570. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 247–250.
74 Gloucester Place
June 2d 1836 [sic for 1837]–
I cannot delay writing to you my dear friend to try to say how glad your letter made me—how more than glad—for I was glad before in the mere hope of what has now occurred. The wish left to make—we always contrive to have some wish left—is that the sum had been larger; [1] and while the negociation was pending, I had Lady Morgan’s £300 in my head, [2] & they wD stay there. I suppose her politics, I mean the prominence of politics in her writings, had a certain weight with the ministry—& dearest Miss Mitford’s writings have too much to do with the pure & beautiful to enter into the counsels & the pay. Not that I grudge the good fortune to Lady Morgan. I was pleased in hearing of it. She has high deserts if not exactly touching ones—& the calamity threatening her eyes has wherewithal to touch. But I am writing, not of Lady Morgan—rather & happier of you my very dear friend—congratulating you yourself—& your father who is so often reminded that he wears his affection & happiness & pride in the same place—& the suggestor & the instruments, thro’ whom you have attained this benefit—& the giver himself—& all your friends—even my own humble self, who tho’ standing afar off cannot be refused to be happy besides. When all was yet uncertain, Mr Kenyon observed to me—“If it is really done, Mr Harness will have a right to be happy.” And so he has—a first & highest right. Only I maintain—being you know such a fiery republican—that the rabble of your friends has another kind of right to be happy too—& one that they must & will exercise.
Otto! He is still an unpleasant thought to you. But I am perverse enough not to be able to regret that he was called into being. Time has a crown for him.
Dash quite well. That is good news. You made me laugh dearest Miss Mitford, with your anti-science,—& my supposed incipient scornfulness will be in danger of growing as high & fast as Jack’s bean stalk,—with your dew upon it. The battle of the Botanists in your garden, certainly comes next to the battle of the frogs & mice, [3] & you sang it out like Homer. I have the privelege—have I?—of ‘scorning the scorners’ [4] —& I may use it?– Well! only give me time to put away my shamefacedness, & I may “use it nobly” [5] —otherwise, suppose they shd ask me “What in the world do you know about us?—or ours”?– I have a provocateur sometimes in a friend of mine [6] who knows about as much on the subject as I myself do, & has been exclusively a “devoted person” from his learning Greek upwards to the Greek fathers, & yet from intercourse with people of science, of mystic countenances & hard words, has learnt to worship the veiled Isis [7] & to reverence the unknown,—of scientific things—& to think it very foolish if not rather blasphemous that every person’s Poetry & Moral philosophy & mental musings & lofty imaginings will not go down on their knees instantly, at the sound of electric batteries, telescopic undrawings, chemical explosions & all sorts of steam engines.
I agree with you in thinking Pickwick admirable—but I have not read every number [8] – He is worth all the “laughing gass”—may we not tell the scientific?– And what is striking in him is his wonderful individuality– He never or seldom sacrifices the natural to the comic—but wins the jest from Nature without stealing it. No one could pass a character of his in the streets without bowing.
Dont let me forget to tell you that Mr Kenyon was kind enough to go with us to the Royal Academy, & that I did not forget you there. But where is Dash? We could not find him. In the catalogue, there is a tantalizing “Dash the property of the Artist” by Mr Ward [9] —but that will not do for Miss Mitford’s Dash. I saw dearest Miss Mitford’s medallion likeness: [10] and very like, both Mr Kenyon & I thought it was. That was tantalizing too, in another way.
I think it is a very interesting Exhibition: and if I had time this morning, I shd be tempted to tell you more of my pleasure in it than you wd care to hear– There is an exquisite picture by Calcott—Raphael & the Fornarina [11] —which I have looked at, again & again with the eyes of my mind since my body’s left it. Its expression has the pathos of happiness—the kind of happiness which lies in serene love always is pathetic,—& the expression comes out clear as a sunbeam, clearer than any color on the painter’s pallette. It is rather a sentiment than a picture.
