3413. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 214–216.
Rome–
May 10th [1854] [1]
My ever dearest Miss Mitford your letter pained me to a degree which I will not pain you by expressing further. Now, I do not write to press for another letter. On the contrary I entreat you not to attempt to write a word to me with your own hand, until you can do so without effort and suffering. In the meanwhile, would it be impossible for K____ to send me in one line some account of you? I dont mean to teaze, but I should be very glad & thankful to have news of you though in the briefest manner, and if a letter were addressed to me at Poste Restante, Florence, it would reach me as we rest there on our road to Paris & London. In any case I shall see you this summer—if it shall please God,—and stay with you the half hour you allow, & kiss your dear hands & feel again I hope, the brightness of your smile. As the green summer comes on you must be the better surely—if you can bear to lie out under the trees, the general health will rally & the local injury correct itself– You must have a strong energetic vitality,—and, after all, spinal disorders do not usually attack life, though they disable & overthrow. The pain you endure, is the terrible thing– Has a local application of chloroform been ever tried? I catch at straws perhaps with my unlearned hands, but it’s the instinct of affection.
While you suffer, my dear friend, the world is applauding you. I catch sight of stray advertisements & fragmentary notices of ‘Atherton’, [2] which seems to have been received everywhere with deserved claps of hands– This will not be comfort to you perhaps,—but you will feel the satisfaction which every workman feels in successful work– I think the edition of plays & poems has not yet appeared, & I suppose there will be nothing in that which can be new to us. [3] ‘Atherton’ I thirst for, .. but the cup will be dry, I dare say, till I get to England .. for new books even at Florence take waiting for far beyond all necessary bounds. We shall not stay long in Tuscany– We want to be in England late in June or very early in July, and some days belong to Paris as we pass, since Robert’s family are resident there– To leave Rome will fill me with barbarian complacency—I dont pretend to have a rag of sentiment about Rome. It’s a palimpsest Rome—a watering-place written over the antique—and I have’nt taken to it as a poet should, I suppose—only let us speak the truth, above all things. I am strongly a creature of association—& the associations of the place have not been personally favorable to me. Among the rest, my child, the light of my eyes, [4] has been more unwell lately than I ever saw him in his life, and we were forced three times to call in a physician. The malady was not serious—it was just the result of the climate .. relaxation of the stomach &c—but the end is that he is looking a delicate, pale little creature, he who was radiant with all the roses & stars of infancy, but two months ago– The pleasantest days in Rome we have spent with the Kembles—the two sisters .. who are charming & excellent, both of them, in different ways—& certainly they have given us some exquisite hours on the campagna, upon pic nic excursions .. they, & certain of their friends .. for instance M. Ampère, [5] the member of the French Institute, who is witty & agreeable, M. Gorze [6] the Austrian minister, also an agreeable man, & Mr Lyons the son of Sir Edmund, &c. The talk was almost too brilliant for the sentiment of the scenery, but it harmonized entirely with the mayonnaise & champagne. I should have mentioned, too, Miss Hosmer (but she is better than a talker) the young American sculptress, who is a great pet of mine & of Robert’s, and who emancipates the eccentric life of a perfectly “emancipated female” from all shadow of blame by the purity of her’s. She lives here all alone (at twenty two) as Gibson’s pupil, (while her father lives in America),—dines & breakfasts at the caffés precisely as a young man would,—works from six oclock in the morning till night, as a great artist must, .. & this with an absence of pretension & simplicity of manners which accord rather with the childish dimples in her rosy cheeks than with her broad forehead & high aims. The Archer Clives have been to Naples, but have returned for a time. Mr Lockhart who went to England with the Duke of Wellington (the same being prepared to bury him on the road) writes to Mrs Sartoris that he has grown much better under the influence of the native beef & beer– To do him justice he looked, when here, innocent of the recollection even of either. I wonder if you have seen Mrs Howe’s poems, lately out, called ‘Passion Flowers’– [7] They were sent to me by an American friend but were intercepted en route so that I have not set eyes on them yet, but one or two persons, not particularly reliable as critics, have praised them to me– She is the wife of Dr Howe the deaf & dumb philanthropist, & herself neither deaf nor dumb (very much the contrary) I understand—a handsome woman & brilliant in society– I gossip on to you dearest dear Miss Mitford, as if you were in gossipping humour. Believe that my tender thoughts, deeper than any said, are with you always– Robert’s love with that of your attached
Ba.
We go on the 22d of this month. You have seen Mr Chorley’s book [8] I dare say, which I should like much to see.
Address, on integral page: Angleterre / Miss Mitford / Swallowfield / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 408–411.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. EBB had undoubtedly read the brief notice of Atherton, and Other Tales in The Athenæum of 15 April 1854, the same issue that carried a review of Days and Hours (see letter 3402, note 2). The reviewer of Atherton, given as Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury in the marked file copy of The Athenæum now at City University (London), called it “a charming tale” that “refreshes the reader like a drive in the country” (no. 1381, p. 463). Earlier in this issue (p. 456) the book’s publisher, Blackett and Hurst, ran an advertisement that included a sizable extract from a glowing review in The Illustrated London News. Other positive reviews appeared in The Examiner and The Spectator. By the end of the second week in May, Atherton had gone into a second edition (see The Athenæum, 13 May 1854, no. 1385, p. 575).
3. The Dramatic Works of Mary Russell Mitford (2 vols., 1854) was published on 20 July. Volume I contains Rienzi (1828), Foscari (1826), Julian (1823), and Charles the First (1834), all previously published. Volume II includes the opera Sadak and Kalasrade, published in 1836; three unpublished plays: Inez de Castro, Gaston de Blondeville, and Otto of Wittelsbach; as well as eleven unpublished “Dramatic Scenes.” EBB had read Otto of Wittelsbach in manuscript; see letter 561.
4. Cf. Psalm 38:10.
5. Jean-Jacques Ampère (1800–64), French historian, writer, and member of the French Academy.
6. Lucas Count Gozze (1804–71), Croatian-born diplomat, had been chargé d’affaires at the Austrian legation in Rome since 1853.
7. Passion-Flowers (Boston, 1853) by Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910), poet and social activist, was published anonymously in December 1853, but the author’s identity was soon known. Now mainly remembered as the lyricist of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” she married in 1843 Samuel Gridley Howe (1801–76), physician, philanthropist, and abolitionist. He was the first director of what became known as the Perkins School for the Blind and also contributed greatly to the enlightened care of the deaf and mentally handicapped.
8. Modern German Music: Recollections and Criticisms (2 vols., 1854) by Henry Fothergill Chorley. It is likely EBB had seen a review of the work in The Athenæum of 15 April 1854 (p. 462), the same issue that carried notices of Days and Hours and Atherton (see note 2 above). Modern German Music was partly based on Chorley’s Music and Manners of France and Germany (1841) which EBB had read and enjoyed, but those portions that had appeared earlier were largely rewritten and greatly expanded (see Modern German Music, I, vii–viii).
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