Correspondence

2358.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 12, 323–324.

[London]

Tuesday [12 May 1846] [1]

My dearest Miss Mitford I must pray to hear a little more of you, besides what you have written. How are you? & how are you managing about your maid? [2] Has she left you—& have you the prospect of another? and do you think at all about coming to London? I have been expecting day by day to hear from you, &, now that the letter comes, here is not a word of you except as to your connection with Dumas, [3] which is too distant to please me, let him have ever so much, as you say, of other merit. For the rest, I am glad that you are at work—but I do not like Amaury [4]  .. it is dreadfully heavy, it appears to me. Of Dumas generally, I do not think particularly lowly. He has a great deal of talent & writes most amusing books—I like him in his way, very much. His ‘Guerre des femmes,’ a late work of his on the Ligue wars, made me weep like a thundercloud—but I dont think I have cried over another of his books. Do not set me down as a despiser of Dumas– And do you select the decent ones? or what is the test? [5] Do you venture to leave out passages? Answer or do not answer those questions .. I leave them to your generosity—but do [6] say how you are—because the knowledge of that is a matter of necessity with me.

For me, I have been out once or twice or thrice in the carriage—& yesterday was tempted to get out & feel the grass under my feet in the Regent’s Park. It was a pure & strange feeling of pleasure. Very well I am of course, with the sun & nearing summer. I put on my summer looks, you know, as people do the fashions.

And I am glad that Mr Buckingham has gone, since he was to go—for you seemed to me nervous & fearful overmuch. When I go, my very dear friend, it shall not be to America—I am faithful to the Mediterranean– Only, while the summer lasts, England satisfies me. Even the Regent’s Park where I was yesterday, looked to me like a region of Arcady, .. the trees & the grass, saturated with their green sunlight! I put both my feet on the grass—I gathered it with my hands—I laid it against my lips. Such a strange pleasure, it was. And so beautiful, as a scene! You blaspheme against our London-country, through not knowing what manner of country we have.

Today Mrs Jameson has been here. I like her increasingly, & she is quite affectionate in her goodness to me. Now, she has two books in the press .. her work on Art, of which, extracts appeared in the Athenæum, & a volume of miscellaneous essays. [7]

Dear Mr Kenyon has gone away in haste & sorrow to Portsmouth, on account of the dangerous illness of his friend Commodore Jones. [8]

Is there news? No. Yet I hear distantly that Mr Dilke is about to take the ruin of the ‘Daily News’, & set it up again at 2d½ .. on the Parisian plan. [9] I hear too that Tennyson is in London, standing godfather to Dickens’s child—who is christened Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson, [10] so as to be half a poet & half a … ‘paletot’! Do you approve?

Ever your affectionate EBB.

I sent the letter to Welbeck Street,—& as Mrs Dupuy [11] was reported there to be in Brighton, forwarded it on.

Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 168–170.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Date based on EBB’s reference to “the walk” in Regent’s Park, an account of which she had given in letter 2355.

2. In a letter to Miss Mitford, dated [?11] [June 1846] (MS at Wellesley), EBB expresses her satisfaction that Miss Mitford has engaged Eliza to take the place of Jane who had been discovered stealing the previous year. However, Eliza was soon found to be unsuitable, and she too was replaced.

3. Fragments des oeuvres d’Alexandre Dumas, Chosis a l’usage de la Jeunesse (1846) par Miss Mary Russell Mitford, which is advertised by Rolandi as a “New Work” in The Athenæum of 21 November (no. 995, p. 1197). As previously noted (in letter 2105, note 2), Miss Mitford was preparing this at Rolandi’s request, and Eton College was to have 100 copies.

4. One of the numerous novels by Dumas published in 1844.

5. See letter 2330, note 11.

6. Underscored three times.

7. The publication of Mrs. Jameson’s Memoirs and Essays, Illustrative of Art, Literature, and Social Morals (1846) was announced in “List of New Books” in The Athenæum of 6 June 1846; a review followed in the issue for 27 June. Extracts from her Sacred and Legendary Art, which was not published until 1848, had appeared in various issues during 1845 and 1846. EBB provided translations for this work (see letter 2304, note 2).

8. See letter 2353, note 3.

9. See letter 2348, note 1.

10. See letter 2348, note 5.

11. Miss Mitford’s friend, Mrs. J.P. (Sophia) Dupuy, lived at 31 Welbeck Street, not far from 50 Wimpole Street.

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