Correspondence

2811.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 336–340.

Bagni di Lucca

August 31. [1849] [1]

I told Mr Lever what you thought of him, dearest friend, and then he said, all in a glow & animation, that you were not only his own delight but the delight of his children—which is affection by refraction .. is’nt it? Quite gratified he seemed by the hold of your good opinion. Not only is he the notability par excellence of these Baths of Lucca where he has lived a whole year, daring the snows upon the mountains, but he presides over the weekly balls at the casino where the English ‘do congregate’ [2] (all except Robert & me) and is said to be the light of the flambeaux & the spring of the dancers– There is a general desolation when he will retire to play whist. In addition to which, he really seems to be loving & loveable in his family– You always see him with his children & his wife—he drives her & her baby [3] up & down along the only carriageable road of Lucca: so set down that piece of domestic life on the bright side, in the broad charge against married authors .. now do!– I believe he is to return to Florence this winter with his family,—having had enough of the mountains. Have you read ‘Roland Cashel’ [4]  .. is’nt that the name of his last novel? The Athenæum said of it that it was ‘new ground’, [5] & praised it. I hear that he gets a hundred pounds for each monthly number. Oh, how glad I was to have your letter—written in such pain, read in such pleasure! it was only fair to tell me in the last lines that the face ache was better, to keep off a fit of remorse. I do hope that Mr May is not right about neuralgia—because that is more difficult to cure than pain which arises from the teeth. Tell me how you are in all ways. I look into your letters eagerly for news of your health .. then, of your spirits, which are a part of health. The cholera makes me very frightened for my dearest people in London,—& silence the least longer than usual, ploughs up my days & nights into long furrows. The desease rages in the neighbourhood of my husband’s family—and though Wimpole Street has been hitherto clear, who can calculate on what may be? My head goes round to think of it. And Papa, who will keep going into that horrible city! Even if my sisters & brothers shd go into the country as every year, he will be left—he is no more moveable than St Paul’s– My sister in law will probably not come to us as soon as she intended, through a consideration for her father, who ought not, Robert thinks, to stay alone in the midst of such contingencies—so perhaps we may go to seek her ourselves in the spring, if she does not seek us out before in Italy. God keep us all, & near to one another! Love runs dreadful risks in this world. Yet Love is, how much the best thing in the world? We have had a great event in our house—Baby has cut a tooth– A little white bud of a tooth, come, nobody knows how, not even Baby. He did not suffer a moment. It is early for teeth; & since Robert & I have begun to be scientific about babies we have been proportionably nervous & frightened about the tooth-cutting; so many have waned & wasted under our eyes, in that crisis– One friend said .. “You have a beautiful child to be sure, .. but you must be prepared to see his roses go when his teeth come.” And another friend said .. “Yes, he is fat & strong, but he will grow thin, when his teeth come, and you must’nt mind that.” And a third friend said .. “A remarkably forward child, you have there! We must hope that his teeth wont come early too, & pull him down.” So that these teeth were as awful as a lion’s to face in one’s thoughts,—and it was a wonder & a joy when the nurse came running in while we were at dinner, & Wilson ran after her, to show the little tooth. Perhaps Mrs Acton Tyndal’s child suffers from the tooth-crisis, in which case he may get over it triumphantly & be a strong boy after all. I hope he may, with all my heart. Our baby is a great joy to us—not fretful, not peevish,—you never hear him cry without some especial reason. His little happy laugh is always ringing through the rooms– He is afraid of nobody & nothing in the world, & was in fits of ecstasy at the tossing of the horse’s head, when he rode on Wilson’s knee five or six miles the other day to a village in the mountains—screaming for joy, she said. He not six months yet, by a fortnight! His father loves him passionately, and the sentiment is reciprocated, I assure you– We have had the coolest of Italian summers at these Baths of Lucca, the thermometer at the hottest hour of the hottest day only at seventy six, & generally at sixty eight or seventy. The nights invariably cool. Now,—the freshness of the air is growing almost too fresh. I shut my window at night, & by day, accept my flannel petticoat– I only hope we shall be able (for the cold) to keep our intention of staying here till the end of October. I have enjoyed it so entirely & shall be so sorry to break off this happy silence into the Austrian drums at poor Florence! And then, we want to see the vintage. Some grapes are ripe already, but it is not vintage-time. We have every kind of good fruit .. great water-melons, which with both arms I can scarcely carry, at two pence halfpenny each: and figs & peaches cheap in proportion. And the place agrees with Baby, & has done good to my husband’s spirits, though the only “amusement” or distraction, he has, is looking at the mountains, & climbing among the woods with me. Yes, we have been reading some French romances—Monte Christo, for instance .. I, for the second time [6] —but, I have liked it .. to read it with him. That Dumas certainly has power—and to think of the scramble there was for his brains, a year or two ago in Paris! [7] For a man to write so much & so well together, is a miracle. Do you mean that they have left off writing, .. those French writers, .. or that they have tired you out with writing that looks faint beside the rush of facts, as the range of French politics show those? Has not Eugene Sue been illustrating the passions? [8] Somebody told me so. Do you tell me how you like the French president, & whether he will ever in your mind, sit on Napoleon’s throne. It seems to me that he has given proof, as far as the evidence goes, of prudence, integrity, & conscientious patriotism—the situation is difficult & he fills it honorably. The Rome business has been miserably managed—this is the great blot on the character of his government. But I, for my own part, (my husband is not so minded) do consider that the French motive has been good, the intention pure,—the occupation of Rome by the Austrians being imminent, & the French intervention the only means (with the exception of a European war) of saving Rome from the hoof of the Absolutists. At the same time if Pius the ninth is the obstinate idiot he seems to be, good & tenderhearted man as he surely is, .. and if the old abuses are to be restored .. why Austria might as well have done her own dirty work & saved French hands from the disgrace of it. It makes us two very angry. Robert especially is furious. We are not within reach of the book you speak of, ‘Portraits des Orateurs Francais’ [9] —oh, we might nearly as well live on a desert island as far as modern books go. And here, at Lucca, even Robert cant catch sight of even the Athenæum– We have a two-day old Galignani & think ourselves royally off—and then, this little shop with French books in it, .. just a few, .. & the Gentilhomme Campagnard the latest published. Yes, but somebody lent us the first volume of Châteaubriand’s Memoirs. [10] Have you seen it? Curiously uninteresting considering “the man & the hour”– [11] He writes of his youth with a grey goose-quill—the paper is all wrinkled– And then he is not frank—he must have more to tell than he tells. I looked for a more intense & sincere book ‘outre tombe’ [12] certainly.– I am busy about my new edition [13] —that is all at present—but some things are written. Good of Mr Chorley, (he is good) to place you face to face with Robert’s books; & I am glad you like “Colombe” & ‘Luria’. [14] Dear Mr Kenyon’s poems we have just received & are about to read, & I am delighted at a glance to see that he has inserted the ‘Gipsey Carol’ which, in ms, was such a favorite of mine. [15] Really, is he so rich? I am glad of it, if he is. Money could not be in more generous & intelligent hands. Dearest Miss Mitford, you are only just in being trustful of my affection for you– Never do I forget nor cease to love you. Write & tell me of your dear self—how you are exactly .. and whether you have been at Three Mile Cross all the summer. May God bless you! Robert’s regards. Can you read?– Love a little your

