2408. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 38–40.
[London]
Thursday. [?11] [June 1846] [1]
I am delighted to have your letter, ever dearest Miss Mitford,—for my patience was gasping for breath, & certainly if I had not received it just then, you would have been dunned for it forthwith. On the whole, too, it is a good pleasant letter, & satisfies me about your maid—though I, who am ambitious for you, should have liked a more accomplished person than you describe—still, good temper, good principle & simplicity are excellent things in their way. [2] As for Eliza, your being so hard hearted, seems to argue that she has been jilted deservedly– Did her Light-of-love win her too lightly, or what? In losing her, you at least do not seem to lose much. She was over-grave for you, I think, & not of an affectionate nature,—so that you were as inclined to be a jilter of hers, as ever were her lovers. May the new maid content you better—for these changes are sad things to bear, & I know how they vex you. Have you a gardener? Tell me all.
Why, Mr Buckingham has lingered indeed! I am glad he is off at last, & hopeful that you may have good news of him when he has lived long enough on the sea– [3] As for me, I am flourishing more & more, & really am as well as possible when I keep quiet & do not overwork myself. This is my time for living, you know, .. this summer-time—& none of your roses (may they pardon the profane comparison!) bud & blow faster than I do. You see, the miracle of last winter kept me from my annual descent—and so, I rise now from last year’s level. I was told yesterday by somebody who had not seen me since my illness, that I look rather better than I did then .. before it! .. which sounds ‘un peu fort’! [4] but the truth is that I am surprisingly well. Every morning, if I do not go in a carriage, I walk out .. to the bookseller’s at the corner of the street, [5] there to rest & turn—& I have been in the carriage to Hampstead without suffering. Still, you know, I do not set up for strength, exactly—& I am forced to take precautions & cultivate myself rigidly .. i.e .. with more care than I am worth—for a sharp winter would undo me again .. of that, I am aware perfectly. Ah well,—let the winters go! Who would talk of winter, with the summer round them? Such an exquisite summer too!– I feel it in my soul, do you know. I have had a heavy life, so far .. but perhaps God means to give me a little compensation even in this world. You, in the meanwhile, lament about the heat, & I will grant to you that during three days, when the thermometer stood in this room at eighty, I did call for the winds & the dews & every modification of impossible coolness. Only, however, during those three days. On every day beside, I was glad, & grateful .. I hope ..: it is an exquisite summer. You who have the trees to fan you, .. how can you be too hot? But, being too hot, how good of you & dear of you, to be glad of the heat for me? I thank you, dearest kindest friend!–
Mr Horne was only a week in London & left it without writing more to me than the little note announcing his arrival. Mr Dilke has the Daily News, & Mr Horne serves under his government [6] —which surprises me considerably. Mr Wentworth Dilke, the son, takes the Athenæum, which grows duller & duller, fainter & fainter, it seems to me. Dickens is in Switzerland .. for a year. [7] Mrs Jameson goes to Italy in the autumn. The Countess Hahn Hahn is in London. Our other visitor, Ibrahim, [8] was dissuaded, I hear, with the whole power & might of the French language, from risking his delicate health in our “horrible climate:”—this, at Paris!—he comes, & finds our thermometers at eighty– Instead of being chilled to death, he is nearly broiled—. Which is too intense a surprise to be quite a pleasant one, perhaps.
Your Dumas, I hope you know, has been writing a more than usually amusing book in his Comte de Monte Cristo. [9] It kept me afloat through the three hot days, &, though as improbable as possible, I owe it none the less thankfulness for some hours of dreamy amusement. He is an excellent storyteller—& if I were a Sultana, as Sultanas used to be, I would give him a corner of the divan & a golden cup, & never think of cutting his head off. [10] As to the difference between good & evil, he does not know it—but he knows his right hand from his left .. he is a clever fellow. Nearer, he is, upon the whole, to Alexander the Great, than to Alexander the coppersmith [11] —so vive Alexandre! Mind you read Monte Cristo—particularly, if you are too hot. I recommend Monte Cristo .. taken between glasses of lemonade—.
And now, I suppose, you begin to hold your drawing rooms & levees—the strawberry beds do not ripen in vain for all the neighbourhood round. Yet let nobody tire you, dearest Miss Mitford—keep from your superfluities of hospitality .. I am afraid for you, almost. For our part, we are going to have a whole army of aunts, uncles, cousins & cousinets, down upon us from Paris & other places—& almost I am frightened at the prospect. A cousin of mine, Mrs Hedley’s eldest daughter, is going to be married to Mr Bevan, a younger brother of the great Brewer—& there is to be anticipated a press in issimus, of the pressissimust, [12] as they all come to England for the nonce.
Write to me .. do .. & tell me all of yourself. It is wise of you, of course, not to tempt the heat, since you suffer from it. Love me, in the meanwhile, not coolly.
Your affectionate as ever
EBB–
Say how Mr Lovejoy’s poor child is.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 172–174.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Conjectural date suggested by EBB’s references to Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, which she mentioned in letter 2402, and to the impending visit by the Hedleys, to which she referred in letter 2405.
2. Expressing her gratitude to her friend, Lucy Anderdon Partridge, for finding her new maid, Miss Mitford wrote in August 1846 that “Maria grows in my favour day by day. … Her naïveté is delicious, she gets prettier and prettier; and without losing her little rustic grace is becoming easy, and knows what to say and do” (Chorley, I, 227–228).
3. See letter 2206, note 2.
4. “A bit much.”
5. i.e., Hodgson’s (see letter 2384, note 1).
6. Horne continued to serve as the Irish correspondent for The Daily News until the autumn of 1846. Soon after the paper’s commencement Dickens had left, and John Forster, who took his place, was replaced by Charles Wentworth Dilke, who had recently relinquished editorial control of The Athenæum to T.K. Hervey. “On May 23, 1846, Hervey, formerly editor of Friendship’s Offering, an Annual, who had been a regular contributor since the early years of Dilke’s regime, took control of the editorial duties, while Dilke remained in the background as proprietor and supervisor of policy” (Leslie A. Marchand, The Athenæum: A Mirror of Victorian Culture, 1941, p. 76). It was probably about this time that Dilke began to involve his son, Charles Wentworth Dilke (1810–69) in the management of the journal.
7. Dickens had left England on 31 May and arrived in Lausanne on 11 June where he remained until the following November, working primarily on Dombey and Son (1846–48), as well as his next Christmas book, The Battle of Life (1846).
8. Ibrahim Pasha (1789–1848), the Egyptian general whose desolation of Greece in the mid 1820’s resulted in the intervention of English, French, and Russian troops. His visit to Europe in 1846 stirred curiosity, and while in London, according to The Athenæum for 13 June 1846 (no. 972, p. 605), he attended the fête of the Horticultural Society at Chiswick.
9. EBB had first mentioned this work in letter 2221.
10. A reference to the daughter of the Grand Vizier, who managed to stave off death by recounting the 1,001 stories in The Arabian Nights.
11. Cf. II Timothy 4:14.
12. See letter 2405, note 6.
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