594. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 292–295.
[London]
Octr 26th 1837.
I thank you my dearest Miss Mitford for the beautiful annual, [1] & together with it & more than for it, for your kindest accompanying letter. The kindness of its various expressions has been gratefully felt—& there is within me a deep response to all its affectionateness. I hope you will continue to love me, whatever & however many faults & inconsistencies and incoherences you may find in me. One can afford to lose a great deal on this earth when the sun shines on it, & not feel any the worse for the loss: but a single shred of human affection, one cant [2] afford to lose,—tho’ the sun & moon & stars shone all at once!——
As to my ballad, even if it were as good as I wish it were, it would have its ends fulfilled,—(for you are kindly satisfied—& Mr Kenyon too liked it!) yes, and its honor besides—for is it not under a cover bearing your name, and in association with honor-giving as well as honor-taking poetry & prose—?
“Cloth of freize be not too bold,
Tho’ thou’rt matched with cloth of gold”! [3]
That shd have been my motto, when you sent for one:– Thank you for all your indulgence.
And now I ought to thank you in another capacity, as one of the public, as one of those “gentle readers” so subject to huge frowns,—for your own beautiful part in the Tableaux. Of course my favorites are The King’s Ward, & perhaps above all The Wager. Perhaps above all—because I was so pleased & struck with the ingenuity & gracefulness with which you have borne along what the Athenæum most justly calls “the rare Anacreontic” [4] —showing every plume in your sunshine & wind—instead of putting it in a fog or a sea gale, as many wd have done. I am sure Mr Kenyon will be pleased—is, by this time. I much admire his song. Its cadence & its sense swell together, & by a breath, like my favorite soap bubbles (which I delight in looking at now just as if I were a baby!) & it seems to me to have more harmony in its construction than any impromptu I ever heard of. Melody may be in a thread,—but harmony in general requires weaving! However this may be, you have woven the song into the story as skilfully & smoothly as a Fate.
To change that metaphor—thro’ the story, & thro’ the touching King’s Ward, there seems to be a floating drama—which holds the same relationship to the actual, as Cleopatra’s bark to Cleopatra’s palace. I think I detect a portrait in the Scotch illustration. [5] Is it rightly guessed?——
Barry Cornwall’s poem is a very fine one [6] —with a triumph in it & a sadness—& the sadness humanizing the triumph, more than the reference to knighthood does.
The engravings are beautifully executed—the effect of light & shadow so expressive & picture like! I like Mr Kenyon’s, & Georgia & mine (as in duty bound) the best—but then the falconry is very lovely– [7] I am so glad that the beauty of his longer poem is recognized in the Athenæum– It is not classical & cold as the pseudo-classicalism—but classical and tender. I admire it much—too much to refer to Crabbe’s lyrics as the critic does. [8] You know I have a pathy about Crabbe which is not, whatever else it may be, a sympathy. I never could praise anything in poetry, by connecting it in similitude with his!—— [9]
I have written a note containing your message to Mr Boyd—feeling sure that it would please him–
This is a terrible time of year, dearest Miss Mitford, to unroof yourself in! Could’nt it be put off to the spring? And could’nt you come to London during the operation? That is as good a plan, as Mr Bang’s! [10]
Is the novel doing you harm, that you should be unwell? I am so glad that I shall hear from Mr Kenyon all about you!—so glad too to hear of his near return to London. In a letter from a relative of ours [11] & a stranger to him, dated Torquay & addressed to my sister, we had just heard that “Mrs Trollope! and Mr Kenyon, a very literary man, were about to spend the winter there”.
All prosperity to the Jackdaw!—but what does Dash say? Does he look like Othello?—— [12] My poor little dove is very thoughtful or sad .. I wont call him stupid as my brothers do! He is probably in a deep puzzle between his innate ideas of trees & hills, & these ceilings & carpets—& being in a puzzle is the surest proof of philosophy!——
Talking of philosophy, I have seen in the papers the marriage of Miss Shepherd. [13] May it be a happy event for her! I cannot lose my interest in her!–
One is ungrateful here below even against one’s will,—but I must mention late instead of never that I recognized the graceful song full of suggestions, “Lady &c[”]– [14]
God bless you my very dear friend—& keep us all from all greater sins than “the love of geraniums”. Were that the only sin or the chief, what a lovely garden this earth would be—& these hearts would be!—— I believe that some religious people, from the purest motives & (if the truth were known) from a want of natural sensibility to the beautiful, make a pitiable mistake in endeavouring to put it away from th<em> that they may look at the face of God!– As if the beautiful were not an indication of the Chief Beauty!—or as if the whole fair universe were not one transparency—with a Great Light beyond!——
Ever & most affectionately your
E B Barrett
Truly I thank you—tho’ in this low place,—for your kind expressions relating to Papa & the initials. [15] He has felt all of them. It was my fault—& so I thoroughly deserved the ‘worry’–
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 48–51.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Findens’ Tableaux for 1838, with a preface dated 19 September, had just been issued.
2. Underscored three times.
3. The last couplet of a four-line verse attributed to Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, at the time of his marriage to Mary Tudor. According to Leigh Hunt, the verse was woven into the saddle-cloth of a horse Brandon rode at a tournament (London Journal and The Printing Machine, II, 1835). It also appeared in a portrait of Mary Tudor (Richard Davey, The Sisters of Lady Jane Grey and Their Wicked Grandfather, 1911, p. 56).
4. The Athenæum of 21 October 1837 (no. 521, pp. 783–784) said that Miss Mitford’s “The Wager” was “prefaced by so rare an anacreontic, … that we must make room for it,” and then quoted Kenyon’s “Champagne Rose” in full. (For the full text of the review, see pp. 338–339.)
5. To accompany an illustration of deer-shooting, Miss Mitford had contributed “Sir Allen and His Dog.” Her description of Sir Allen—“He, at nearly eighty, still upright, robust, and vigorous in form, with … a magnificent bald head, and long curling hair, as white as the snows of Ben Nevis”—was taken by EBB to be a thinly-disguised portrait of Dr. Mitford.
6. “The Death of the Bull,” accompanying an illustration of Andalusia.
7. Kenyon’s “The Shrine of the Virgin” accompanied an illustration of Sicily; “The Georgian Sisters,” by Henrietta Harrison, faced a portrait entitled “The Slave Merchant”; EBB’s verses matched “Hindoo Girls.” “Hawking,” by F.P. Stephanoff, was matched with Miss Mitford’s “The King’s Ward.”
8. The reviewer in The Athenæum said of Kenyon’s “The Shrine of the Virgin” that it “contains some stanzas which remind us of Crabbe when in his lyrical mood.” Speaking of the contributions as a whole, he wrote “if their staple be but gossamery, it is still gossamer of a new pattern.”
9. In letter 530, EBB had said of Crabbe “it used to be and is and ever will be an impossibility to me to call him a poet.”
10. Unidentified. Perhaps connected in some way with the plans for the repair of Miss Mitford’s cottage.
11. i.e., Jane Hedley, then living in Torquay.
12. i.e., jealous.
13. The Times of 19 October recorded the marriage on the 17th of “Captain Henry Rowland Brandreth, of the Royal Engineers, to Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Henry John Shepherd, Esq. and Lady Mary Shepherd.” EBB had met Lady Mary and her daughters in 1828.
14. A reference to the song beginning “Waken to pleasure, Lady sweet!” embodied in Miss Mitford’s story, “The King’s Ward.” From an out-of-print work by Miss Mitford, they were, as she explained in the preface, verses that she did “not quite wish to die.”
15. See letter 591.
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