2999. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 243–246.
138 Avenue des Ch. Elysées.
[21–22 January 1852] [1]
My very dear friend, Let me begin what I have to say by recognizing you as the most generous & affectionate of friends. I never could mistake the least of your intentions: you were always, from first to last, kind & tenderly indulgent to me—always exaggerating what was good in me, always forgetting what was faulty & weak—keeping me by force of affection, in a higher place than I could aspire to by force of vanity—loving me always, in fact. Now let me tell you the truth. It will prove how hard it is for the tenderest friends to help paining one another, since you have pained me. See what a deep wound I must have in me, to be pained by the touch of such a hand. Oh, I am morbid, I very well know!– But the truth is that I have been miserably upset by your book, & that if I had had the least imagination of your intending to touch upon certain biographical details in relation to me, I would have conjured you by your love to me & by my love to you to forbear it altogether. [2] You cannot understand—no, you cannot understand with all your wide sympathy (perhaps because you are not morbid & I am) the sort of susceptibility I have upon one subject. [3] I have lived heart to heart (for instance) with my husband these five years, & have never yet spoken out in a whisper even, what is in me—never yet could find heart or breath .. never yet could bear to hear a word of reference from his lips. And now those dreadful words are going the round of the newspapers .. to be verified here, commented on there, gossipped about everywhere—& I, for my part, am frightened to look at a paper, as a child in the dark—as unreasonably, you will say,—but what then?—what drives us mad is our unreason–
I will tell you how it was. First of all, an English acquaintance here told us, that she had been hearing a lecture at the Collége de France, .. & that the professor, M. Philaret Chasles, in the introduction to a series of lectures on English poetry, had expressed his intention of noticing Tennyson, Browning &c, & EBB .. “from whose private life the veil had been raised in so interesting a manner lately by Miss Mitford.” In the midst of my anxiety about this, up comes a writer of the Revue des deux Mondes, to my husband, to say that he was preparing a review upon me & had been directed by the editor to make use of some biographical details extracted from your book into the Athenæum, but that it had occurred to him doubtfully whether certain things might not be painful to me & whether I might not prefer their being omitted in his paper. (All this time we had seen neither book nor Athenæum.)– Robert answered for me that the omission of such & such things would be much preferred by me—& accordingly, the article appears in the “Revue” with the passage from your book garbled & curtailed as seemed best to the quoter– [4] Then Robert set about procuring the Athenæum in question. He tells me (& that I perfectly believe), that, for the facts to be given at all, they could not possibly be given with greater delicacy—oh, and I will add for myself, that for them to be related by anyone during my life, I would rather have you to relate them than another. But why should they be related during my life? There was no need—no need– To show my nervous susceptibility in the length & breadth of it to you, I could not, (when it came to the point), bear to read the passage extracted in the Athenæum—notwithstanding my natural anxiety to see exactly what was done– I could not bear to do it– I made Robert read it aloud .... with omissions—so that I know all your kindness—I feel it deeply,—through tears of pain, I feel it—and if, as I dare say you will, you think me very very foolish, do not on that account think me ungrateful– Ungrateful I never can be to you, my much loved & kindest friend.
I hear your book is considered one of your best productions,—and I do not doubt that the opinion is just. Thank you for giving it to us—thank you.
I dont like to send you a letter from Paris without a word about your hero. [5] “Handsome”!—I fancy not—nor after the imperial type. I have not seen his face distinctly– What do you think about the constitution? Will it work, do you fancy, now a days in France? The initiative of the laws, put out of the power of the Legislative assembly, seems to me a stupidity; and the senators, in their fine dresses, make me wink a little– Also I hear that the “senatorial cardinals” dont please the peasants, who hate the priesthood as much as they hate the “Cossacks”– [6] On the other hand, Montalembert was certainly in bed the other day with vexation, because “nobody could do anything with Louis Napoleon—he was obstinate” .. “nous en lavons les mains” [7] —& that fact gives me hope that not too much indulgence is intended to the church. [8] There’s to be a ball at the Tuilleries, with “court-dresses” .. which is ‘un peu fort’ [9] for a republic. By the way, rumour (with apparent authority justifying it) says, that a black woman opened her mouth & prophecied to him at Ham .. “he should be the head of the French nation, & be assassinated in a ballroom.” I was assured that he believes the prophecy firmly, “being in all things too superstitious” [10] and fatalistical.