ever affectionate

EBB–

Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 275–279.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Year provided by postmark.

2. The Merchant of Venice, I, 3, 49.

3. Sydney Lever; see letter 2797, note 13.

4. Lever’s novel was issued in monthly installments from May 1848 to November 1849 and appeared in book form the following year.

5. We have been unable to trace this comment in The Athenæum. A negative review of the first eight numbers had appeared in that publication on 30 December 1848, no. 1105, pp. 1325–26. The reviewer has been identified as Henry Fothergill Chorley in the marked file copy of The Athenæum now at City University (London).

6. EBB had read it during the summer of 1846; see letters 2402 and 2408.

7. An allusion to Dumas’ 1847 trial for breach of contract; see letter 2671, note 6.

8. See letter 2738, note 11.

9. Études sur les orateurs parlementaires (1836) by Timon, pseudonymn of Louis-Marie de Lahaye, Vicomte de Cormenin. Later editions were issued under the title: Livre des Orateurs.

10. François René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe (12 vols., 1849–50), published posthumously. An English translation of the first part was published by Henry Colburn in three volumes in 1848.

11. Perhaps an allusion to Harriet Martineau’s The Hour and the Man: A Historical Romance (3 vols., 1841).

12. “Beyond the grave.”

13. Poems (1850), a “new edition” published by Chapman and Hall in November 1850.

14. In her Recollections of a Literary Life (3 vols., 1852), Miss Mitford praised RB’s dramatic works: “Besides ‘The Blot on the Scutcheon’ which has been successfully produced at two metropolitan theatres, ‘Colombe’s Birthday’ and ‘Lucia’ [sic] show not only what he has done, but what with the hope of a great triumph before him he might yet do as a dramatist” (1, 285).

15. “Sacred Gipsy Carol” was collected in Kenyon’s A Day at Tivoli (1849).

___________________

National Endowment for the Humanities - Logo

Editorial work on The Brownings’ Correspondence is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This website was last updated on 3-29-2024.

Copyright © 2024 Wedgestone Press. All rights reserved.

Back To Top