Correspondence

3278.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 323–326.

Florence.

[ca. 26] October [1853] [1]

My very dear friend I have been longer than usual in writing to you, but I was loth to come upon you & pester you in the midst of your work. [2] Oh—do not tire yourself by writing to me. I would not for the world add the least grain of dust to the weight you have to carry—(we are all “porters,” says Alexander Smith) [3] & I know well what a fatigue it must be to you to have to prepare new editions, collected editions, when you are so unwell, without affectionate friends plucking you by the sleeve every moment & praying you to attend to them. I am considerate, believe me, and humble. Write to me just & literally five lines to say how you are & that you love me a little, & I shall be satisfied & happy. I, for my part, will go on writing (when that arrangement is once made) without fear of doing you harm. Is it an agreement? Pay no postages I beseech you, unless you mean to give me pain. I have a taste & vocation for paying postages, as I often have told you. Now remember.

We returned gladly to Florence, and shall go on to Rome before long, only as the time is still uncertain, continue to direct your letters here– Since coming back, we have seen, in a slovenly sort of fashion, a good deal of society .. at least a great number of people .. chiefly Americans who “do congregate” [4] about us considerably. Our dear friends the Storys are lingering on their road to Rome, & we see them daily of course. He is quite a man of genius, & has produced since he has been here .. ‘on the road,’ as I said .. a statuette of Beethoven, full of originality & vital character. [5] That work of itself ought to make a reputation. Did you see professor Felton, the Greek professor from Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he passed through England? [6] We just missed him—he went to Athens as we left Lucca. The Trollopes we have not caught sight of since we came. They live at the other end of Florence [7] & I have not been able to get down there up to this moment .. but the Storys spent an evening with them two days ago, to meet their Ex-president Mr Van Buren, and our Mrs Somerville, [8] and found the elder & younger Mrs Trollopes queening it over a miscellaneous host of visitors– [9] Mrs Trollope seems to be quite strong again & as social as ever [10] ––with “an open day” once a week, filled up to the brim with the various nationalities & very various reputations for which this city is famous. Oh, we are by no means purists in Florence I can assure you, in any sense of that term. We pick up our halt and maim & wayfaring Sadducees, [11] & give them the best honours of our hospitality—the result being … singular sometimes. Paris is more purist than Florence—whence you may judge!– Everybody is coming to Italy it seems– Dickens & Thackeray go to Rome, I understand, and somebody has announced for Alfred Tennyson, that he comes to Florence. [12] I shall be vexed if he should come while we are in Rome, but what can be done? We must go to Rome as a preparation for getting back to London next summer .. when we must be in London, and I must rush down to Reading to look in your face, my beloved friend, & see you better. You shall be better—yes, indeed. Dearest Miss Mitford, I have been thinking much of you. If the improvement is unsatisfactory, you ought to have other advice,—and if I were you .. now do not start & stare .. if I were you, I would try homœopathy, or mesmerism, or rather both together. When allopathy fails, the best argument against the trial of the homœopaths fails too. I have heard of extraordinary cures—and if mesmerism were used, it probably would relieve you—it might relieve you at once. Do consider the reasonableness of this. For all our sakes, you should submit to experiments which would cost you nothing, even if they achieved nothing. You are aware of the late testimony of the Archbishop of Dublin who attributes his cure from severe rheumatic affections entirely to mesmerism, after a vain experience of most of the medical ability of Europe. [13] The archbishop is a man whom even Mr Chorley would listen to with respect—a man whom theology has not narrowed, nor liberalism of thought & opinion, rendered too speculative.

Talking of theologians, I hear of a meeting of certain clergy in London the other day, to decide whether the “manifestations” are “of the devil” or not!! [14] The subject deepens & deepens with us all– I had a most interesting letter yesterday from Mr Westland Marston (the dramatist) giving me the history of his own experiences– Both he and his wife are ‘mediums.’ Judge Edmonds is bringing out a book in America with a relation of what he has seen & heard [15] —accepting the risk, as he says, of being considered mad & an idiot. As to that, everybody is apt to be ‘mad’ who gets beyond the conventions, whether in science or morals–

We have been reading Alexander Smith– What do you say of him?– Ah—I forgot that I must’nt ask questions. He is a poet, but no artist certainly. Cousins of ours are going to take Mrs Dupuy’s house in Wimpole Street I hear—Mr & Mrs Reynolds. [16] She is my first cousin. Do take care of yourself—do be better! may God make you better, dear, dear friend!– My true affection is always with you, & many anxious thoughts beside!

