606. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 5–6.
74 Gloucester Place–
Tuesday. [January 1838] [1]
Do write one line to me my dearest Miss Mitford, just to say how you are– I might have asked as much as this before—but felt unwilling to be in your way when so much else was there. One line—I must ask for now!—— It haunts me that you are suffering. May God grant that such a thought be one of my many vain ones!—& that the amendment you spoke of be not vain at all.
This is the first day of my release from prison—for during this terrible weather which held daggers for all weak chests, I was not permitted to get up before it was deep in the afternoon,—& so have scarcely had a pen in my hand for a fortnight past. I was glad to be able to breakfast as usual with Papa this morning—& feel an early-rising-vain-gloriousness almost as “thick upon me” [2] as Mr Boyd’s is upon him—when (& he always does it) he gets up at four or five o clock in the morning & looks down upon the rest of the world. You cant think how much scorn I and my half past nine o clock breakfasts have met with from him. You would meet with no mercy. He has intimated to me again & again, that it was both a moral & religious sin not to get up before the second cock crowing– And that Peter’s repentance, besides a good deal of sackcloth, shd wait upon the third– [3] I believe I inferred the last—being logical: but the “moral & religious sin” was just his own expression.
How high you bribe dearest Miss Mitford! To stand alone by your side in praising Hayley [4] & his contemporaries—or in doing anything else! That is a bribe,—& when I have read the essays on scu[l]pture Painting & epic poetry,—anything more than the Triumphs of Temper,—I will make a desperate effort towards admiration. I admire him now as a man—and as Cowper’s friend! I admire Miss Seward, not as a letter writer or a poet or a critic,—but as a kindly, generous hearted woman who loved poetical literature “not wisely” [5] but very well,—who loved her friends still better than her vanities,—& who was not frozen to her pedestal! (she had one in her day!)—as many are apt to be in all days. When Sir Walter Scott edited her poems he cancelled such praise as he had given them in his own letters to her– [6] It was an ungenerous act! The poor poetess could no more have committed it than she cd have written Waverley!——
My dear friend! as you have changed your mind about the season of application for increase of pension, I have not said a word to Mr Gosset. [7] If I am wrong, tell me immediately.
Finden is a triumph for you!– I am so glad of it. Dearest Miss Mitford, whenever I am able to do anything, or you fancy so & like me to try, by making me do it pray remember that you make me obliged–
The poor little dove, weak for the last three weeks, perished one cold night a fortnight since. I mean the poor little cockney dove. The others, I took up to my bedroom & kept very warm—& after some spiritless songless days, they revived & are perfectly well now. If I were to lose either of them, I should name it as a grief–
Goodbye—God bless you, dearest Miss Mitford. Do tell me that you are better. Dr Chambers says that I shall lose my cough in the warm weather—April or May—& not before. So there is nothing for it but patience. And nothing makes one so patient, as knowing that patience is not needed for those one loves!——
Your ever affectionate
E B Barrett.
I have not yet seen Mr Kenyon. He sent me Mr Landor’s last most exquisite book [8] of which I have no time to speak–
The kind regards of all the house—do accept them!——
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 59–60 (as [19? December 1837]).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by the further reference to Miss Mitford’s pension, mentioned in the previous letter.
2. Cf. Henry VIII, III, 2, 354.
3. Cf. Mark, 14:72.
4. William Hayley (1745–1820). The following references are to An Epistle on Painting (1777), Poetical Epistle on Epic Poetry (1782), An Essay on Sculpture (1800) and The Triumphs of Temper (1781).
5. Othello, V, 2, 344.
6. At the request of Miss Seward (known as “the Swan of Lichfield”), Scott edited and published her poetical works in 1810, a year after her death. In a memoir of her included in the first volume, Scott was somewhat less enthusiastic about her poetry than he had professed to be in letters to her.
7. As EBB mentioned in the previous letter, her cousin’s husband, Ralph Gosset, was obliged to return from Ireland prior to the opening of Parliament; this took place on 16 January, thus dating this letter to the first half of the month.
8. The Pentameron and Pentalogia (1837).
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