Correspondence

2501.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 183–186.

[London]

[23 July 1846] [1]

I have been a truant to you, will you say, my dearest Miss Mitford? But I waited to have this letter back from George to whom I had sent it in haste .. from Mr Serjt Talfourd, you will observe—& through a fault of the sinning post (was there ever such a sinning post? Who sells the indulgences?) it has wandered about the country ever since, & reached me only today. How the mistake about the editorship came to be made, you will see by the letter—& certainly the “hurry & horror of the moment,” as Mr Talfourd says, were too natural things, for me to complain of their consequences. Still, had it been otherwise, I should have been spared a great deal of pain & vexation—. It could scarcely have been otherwise, however—& I am glad to be released at length from the agitation of past thoughts.

The subscription will amount, it is hoped, to two thousand pounds, which will secure an annuity to the widow & daughter. [2] But who can this “friend” [3] be, over whom so dreadful an imputation hangs? I think that it was too cruel an act for a woman’s hand to fasten such an imputation, unless provoked by some excess of injury! She should have forborne speaking those words to you, unless the justification be a flagrant one. For my part, nothing, scarcely, can be clearer to me than that the suicide was ripening in Haydon’s soul through long years– A little shaking of the tree brought it down, at the last. Poor Haydon!– A great, cankarous nature! She, when she wrote to you, did she write as if she felt it deeply?

Then I was a sorceress about Mr Buckingham!—— Oh—there was a sign in the Heavens!– [4] I felt sure that he had sinned .. offended .. somehow. If you ever are angry with me (will you .. can you ever?) I shall feel it in the air, though hundreds of miles away!—— So take care of your thoughts. Keep them gently stroked down, dearest, kindest friend!– You shall not deceive me.

I have just seen a print of your Alexandre Dumas .. & he looks his negro ancestry in every hair of his woolly black head, in the white of his eyes, & his thick lipped mouth [5] —also of Victor Hugo, whose great forehead scarcely redeems the ignoble rest of the face—he looks neither very much the poet, nor at all the Lovelace-traitor. [6] How these faces cross with a bleak shadow the Ideal within us!—— It is only now & then that a body does not perjure itself against the soul that goes with it .. the ‘animula blandula, vagula,’ of Adrian. [7]

While I write, your letter comes. So good of you & it, not to scold me!–

As for your Mr Bennett, & his ‘mignionette’ which is pretty & sweet-smelling, I often have poems from him .. three or four times in all, perhaps .. & the mignionette came to me with the rest. The verses on Haydon, I do not praise,—such verses had better be unwritten surely. [8]

So you have two marriages on your hands! [9] My cousin’s is to take place on tuesday week. The glory of the trousseau in the meanwhile, is great– She is to have six dress pocket handkerchiefs, at four guineas each—& her commonest of petticoats is redolent of Valenciennes lace—forty guineas of lace trimming on the bridal dress, besides the long veil. All this glory to go to a man who is by no means rich, or likely to hold the note on long. I am impertinent enough to criticise a little, & to think that more simplicity would have been a better thing—& really the bride is graceful & brilliant enough to do without any of it. Six bridesmaids .. two of them my sister Henrietta & my cousin Miss Butler, from this house .. two Miss Maberley’s (of the post office) Miss Monckton [10] & another whose name I forget– Forty people are to breakfast at Fenton’s Hotel [11] after the ceremony– I wish my aunt well through it .. the excitement keeps her up just now. The gentleman .. Mr Bevan .. is a gentleman in manners & bearing .. sensible in countenance .. expresses himself well in conversation .. is very amiable & domestic, .. & in love comme quâtre. [12] The worst is that he is raving mad on the Puseyite question, & can talk of nothing else but of Ecclesiastical architecture. If I were his wife I should soon be mad too .. in a different way. He seems to conduct his courtship between aisles & arches; & he has already convinced Arabella of the necessity of the celibacy of the clergy, of the real presence in the sacrament, & of the damnation of little infants who are not baptized … also, that the altar is the central point in the church. Think how satisfactory all this must be. Her lips, only can smile!

