2895. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 245–248.
Florence.
Dec. 13. [1850] [1]
Did I write a scolding letter, dearest Miss Mitford? So much the better, when people deserve to be scolded. The worst is however that it sometimes does them no sort of good, & that they will sit on among the ruins of Carthage, let ever so many messages come from Italy. My only hope now is, that you will have a mild winter in England, as we seem likely to have it here—& that in the spring, by the help of some divine interposition of friends supernaturally endowed (after the manner of Mr Chorley) you may be made to go away into a house with fast walls & chimneys. Certainly if you could be made to write, anything else is possible. That’s my comfort. And the other’s my hope, as I said—and so between hope & consolation I need’nt scold any more.
Let me tell you what I have heard of Mrs Gaskell [2] for fear I should forget it later. She is connected by marriage with Mrs A T. Thompson, [3] & from a friend of Mrs Thompson’s it came to me, & really seems to exonerate Chapman & Hall from the charge advanced against them. Mary Barton was shown in m∙s. to Mrs Thompson & failed to please her; and in deference to her judgement certain alterations were made. Subsequently it was offered to all or nearly all the publishers in London, & rejected. Chapman & Hall accepted & gave a hundred pounds, as you heard, for the copyright of the work: and though the success did not perhaps (that is quite possible) induce any liberality with regard to copies, they gave another hundred pounds upon printing the second edition, and it was not in the bond to do so. I am told that the liberality of the proceeding was appreciated by the author & her friends accordingly—& there’s the end of my story. Two hundred pounds is a good price .. is’nt it? .. for a novel, as times go– Miss Lynn had only a hundred & fifty for her Ægyptian novel—or perhaps for the Greek one. [4] Taking the long run of poetry (if it runs at all) I am half given to think that it pays better than the novel does, in spite of everything. Not that we speak out of golden experience—alas, no! we have had not a sous from our books for a year past, the booksellers being bound of course to cover their own expenses first. Then this Christmas account has not yet reached us. But the former editions paid us regularly so much a year, & so will the present ones I hope– Only I was not thinking of them, in preferring what may strike you as an extravagant paradox, .. but of Tennyson’s returns from Moxon last year which I understand amounted to five hundred pounds. To be sure ‘In Memoriam’ was a new success—which should not prevent our considering the fact of a regular income proceeding from the previous books. A novel flashes up for a season & does not often outlast it. For Mary Barton, I am a little, little disappointed, do you know. I have just done reading it. There is power & truth—she can shape & she can pierce—but I wish half the book away, it is so tedious every now & then,—and besides I want more beauty, more air from the universal world—these class-books must always be defective as works of art. How could I help being disappointed a little when Mrs Jameson told me that “since the Bride of Lammermoor, [5] nothing had appeared equal to Mary Barton”? Then the style of the book is slovenly, & given to a kind of phraseology which would be vulgar even as colloquial English. Oh—it is a powerful book in many ways– You are not to set me down as hypercritical. Probably the author will write herself clear of many of her faults: she has strength enough. As to [‘]‘In Memoriam,” I have seen it, I have read it, .. dear Mr Kenyon had the goodness to send it to me by an American traveller [6] .. & now, I really do disagree with you, for the book has gone to my heart & soul .. I think it full of deep pathos & beauty. All I wish away, is the marriage hymn at the end, [7] & that, for every reason I wish away—it’s a discord in the music. The monotony is a part of the position—the sea is monotonous, & so is lasting grief: your complaint is against fate & humanity rather than against the poet Tennyson. Who that has suffered, has not felt wave after wave break dully against one rock, till brain & heart with all their radiances seemed lost in a single shadow? So the effect of the book is artistic & true, I think—& indeed I do not wonder at the opinion which has reached us from various quarters that Tennyson stands higher through having written it. You see what he appeared to want, according to the view of many, was an earnest personality & direct purpose. In this last book, though of course there is not room in it for that exercise of creative faculty which elsewhere established his fame, he appeals, heart to heart, directly as from his own to the universal heart, & we all feel him nearer to us—I do .. & so do others– Have you read a poem called the Roman, which was praised highly in the Athenæum, but did not seem to Robert to justify the praise in the passages extracted? written by somebody with certainly a ‘nom de guerre’, .. Sidney Yendys– [8] Observe, Yendys is Sidney reversed. Have you heard anything about it, or seen? The Athenæum has been gracious to me beyond gratitude almost—nothing could by possibility be kinder. [9] A friend of mine sent me the article from Brussels—a Mr Westwood, who writes poems himself, yes, & poetical poems too, written with an odorous, fresh sense of poetry about them. He has not original power—more’s the pity: but he has stayed near the rose .. in the “sweet breath & buddings of the spring” [10] —& although that wont make anyone live beyond spring-weather, it is the expression of a sensitive & aspirant nature; & the man is interesting & amiable—an old correspondent of mine & kind to me always. From the little I know of Mr Bennett, I should say that Mr Westwood stood much higher in the matter of gifts,—though I fear that neither of them will make way in that particular department of literature selected by them for action.