Your EBB–

Robert’s love–

Address: Miss Mitford / Swallowfield / [near] Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 396–400.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Year provided by EBB’s reference to Dickens’s and Thackeray’s plans to visit Rome, which are mentioned in the preceding letter. The approximate day is suggested by her reference to the Story’s meeting Martin Van Buren at the Trollopes (see note 9).

2. Miss Mitford was working on Atherton, a novel she had been planning to write since 1836. It was published in March 1854 as the first volume in Atherton, and Other Tales (3 vols.). Additionally, she had recently finished a thirty-four page autobiographical introduction for The Dramatic Works of Mary Russell Mitford, which was issued in July 1854.

3. From line 2 in the sonnet that begins: “I cannot deem why men toil so for Fame. / A porter is a porter though his load / Be the oceaned world” (Poems, 1853).

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

5. William Wetmore Story completed this statuette of a seated and musing Beethoven in 1854. RB refers to it in a letter to Story written in late December of that year (ms at KS). It was cast in bronze at Paris where James Russell Lowell saw it in the summer of 1855 (see BAF, pp. 293–294).

6. Cornelius Conway Felton (1807–62) was appointed Eliot Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard in 1834. He served as president of the university from 1860 until his death. Presumably, Miss Mitford did not meet Felton; she does not mention him in her reply (see letter 3285).

7. In the Piazza Maria Antonia near the north city wall (see letter 2860, note 3).

8. Mary Somerville (née Fairfax, 1780–1872), scientific writer and mathematician. In 1838, because of her husband’s poor health, the Somervilles “went to Rome for the winter, and except for two brief visits Mary never returned to Britain. They had no settled home, but lived for periods in various Italian cities” (ODNB). Martin Van Buren (1782–1862), eighth president of the United States (1837–41), had left for Europe in April 1853. The following year he settled at Sorrento, Italy, to work on his autobiography, returning to New York in 1855.

9. In a letter to the Newark Daily Advertiser dated 20 October 1853, Elizabeth Kinney reported the following: “Mr. Van Buren and his son have been joined here by ex-Atty. Genl. [Henry D.] Gilpin and lady, and Mr. [Gouverneur] Kemble. Mrs. Trollope, who resides here with her son, has invited them and some of our countrymen to dinner” (15 November 1853).

10. This refers to Frances Trollope (née Milton, 1779–1863) rather than her daughter-in-law, Theodosia Trollope (née Garrow, 1816–65). The elder Mrs. Trollope had been ill in the spring with bronchitis.

11. Cf. Luke 14:21.

12. See note 4 in the preceding letter.

13. Years earlier, in a letter to EBB, Harriet Martineau reported that Richard Whately (Archbishop of Dublin) had given her some private papers, in which he stated his belief in the healing benefits of mesmerism, and that she was at liberty to show them to others (see letter 2203).

14. According to Frank Podmore, this meeting took place on 16 June 1853. The Rev. N. S. Godfrey of Leeds placed a Bible on a turning table and it stopped moving, confirming for Godfrey his suspicion that the influence was diabolical; see Modern Spiritualism: A History and Criticism (1902), pp. 12–13. Godfrey published an account of his experiments as Table-Moving Tested and Proved to be the Result of Satanic Agency (1853) and Table-Turning, the Devil’s Modern Master-Piece (1853).

15. His Spiritualism had just been published in New York; see letter 3181, note 14.

16. The Reynoldses moved into Sophia Dupuy’s house at 37 Wimpole Street (opposite the Moulton-Barretts) sometime prior to the birth of their child at that address on 18 January 1854.

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