Correspondence

3110.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 214–216.

58 Welbeck street.

Tuesday. [Postmark: 14 September 1852]

Alas, no, I cannot go to you before the saturday you name, nor for some days after, dearest friend. It is simply impossible. Wilson has not come back, nor will till the end of next week, and though I can get away from my child for two or three hours at once during the daytime, for the whole day I could not go .. what would become of him, poor darling? Ah, you may talk of spoiling. After all, I maintain him to be a miracle of goodness. My friends wonder among themselves how anything so good can come out of Nazareth [1]  .. i.e. out of my keeping. He never (scarcely) cries & frets like other children, .. only, as he says reasonably, if I leave him “tutto solo [2] —no Lili, no Mamma, ..” the mitaine [3] (in the myth of which personnage, our french cook Desirée instructed him fully) will come and take him away!!—— What’s to be said to that, I wonder? You see, I justify my “despotism” like other theorists—and in fact the filial despotism is better than the “paternal,” sweeter & more tender, look at it as you will. [4]

For the rest, no, dearest Miss Mitford. Neither “brother” nor “sister,” I assure you. Too glad I should be to say ‘yes’, but no, no, it must be instead. Several of my friends took up the same notion, because when I came first to England I was tired & languid & had to lie on the sofa a few days, .. but all that is bosh .. I have not any prospects, nor have had since the bad illness in Florence nearly two years ago .. so now I give up the hope of it.

And I cant go to you this week, nor next week, probably. How vexatious– My comfort is that you seem to be better, much, much better, & that you have courage to think of the poney carriages & the Kingsleys of the earth. That man impressed me much, interested me much. The more you see of him, the more you will like him, is my prophecy. He has a volume of poems, I hear, close upon publication, & Robert & I are looking forward to it eagerly. [5]

Mr Ruskin has been to see us .. (did I tell you that?) and brought his pretty, natural, sprightly wife with him .. ‘whose single naughtiness,’ said he, ‘is the love of continental life & discontent with England’! Why should we affect to believe anything in the world? Gossip is as bad as history. Sundry affidavits have been made to me that Mrs Ruskin was victimized by the Graduate’s [6] continental tastes, & had been breaking her heart at Venice while her husband was about the “Stones”. [7] All which is to be read exactly backwards. She teazes him, he tells you, to buy a house at Venice. Pretty she is, & exquisitely dressed .. that struck me .. but extraordinary beauty she has none at all, neither of feature nor expression. Have you seen her? & what is your thought? She loves Art, she says.

We went to Denmark Hill yesterday by agreement, to have luncheon with them & to see the Turners, [8] which, by the way, are divine. I like Mr Ruskin much, & so does Robert. Very gentle, yet earnest,—refined & truthful. I like him very much. We count him one among the valuable acquaintances made this year in England.

Have I told you about Flush lately, & that his hair has come back, & that he has grown fat to the respectable degree? Wiedeman loves him passionately, and sings to him, and prays to God for him in his baby words. I have never taught the child any prayers, so he prays out whatever is in his little heart, and Flush being there, comes in for a blessing, as why should he not? Papa, Mama, Lili and Flush make up the greater part of the child’s loves, and I hear them named one after another in the pretty rambling prayers which are as acceptable, I do not doubt, as any world of orthodoxy called up by the bishops in convocation. [9] I should like you to see my child. He is improved this year. His ringlets hang down, & his blue eyes have in them a more stedfast look. Robert & I are of opinion that there never was such a child before—we may be mistaken, (to be candid) but that’s our opinion.

Mr Kenyon has come back, & most other people are gone away—but he is worth more than most other people, so the advantage remains to the scale. I am delighted that you should have your dear friend Mr Harness with you, &, for my own part, I do feel grateful to him for the good he has evidently done you. Oh—continue to be better—dont overtire yourself—dont use improvidently the new strength. Remember the winter, & be wise—& let me see you, before it comes, looking as bright & well as I thought you last year. God bless you always.

Love your ever affectionate

Ba–

Robert’s love–

Address: Miss Mitford / Swallowfield / near Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 370–372.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Cf. John 1:46.

2. “All alone.”

3. Shortened form of croquemitaine, a “hobgoblin,” or “ogre.”

4. EBB alludes to two articles that appeared in the 14 September issue of The Times, one of which reported the circulation of a petition in Paris by “the fathers of families and labourers,” calling for the “re-establishment of the Empire” in order to secure the future for their children. Paragraph two of the petition reads, in part: “Considering that a father of a family, under a presidency of 10, 15, or 20 years, cannot possibly know under what political conjunctures he will provide for the marriage of the son or the daughter that just now he fondles on his knee; considering, consequently, that a presidency of 10, 15, or 20 years cannot possibly altogether and justly satisfy the loftiest and sweetest sentiments of paternal and conjugal love” (p. 6). An editorial in the same issue declared that the petition was an obvious contrivance of Louis Napoleon and concluded: “We are much mistaken if the prayer and hope of every honest father of a family is not that his children may escape the snares with which his own path has been strewn, and that, free alike from unbridled license and unbounded despotism, they may go forward in the path of moderate progress” (p. 5).

5. Kingsley was writing poetry at this time; he told the publisher John Parker that he had “enough to make up a 12mo of 70 pages, including, 4 or 5 songs and ballads which have appeared in Fraser’s” (Margaret Farrand Thorp, Charles Kingsley, 1819–1875, Princeton, 1937, p. 140). However, the “volume of poems” remained unpublished until 1858 when it was issued as Andromeda and Other Poems, 169 pp., 8vo.

6. The first four editions of John Ruskin’s Modern Painters (1843) were published anonymously by “a Graduate of Oxford.”

7. The Stones of Venice (3 vols., 1851–53). Only volume one had appeared thus far.

8. Ruskin and his father had begun collecting paintings and sketches by J.M.W. Turner in 1839, eventually becoming patrons as well.

9. EBB refers specifically to the practice in the Church of England of convening the clergy for the purpose of settling ecclesiastical issues. Convocation was divided into two houses: the upper composed of the Bishops; and the lower, of the lesser clergy. Convocation was much in the news in August and September in anticipation of one being held for the first time since 1717.

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