The dear Hedleys—I wish them happiness on happiness. Never was a more affectionate family.

How do you continue to like your maid? [13] And will it be autumn, after all, in the garden?

May God bless you, dearest friend! When does your Dumas emerge? Let me be

ever your affectionate

EBB

Tennyson goes to Switzerland with Moxon, [14] it is understood. Will you be expecting this letter, too, “in the deepest anxiety.” See how people count on your sensibility! Tell me if Andersen or his translator gave you the dedication, [15]  .. which pleased me to hear of.

 

Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 178–181.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by EBB’s reference to her cousin’s marriage “to take place on tuesday week,” 4 August.

2. Only Haydon’s daughter, Mary (1824–64) was at home. As previously noted (letter 2436, note 2), Peel had provided immediate relief to Haydon’s widow. Talfourd and others joined in to help as well. A subscription organized by Lord Morpeth came to £2,000 within two months, including a £50 contribution from the Royal Academy, Haydon’s long-time adversary (Pope, V, 560). Additionally, the Queen granted Mrs. Haydon an annual pension of £50, which she received until her death in 1854.

3. Haydon’s son explains that “an old friend, whom he [Haydon] had helped in early life, now offers to lend him £1000. They are to meet and dine in the City. L______ keeps the engagement, but after dinner breaks the news to Haydon that, he is unable to advance the money” (Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk. With a Memoir by his Son, Frederic Wordsworth Haydon, 1876, I, 233). The friend has not been identified.

4. Cf. Jeremiah 10:2.

5. As indicated in letter 2493, RB had forgotten to bring prints of Dumas and Hugo to EBB when he visited the previous Saturday, but evidently had remembered to bring them to the visit two days earlier. Alexandre Dumas was the grandson of Antoine Alexandre Davy, Marquis de la Pailleterie and a negro woman named Marie Dumas, with whom the grandfather lived in Santo Domingo.

6. An allusion to the protagonist in Richardson’s Clarissa; or, the History of a Young Lady (1747–48), who dupes Clarissa. EBB probably has in mind Hugo’s liaison with the actress Juliette Drouet.

7. “Little soul, wandering pleasant” (Hadrian, Minor Latin Poets, p. 445, trans. J. Wight Duff and Arnold M. Duff).

8. We take this as a reference to “Sketches from a Painter’s Studio: A Tale of To-Day,” which was later collected in Bennett’s Poems (1850), pp. 1–7. Bennett dedicated Poems (1850) to Miss Mitford. See letter 2480, in which EBB mentioned having received “The Sempstress to Her Mignonette.”

9. Miss Mitford’s friend Henrietta Harrison, a minor poet, married Acton Tindal on 30 July 1846 at Dinton, Buckinghamshire, where her father was the vicar. We have been unable to trace details of the other marriage.

10. Unidentified. The “Misses Maberly” were daughters of William Leader Maberly (1798–1885), who was currently director of the Post Office, and his wife, the novelist Catherine Charlotte (née Prittie, 1805–75).

11. Established in 1800, this well-known hotel in St. James’s Street remained fashionable until 1886.

12. “Passionately.”

13. See letter 2408, note 2.

14. See letter 2486, note 4.

15. EBB is referring to the dedicatory preface to The Nightingale and Other Tales, one of two volumes of translations of stories from Hans Christian Andersen by Charles Boner (1815–70) published in 1846. Boner had become acquainted with Miss Mitford the previous year, and corresponded with her until her death. The “dedication” is as follows:

 

My dear Miss Mitford,

You will not, I dare say, have forgotten the tales I read to you, when sitting comfortably by your fire-side some weeks ago. As you were so delighted with the few you then heard, and expressed yourself so favourably of the translation, it gives me great pleasure to be able to present you now with the complete collection. I trust you will receive it kindly, and as a token that the pleasant fifteenth of October is well remembered by me.

How glad should I be if, as on that evening, I could read them to you myself, and again enjoy with you the humour and the pathos of these charming tales.

Believe me,

My dear Miss Mitford,

Very truly yours,

Charles Boner

St. Emeran, Ratisbon,

November 10, 1845.

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