2994. RB to John Kenyon
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 236–237.
Avenue des Champs Elysées, 138.
Jan. 14. ’52.
My dear Mr Kenyon–
We duly received your note, enclosing Miss Mitford’s,—and what you call the “Dividends”—that is, some of our own, and too much of yours. I could say but little if I tried, and will say nothing with tongue or pen—but as Beddowes says, in the poem we discussed on a pleasant Wimbledon day, [1] —“The heart replied—for that had heard—and the hearts’ replies are still” [2] —so let mine be.
I want to tell you of an incident that is giving us both (Ba & I) considerable pain & annoyance; I dare say you know something of it—indeed you must—but you shall hear what we know, up to this minute of my writing, and the way we know it—because it is characteristic. I was informed last week, by a lady-friend, that Mr. Philarète Chasles, one of the Professors at the College de France, had mentioned in his lecture (on “Literature derived from Germanic sources,” or some such title[)], that in the course of his labours he should need to treat of such & such English Poets, and of “their greatest poetess, E.B.B, from whose life such a veil had just been raised by Miss Mitford”—with much flourish that I omit. We knew Miss M. had been bookmaking, criticising &c—but had no notion she could be so silly & thoughtless as to leave that legitimate business for a notice of anybody’s private life, least of all, Ba’s—whose acute, even morbid feeling on the subject she well knows. While we were hoping that the “veil lifted” might be nothing more dreadful than the ungloving of an ink-stained little finger of Ba’s, I had a visit last night from M. Milsand, my admirable critic in the Revue des Deux Mondes,—whom I already discover, in the two evenings he has spent here, to be also one of the finest, gentlest & trust-worthiest of men: he said in a few words (Ba being out of the room) that he had been preparing a review of her poetry, to appear in a few days; that in conformity with his instructions from the Editor, [3] he was bound to introduce any biographic notice already before the English Public—that, on seeing Miss Mitford’s paragraph about Ba, extracted in the Athenæum of Jan. 3, he felt himself bound to incorporate the substance of it in his article,—this Editor receiving the Athenæum & being aware of the existence of the information—but that he (M. Milsand) had felt so sure, by the internal evidence, and whole manner of the thing, that the publication on Miss M’s part was not only entirely independent of Ba’s knowledge & power, but would necessarily cause her great pain—so that here he was come, at the last moment, to know if he had not conjectured rightly. He had never meant to do more than briefly condense the notice—alluding to the painful part in a word or two—& he was now in this dilemma,—to displease the Editor, who could not understand his objection—or Ba, he was sure,—[“]what should he do?”– Such was the delicate intuition of a French acquaintance, of only a few weeks’ date,—a few hours’ conversancy—and such the difference of his proceeding from that of an old friend like Miss Mitford, & a woman besides: I may add, such the conduct of a “literary man,”—the qualification to all sorts of abuse in Miss M’s familiar epistles which never spare “the taint of authorship”, “ungentlemanliness of the craft” &c. I have hopes of seeing the Athenæum in the course of the day– Meanwhile, you will sympathise with the shock this has given Ba,—of which the effect will not soon die away. I can only hope that there is a good sprinkling of such stories as one about “a Plato bound as a novel”—M. Milsand reported—which being purely a falsehood may help to discredit the whole. I will write again in a day or two, but this I am anxious to send off at once.
The weather is milder and Ba is better, I hope. How dear Miss Bailey [sic, for Bayley] will understand all this! Ever yours most affectionately,
RB.
Address: John Kenyon Esqr / 39 Devonshire Place, / Regent’s Park.
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Presumably Sunday, 7 September 1851, as reported by Henry Crabb Robinson to his brother (see SD1506). Robinson also recorded the outing in his diary (see SD1503).
2. Cf. Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Death’s Jest-Book; or The Fool’s Tragedy (1850), IV, iv, 97–98.
3. François Buloz (1803–77), editor of Revue des Deux Mondes from 1831. RB was introduced to him by Milsand about the beginning of April 1852.
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