I forgot something among the pictures that day, which I ought to have remembered. Dont let me forget on this, how gratified I was by the very kind & unexpected & undeserved attention paid to me by Lady Dacre– With the book—& beautiful it is—came a note—such a note—I scarcely knew how to answer it but I knew while I read it that its writer was a relative of yours. [12] That was plain; & knowing & feeling it, could not make me feel less coldly towards her– Now I must be grateful anew in the gratitude of everybody for the proofs given in the late negociation of what you call her “adorable warmth of heart”—but dearest Miss Mitford dont cheat her in the warmth of yours, into fancying that there is anything worth knowing in me– I have been living all my life in something like Miss Martineau’s Mammoth cave (I have just finished her powerful work on America) [13] & wd seem shy & stupid with solitude, & dark & dusty besides to eyes used to sunshine & moonlight.
Mrs Dupuy was good enough to call here on Sunday—and I mean to go to see her tomorrow, if by any possibility I can. There is much kindness in her manner–
I am interrupted & must go, my dear friend!
May God bless you, & make you & keep you happy.
Your affectionate
E B Barrett.
Do not blaspheme the Village. And as to the Country Stories—nobody is very likely to agree with you. [14] I have read the Star of Seville—but not Strafford, & not the Provost of Bruges. [15]
It is unequal—it appears as if its writer stopped to take breath after her finest things—and she has written some very fine things. You will admire Estrella’s apology for her appearance alone, at the trial scene. [16] It touched me deeply– I wish I had thought of writing of this before– Now, I have not a moment!– Would that you were coming to London dearest Miss Mitford. Is there no hope of it?——
Addressed and franked on integral page: 1837 / London June five / Miss Mitford / 3 Mile Cross nr / Reading / W Gosset / [and in EBB’s hand on reverse when folded:] Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 32–36.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. At the urging of friends, particularly William Harness, Miss Mitford had written to Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, setting forth her straitened circumstances, aggravated by the cancellation of the production of Otto, and asking for a government pension. She had also written to the Duke of Devonshire and to Lady Dacre, asking for their influence. On 31 May she was granted £100 a year.
2. Lady Morgan, writing as Sydney Owenson (bapt. 1783, d. 1859), best known for The Wild Irish Girl (1806) and The Princess (1835), had been granted £300 a year a few weeks earlier.
3. In Homer’s mock-heroic Batrachomyomachia. “The battle of the Botanists” was described by Miss Mitford in letter 566.
4. Proverbs, 3:34.
5. Cf. Titus Andronicus, I, 1, 260.
6. Hugh Stuart Boyd.
7. Isis was the principal goddess of ancient Egypt. Proclus tells of a statue of her bearing the inscription “I am that which is, has been, and shall be. My veil no one has lifted. The fruit I bore was the Sun.” Hence “to lift the veil of Isis” connotes the solving of a great mystery.
8. The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club appeared in monthly numbers, beginning in April 1836.
9. No. 319 in the Royal Academy catalogue was “Portrait of Dash, property of the artist” by James Ward (1769–1859), but it was not Miss Mitford’s Dash.
10. The portrait for Chorley’s The Authors of England, engraved by Achille Collas (1795–1859).
11. Augustus Wall Callcott (1779–1844) was best known as a landscape painter. “Raffaelle and the Fornarina” was his most successful attempt at figure painting.
12. According to L’Estrange, Lady Dacre (née Ogle) was related to Miss Mitford, but we have not been able to substantiate this (see letter 567, note 2).
13. Harriet Martineau (1802–76) had visited America in 1834–35 and had just published Society in America, a summation of her impressions. The Athenæum (no. 498, 13 May 1837, pp. 337–339) said “This is a book of no ordinary import. Miss Martineau is a profound and original thinker” but had gone on to say the book had “a coldness and a hardness” lacking in her other works.
Mammoth Cave is a series of chambers in Kentucky.
14. In letter 566, Miss Mitford had said that she did not like her Country Stories.
15. The Provost of Bruges (1836), by George William Lovell (1804–78), was dedicated to Macready.
16. In The Star of Seville, Estrella’s betrothed, Don Carlos, is tricked into killing her brother, Don Pedro, believing that the latter had attacked the king. Carlos is tried and condemned to death. Estrella goes mad and rushes to the scaffold to die with him.
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