Oh—my dearest friend, you may talk about coteries—but the English society at Florence (from what I hear of the hum of it at a distance) is worse than any coterie-society in the world. A coterie, if I understand the thing, is informed by a unity of sentiment, or faith or prejudice—but this society here is not informed at all. People come together to gamble or dance—& if there’s an end, why so much the better .. but there’s not an end in most cases, by any manner of means, & against every sort of innocence. Mind, I imply nothing about Mr Lever, .. who lives irreproachably with his wife & family, rides out with his children in a troop of horses to the Cascine, & yet is as social a person as his joyous temperament leads him to be. But we live in a cave, & peradventure he is afraid of the damp of us: who knows? We know very few residents in Florence—& these, with chance visitors, chiefly Americans, are all that keep us from solitude: every now & then in the evening somebody drops in to tea. Would indeed you were near! but should I be satisfied with you “once a week,” do you fancy? Ah—you would soon love Robert. You could’nt possibly help it, I am sure. I should be soon turned down to an underplace, &, under the circumstances, would not struggle. Do you remember once telling me that “all men are tyrants” .. as sweeping an opinion as the apostle’s, that “all men are liars.” [11] Well—if you knew Robert, you would make an exception certainly.–
Talking of the artistical English here, somebody told me the other day of a young Cambridge or Oxford man, who deducted from his researches in Rome & Florence, that “Michael Angelo was a wag”. Another after walking through the Florentine galleries, exclaimed to a friend of mine .. “I have seen nothing here equal to those magnificent pictures in Paris, by Paul de Kock”. My friend humbly suggested that he might mean Paul De la roche. [12] But see what English you send us for the most part!—— We have had one very interesting visitor lately .. the grandson of Goethe. He did us the honour, he said, of spending two days in Florence on our account,—he especially wishing to see Robert on account of some sympathy of view about Paracelsus. There can scarcely be a more interesting young man:—quite young he seems, & full of aspiration of the purest kind, towards the good & true & beautiful, & not towards the poor laurel crowns attainable from any possible public. I dont know when I hav<e> been so charmed by a visitor; & indeed Robert & I paid him the highest compliment we could, by wishing, one to another, that our little Wiedeman might be like him some day.–
I quite agree with you about the church & your Henry. It surprises me that a child of seven years should find pleasure even once a day in the long English service .. too long, according to my doxy, for maturer years. As to fanaticism it depends on a defect of intellect rather than on an exce<ss> of the adoring faculty. The latter cannot I think be too fully developed. How I shall like you to see our Wiedeman! He is a radiant little creature really—yet he wont talk—he does nothing but gesticulate—only making his will & pleasure wonderfully clear & supreme, I assure you. He’s a tyrant, ready made for your theory. If your book is “better than I expect” .. what will it be? God bless you. Be well & love me & write to me, for I am
your ever affecte
Ba
By your account Mrs Acton Tindal must be high above anybody’s pity—& indeed I am very glad of it.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 317–321.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to “the grandson of Goethe,” who is also mentioned in letters 2891 and 2896.
2. Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (née Stevenson, 1810–65), whose first novel Mary Barton (1848) won her the admiration of, among others, Dickens and Carlyle.
3. Katharine Thomson (née Byerley, 1797–1862), who wrote under the pseudonym Grace Wharton, had married the prominent Scottish physician Anthony Todd Thomson (1778–1849) in 1820. His sister Catherine was Elizabeth Gaskell’s stepmother.
4. Amymone: A Romance of the Days of Pericles (1848) by Elizabeth (“Eliza”) Lynn (afterwards Linton, 1822–98), novelist and essayist, who was also the author of Azeth, the Egyptian (1847). Although she asked £150 for Amymone, she received only £100 (Nancy Fix Anderson, Woman Against Women in Victorian England: A Life of Eliza Lynn Linton, Bloomington, Indiana, 1987, p. 47). She paid for the publication of Azeth herself (Anderson, p. 37).
5. By Sir Walter Scott, published in 1819.
6. Charles Eliot Norton, who also delivered Carlyle’s Latter-Day Pamphlets; see letter 2891, note 5.
7. The Epilogue is a description of the marriage of Tennyson’s sister Cecilia to Edmund Lushington.
8. Pseudonym of Sydney Thompson Dobell (1824–74), poet and critic. His poem, The Roman (1850), was reviewed at length in The Athenæum of 13 April 1850 and enjoyed a “rapid and decided success” (DNB).
9. See letter 2894, note 3.
10. Cf. Ben Jonson, The Sad Shepherd, I, 5, 44–45.
11. Psalm 116:11. Cf. Romans 3:4.
12. Paul Delaroche (1797–1856), was a French painter; Charles Paul de Kock (1793–1871), a French novelist.
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