to me. Is not all this, medical, more than enough? And from me too, who now consider myself convalescent—not an invalid at all!—only “a bird in a cage.” [6] But you are interested in another.

Yes! A kind note from Mr Russell, [7] clearly to your kindness, my kind dear friend! We all thank you from our hearts. Mr Russell was spoken to by another frien<d> of ours, & answered very abruptly that he believed the appointment to be made, but that it was Mr Saunders’s business [8] —& I was afraid that he would not mention the subject to you, he seems to live in such a crowd. Mr Saunders is the great man .. the secretary, .. with three thousand a year, and a palace of a house,—& he having been under personal obligation to Sir William Russell’s father, (no relation of your Russells) & Sir William being Alfred’s intimate friend, [9] he (Mr Saunders) has opened both hands, & all but promised an under-secretaryship to himself when the candidate shall be properly qualified. In the meantime, the business is neither hard nor disagreeable, as I told you in my last letter—but here let me tell you again, that I thank & love you for your kindness just as I ought to do.

In the crossing letter you will find my doxy concerning Mr Horne’s Ballads. Zoe, too, I have been reading at last. [10] An extraordinary book certainly. I should take the author to be a free-thinker, by a copious interpretation of the word. The power, & liberty of utterance, are undeniable generally—but parts of the book are very inferior. Do you not think so?

May God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford.

Ever I am your affectionate & grateful

EBB.

I have heard much of the cold water cure. Mrs Orme, who takes quackeries, by successions, fell into cold water at the beginning of this last summer, & has been ill since the end of June with rheumatic ophthalmia. I call it a consequence—she calls it an accident,—but that the “cold water cure” is not a cure for rheumatic ophthalmia, remains a fact. For chest complaints I shd fear the very worst from such a remedy, with its attendant violent changes produced in the circulation,—and indeed some hydropathists confess boldly their inability to do good in pulmonary cases. I do trust that the poor patients at Malvern are not friends of yours. Consider that the great evil in consumptive habits, is the morbid rapidity & unevenness of the circulation,—& then that the effect of these cold applications is precisely an unnatural rapidity of the circulation—let common sense judge!

I must end! Oh yes, yes! I was indeed very naughty! And you are never anything else but the best & kindest– You shd have rewritten your letter!!? No, indeed you shdnt!

Thank you for the one of this morning! You did amuse me so.

Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 153–155.

Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library and Wellesley College.

1. Dated by letter 2160 referred to at the end of this letter, which contains EBB’s criticisms of Horne’s Ballad Romances.

2. Doubtless Old Love and New Fortune which Chorley had been trying to bring out for some time. It was first mentioned in the correspondence between EBB and Miss Mitford in June 1844 (see letter 1634); see also letter 1817 in which EBB said she “could not very well ask him for the comedy.” The play was not published until 1850.

3. i.e., as the god of light and healing.

4. Robert Fitzwilliam De Barry Barry (d. 1839) attended EBB in Torquay.

5. i.e., Bro’s death.

6. Cf. King Lear, V, 3, 9.

7. Charles Russell. As previously noted (see letter 2122, note 11), he was M.P. for Reading and Chairman of the Great Western Railway.

8. Charles Alexander Saunders (1797–1864) was the Secretary, and later General Superintendent, of the Great Western Railway from 1833 until his death. EBB’s reference here is a further allusion to Miss Mitford’s help in securing a position in the company for Alfred (see letter 2160, note 7).

9. William Russell (1822–92), 2nd Baronet, whose seat was Charlton Park, Gloucestershire. His father, also William (1773–1839) had been created 1st Baronet in 1832. His sister, Emma Monro, is mentioned in several letters from EBB to her brother George; e.g., see letters 1196, 1343, and 1863. The reference to “your Russells” is to the family whose seat was at Swallowfield, near Reading.

10. For EBB’s earlier reference to Zoe: The History of Two Lives by Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury (3 vols., 1845), see letter 1943.

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