537. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 190–191.
74 Gloucester Place.
Wednesday. [?24] [August 1836] [1]
I prophecy that Mr Kenyon will be but a bad post,—inasmuch as a letter delivered by him will have little chance of being read—and besides even if the letter had more to say, & the speaker less, a dead letter by a living friend is a ghastly looking thing. Yet a few words must be written, were they only as a kind of grateful receipt for dearest Miss Mitford’s last welcome little sheet–
After all your depreciation of the flowers, I persist in admiring them,—& should, in the very presence of the crowned John. Letting the depreciation go for something, however, I who remember always skipping the morals of Esop’s fables in those times when I was a rather worse theoretical philosopher & about as good a practical one as I am now—shall deduce the beauty of the prized from the beauty of the depreciated. If this is your dust, what must your stars be? And so you must not look very disdainfully on the praises of my ignorance; & that you may not, I shall try to keep out of sight as long as I can all the details of it—and never tell you quite plainly how little I know one sort of geraunium [sic] from another by its name—not even when John is out of the way.
I am sure dear Miss Mitford, I need not tell you that I thank you with grateful thoughts for both praise & criticism—& that I hope neither may be more thrown away than is made necessary by a good deal of unworthiness. Of course you are very right in the censuring part; and I will try to put more clearness & distinctness into my language as I go on attempting to write it. At the same time, & putting aside my own case as an indefensible one,—I mean to be bold enough to say to you that I do not & cannot see the force of Mr Kemble’s observation even with regard to tragedy unless you wd apply it exclusively to the body or mechanism of tragedy—to the plot & management of the dialogue—& that I am quite sceptical as to the fact of any poet tragic or otherwise, writing poetry dramatic or otherwise, with the ideas of his creating faculty in eternal vicinity to the prescribed idea of “the stupidest person of his acquaintance”.
“Oh! who could hold a fire in his hand
In thinking of that frosty Caucasus!” [2]
Shakespeare wd have bayed the moon [3] till it was black in the face before he did such a thing! And above all—Æschylus! who wrote sublime riddles! What would he have said to Mr Charles Kem<ble!> Dear Miss Mitford! whatever you said, I am quite sure & you see I am mischievous enough to say it, that you never did his bidding—whether you thought you did or not.
You have not read all Tennyson’s poems—neither have I—but did you see his ‘mermaid’ at the end of Leigh Hunt’s paper on mermaids in the New Monthly Magazine? [4] There is a tone in the poetry—in the very extravagance of the poetry & language—an abandonment & wildness—which seemed to me to accord beautifully with the subject, & stayed with me afterwards—a true sign of true poetry—whether I would or not. And if there are, as in far inferior writers, occasional perplexities & obscurations in the meaning—still, no one could complain of them there—seeing that the language seems to have caught its strangeness with its music from the Mermaid’s tongue. Do read the poem & tell me that you like it.
I am very anxious to read something besides—having seen in Saunders & Ottley’s catalogue of new publications—A new novel by Miss Mitford. How long are people to stand on tiptoe waiting for it?
Perhaps Mr Chorley did not call here after all. My only reason for supposing that he did, was the sight of his card, & the hearing that a gentleman had brought it.
Somebody says that human nature loves to be envied, but when you told me of your “troops of friends” [5] & compared your dwelling to Beulah Spa you proved yourself too virtuous for the pleasure. If my envy had begun, it ceased that moment—& I became miraculously contented with my solitude in London!
My hope for this presumptuous letter—I am afraid of reading it over for fear of confirming my own impression of it—is that you will forget its offences in Mr Kenyon’s conversation. You see he is going away from us for some time!!! but I am driven into the corner! [6]
Your affecte
E B Barrett.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Favored by Mr Kenyon.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 14–16.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This is in reply to the previous letter; the 24th seems probable, though the 31st is possible.
2. Richard II, I, 3, 294–295, slightly misquoted.
3. Julius Cæsar, IV, 3, 27.
4. Hunt’s essay, “The Sirens and Mermaids of the Poets,” appeared in The New Monthly Magazine for July 1836 (XLVII, 273–282); Tennyson’s “The Mermaid” was printed on p. 282.
5. Macbeth, V, 3, 25.
6. This remark, with the signature, was squeezed into the extreme corner of the wrapper.
___________________
