Correspondence

647.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 51–53.

50 Wimpole Street.

Thursday. [21 June 1838] [1]

We thank you gratefully dearest Miss Mitford– Papa & I and all of us thank you for your more than kindnesses. The extracts were both gladdening & surprising—& the one the more for being the other also. Oh! it was so kind of you in the midst of your multitude of occupations, to make time (out of love) to send them to us! [2]

As to the Ballad, dearest Miss Mitford, which you & Mr Kenyon are indulgent enough to like, remember that he passed his criticism over it—before it went to you—& so if you did not find as many obscurities as he did in it, the reason is—his merit & not mine. But dont believe him—no!—dont believe even Mr Kenyon—whenever he says that I am perversely obscure. Unfortunately obscure—not perversely—that is quite a wrong word. And the last time he used it to me (and then I assure you another word still worse was with it) I begged him to confine them for the future to his jesting moods. Because indeed I am not in the very least degree perverse in this fault of mine which is my destiny rather than my choice, & comes upon me I think, just where I would eschew it most. So little has perversity to do with it’s occurrence, that my fear of it makes me sometimes feel quite nervous and thought-tied in composition.

Mr Townsend’s poems have just reached me. [3] I have had no time to read them, except at a rail road speed, & that not continuously. They seem to have much thought & poetic beauty; and my pleasure (certain) in receiving them, & my pleasure (I may say certain too) in reading them, is made the more pleasurable by thanking you for it, my dear friend!

Is Flash or Flock the hero of your story—which interested us all, to say nothing of Sette & Occy. How like you was the impulse to a stockingless vengeance! How very very like!– [4]

I am writing in such haste to meet a franker at Westminster. But do give my thankful remembrance & regard to Dr Mitford—and do believe how gratefully Papa has felt every word of your letter—& accept my expression of his feeling.

I have not seen Mr Kenyon since I wrote last. All last week I was not permitted to get out of bed, & was haunted with leeches & blisters. And in the course of it, Lady Dacre was so kind as to call here—& to leave a note instead of the personal greeting which I was not able to receive. The honor she did me a year ago, in sending me her book, encouraged me to offer her my poems. I hesitated about doing so at first, lest it should appear as if my vanity were dreaming of a return—but Mr Kenyon’s opinion turned the balance. I was very sorry not to have seen Lady Dacre, & have written a reply to her note expressive of this regret. But after all, this inaudible voice (except in its cough) could have scarcely made her understand that I was obliged by her visit, had I been able to receive it.

Dr Chambers has freed me again into the drawing room, & I am much better or he would not have done so. There is not however much strength or much health—or any near prospect of regaining either. It is well that in proportion to our feebleness, we may feel our dependence upon God.

I feel as if I had not said half—& they have come to ask me if I have not said all! My beloved friend, may you be happy in all ways!——

Do write whenever you wish to talk & have no one to talk too [sic], nearer you than I am! Indeed I did not forget Dr Mitford when I wrote those words—altho’ they look like it!——

Your gratefully affectionate

E B Barrett

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 76–77 (as [14 June 1838]).

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by the reference to EBB’s note to Lady Dacre (646).

2. Apparently Miss Mitford had copied extracts from reviews of The Seraphim.

3. Miss Mitford’s friend Richard Edwin Austin Townsend (1801–58) had printed privately in 1838 Visions of the Western Railways.

4. The “hero of your story” was, of course, Flush, as is made clear in later letters; he was the father of EBB’s own Flush. EBB’s reference to “stockingless vengeance” is unclear; it may refer in some way to Miss Mitford’s acquiring the dog after his leg was broken by a boy (see L’Estrange (2), II, 206).

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