I was interrupted in this letter yesterday. Meantime, comes out the decree against the Orleans property, which I disapprove of altogether. It’s the worst thing yet done, to my mind. Yet the Bourse stands fast, & the decree is likely enough to be popular with the ouvrier class. [11] There are rumours of tremendously wild financial measures—only I believe in no rumours just now, and apparently the Bourse is as incredulous on this particular point. If I thought (as people say) that we are on the verge of a “law,” declaring the Roman Catholic religion the state religion, I should give him up at once—but this would be contrary to the traditions of the empire, & I cant suppose it to be probable on any account.
Observe—I am no Napoleonist. I am simply a democrat, and hold that the majority of a nation has the right of choice upon the question of its own government, … even where it makes a mistake. Therefore the outcry of the English newspapers is most disgusting to me. For the rest, one can hardly do strict justice, at this time of transition, to the ultimate situation of the country—we must really wait a little, till the wind & rain shall have ceased to dash so in one’s eyes. The wits go on talking, though, all the same,—& I heard a suggestion yesterday, that, for the effaced “Liberté, egalité, fraternité,” should be written up, “Infanterie, cavallerie, artillerie.” That’s the last “mot,” I believe. The salons are very noisy. A lady was ordered to her country seat the other day, for exclaiming, .. “Et il n’y a pas de Charlotte Corday”! [12]
Forgive, with this dull letter, my other defects. Always I am frank to you, saying what is in my heart; & there is always there, dearest Miss Mitford, a faithful & grateful affection to you from your
EBB–
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 343–346.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dating based on EBB’s remark: “I was interrupted in this letter yesterday. Meantime, comes out the decree against the Orleans property.” The decree was issued 22 January 1852 (see note 11).
2. A reference to the chapter entitled “Married Poets” in Miss Mitford’s Recollections of a Literary Life, in which Miss Mitford revealed details about the death of EBB’s brother Edward; see letter 2993, note 4.
3. Miss Mitford gave her view of EBB’s “susceptibility” in a letter to W.C. Bennett dated 30 January 1852: “Fancy Mrs. Browning making herself miserable about my mention of her brother! Is not it absurd? 15 years after, and after she herself had run away. … but really I have no sympathy for such morbidity of feeling—or rather such affection” (SD1544).
4. For the full text of Milsand’s notice in Revue des Deux Mondes, including the passage he quotes from Miss Mitford’s Recollections, see pp. 358–363.
5. i.e., Louis Napoleon.
6. Horsemen of the Russian Steppe known for their courage in battle, they were much feared by the French army during the 1812 campaign. Cossacks entered Paris, along with the other allied troops, in 1814.
7. “We wash our hands of him.” Cf. Matthew 27:24.
8. Although Montalembert was a strong advocate for Roman Catholic causes, there were other influences keeping him “in bed.” Reports in English newspapers at this time attributed his apparent illness to the controversy surrounding the reception for him at the Académie Française. Originally scheduled for 13 December 1851, it was rescheduled for 15 January 1852 but again postponed. The Times of 22 January (p. 6) carried a letter from its Paris correspondent, dated the 20th, which discussed this subject at some length. The reception was set to take place when the “Moniteur of 10th inst. published the [government’s] decrees of exile and expulsion; and three members of the Academy, MM. Victor Hugo, Thiers, and de Rémusat … were comprised in them. Those decrees produced a painful sensation in the Academy.” Montalembert was aware of rumours that he had been a silent, if not an active, party to the decrees and that he had accepted a seat in the new senate. Neither rumour was true. Additionally, he had already disappointed many of his former colleagues in the Assembly by agreeing to a position in the new government as consultative commissioner to Louis Napoleon. But, as the Times correspondent pointed out, Montalembert was “really suffering from illness; and his indisposition was so far fortunate that it supplied him with an excuse for delay. … Immediately after the publication of the decrees he wrote officially to the Academy, begging for a postponement.”
9. “A bit much.”
10. Cf. Acts 17:22.
11. The “working class.” On 22 January Louis Napoleon issued a decree expropriating property owned by members of Louis Philippe’s family, which was of the house of Orleans. The decree, condemned by many as a spiteful act, resulted in the resignation of several cabinet members, including Morny, Louis Napoleon’s half-brother, who was Minister of the Interior. Montalembert immediately resigned from the consultative commission.
12. “And there is no Charlotte Corday.” Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d’Armont (1768–93) stabbed Jean Paul Marat to death in his bath on 13 July 1793. It was an act of vengeance for the overthrow of the moderate Girondins by the more extreme faction led by Marat and Robespierre. Mlle. Corday went to the guillotine four days after the murder.
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