683. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 118–121.
[Torquay]
March 7 [1839] [1]
Ever dearest Miss Mitford,
I must say so at the first word, though it may seem so contradictory to the long silence & neglect of which you have or surely may have (making every allowance for your tried kindness) judged somewhat severely– To explain it all, my beloved friend, I have been very ill—& your two last delightful letters were received by me when I was quite confined to my bed, & in such a state of debility as rendered writing a thing impossible– Even at this time, altho’ more than a month has passed since this laying up began, the extent of my strength is to bear being lifted to the sofa for three hours a day—& I have not left my bedroom for six weeks. The cold weather at the end of January irritated the chest a good deal—& then most unaccountably—I never suffered from such a thing my whole life before—I had for ten days a kind of bilious fever which necessitated the use of stronger medecines than my state cd very well bear—& then came on a terrible state of debility—the stomach out of sheer weakness, rejecting all sustenance except wine & water—& the chest, seeming to grudge the exercise of respiration. I felt oftener than once inclined to believe that the whole machine was giving way everywhere! But God has not willed it so! I am much better, & stronger—& growing with my strength has been the wish of assuring you––that indeed indeed I have not forgotten you, I am not ungrateful to you– As to the fish—oh what must you have thought!. But before your last letter brought me the permission of sending it, I was able to direct some to be sent to you—& the provoking fishermen or market people would not let us have any “fresh enough” according to the doxy of our cook. Torquay thinks more of pleasure boats than fishing boats. Indeed all the fish we have, or almost all, is the produce of Brixom [2] —& then the East winds set their faces against fishing anywhere– But I shall hope for better facilities henceforward—& in the meantime, if you will take the trouble of directing the empty basket back to me with ‘returned basket’ written on the card, it will be ready to go to you again—& will reach me free of carriage. Thank you dearest Miss Mitford for believing that it does give me pleasure to do this little service. Would it were greater!–
And thank you for the memorial of poor LEL. How kind of you to spare those seeds to me!– [3]
I must not write any more—& have written far too much of myself—only I wanted to place my innocense of not loving you, beyond suspicion. Henrietta shd have written. I thought of asking her to do so—& then I thought again––“Why shd I not wait until I am better—if I am to be better? & spare her some gloomy fancies about me”—
I do feel so much for dear Lady Dacre. [4] If you shd be writing to her, & shd besides feel sure that the sound of a name so little familiar to her as mine, wd not be or appear an impertinent intrusion, will you say how I have felt & do feel for her. When kindness has been shown to us—& hers was shown to me—we are apt to be intrusive in return. But without this, & indeed apart from it altogether—poor Mrs Sulivan was herself interesting to me as a writer. Her tale of the wife with two husbands affected me very much—& appeared most striking to me from its pathos & purity of tone. [5]
God bless you dearest Miss Mitford!–
Kindest regards to Dr Mitford—go on to send me good news about him. I am tired with writing as you will see–
Papa & Sette are here again! a good reason for my betterness–
Your ever attached
EBB——
I have not answered yr letters I know– Say if there is any particular kind of fish which you & Dr Mitford prefer.
Thank you for letting me read Mrs Westmacott’s letter [6] ——& for liking the stanzas. [7]
Tuesday morning.
The last sheet was written days ago—& to my great disappointment in vain. And now they have come up to me to hurry my letter to an end– First delay, & then hurry—both things for grumbling.
Retsch is very interesting in Mrs Westmacott’s letter, & wild & grand & Faustic in his own productions. I have seen his illustrations of the Fridolin—accompanied by an English versification of the ballad—not a bad one but perfectly uninspired. [8] Your Buccaneer is certainly(—of course it struck me at the time to be—) an animated English version of that story out of the German Furnace– [9] By the way do you hear anything, have you heard anything from Mr Tilt & of his intentions? [10] Do you meditate the vivifying of any kind of annual this summer—or are they all to be annuals in the strict sense of your mignionette?—only without the perfume?——
I am sure you were polishing your dagger just when you asked me to agree with you in giving Goëthe’s laurel to Schiller. You might as well ask our young Queen to prefer Shakespeare to Mr Van Amburgh. [11] My doxy is that there is (now you know what my doxy must be) that there is more essential genius in Goethe’s mysterious Faustic growlings than in Schiller’s most eloquent eloquence. He is of the schools. He lights his lamp like any common man—& I am quite sure not only that he wrote with a pen, but that it might very possibly have been a steel one. Now Goëthe’s poetry comes like the wind––we cannot tell whence it cometh [12] —& what is more, never think of asking—and if you asked me I shd be obliged to shake my head & put on quite as mystic a face as his own.
Now you must forgive all this foolish criticism. Foolishness & criticism are so apt, do so naturally go together! and I am, for a critic, even unnaturally consistent, for I like Schiller’s Robbers [13] better than any other play of his I have read.
I had in my hands (not of course for my reading) for a part of an evening years ago & at a party Lord Francis Gowers translation of the Faust. It was the only time I ever saw any translation of that untranslateable wonder––I never even saw the one you refer to. [14] On the other hand, the time I have given to German literature has been but little—none at all until the summer before last—and so you must find some good excuse for me if I have written anything very, more than critically, foolish.
Do mention poor Lady Dacre.
Thank you for all your encouraging kindnesses (how they multiply) about my poetry. But dearest Miss Mitford, if it were really the fashion to like it, wdnt it be a little so to buy it! And Messrs Saunders & Otley gave bad accounts in the early part of the winter. [15] Do you think there shd be more advertisements?
I have not seen the Deluge– [16] Tell me your thought of it. And oh! do, when you can, write—& be sure that I am better—the pulse has been better for several days now——
Your hurried but most
affectionate EBB.
Mr Kenyon is quite well—but very seldom seen in Wimpole Street.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 111–114.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by the reference to the death of Lady Dacre’s daughter. Inclusive dating provided by EBB’s “Tuesday morning.”
2. Sic, for Brixham, on the southern arm of Tor Bay, opposite Torquay.
3. As later letters make clear, Miss Mitford had received from Africa some seeds sent by Letitia Landon (Mrs. Maclean) before her death, and EBB had been given two of them.
4. Arabella Jane Sullivan (née Wilmot), Lady Dacre’s daughter by her first husband, Valentine Henry Wilmot, had died on 27 January 1839.
5. Mrs. Sullivan was the author of Recollections of a Chaperon (1831) and Tales of the Peerage and Peasantry (1835), both edited by Lady Dacre. EBB’s reference appears to be to “An Old Tale, and Often Told,” included in the former title.
6. The wife of the Rev. Horatio Westmacott, Rector of Chastleton, Oxfordshire.
7. Presumably EBB’s reference is to “L.E.L.’s Last Question,” published in The Athenæum of 26 January 1839 (no. 587, p. 69).
8. Moritz Retzsch (1779–1857), painter and engraver, furnished illustrations for the works of Schiller, Goethe and others, Fridolin (1798) being by Schiller. The English translation mentioned by EBB was Fridolin, or the Road to the Iron Foundry (1824), translated by John Payne Collier (1789–1883).
9. “The Buccaneer” was one of Miss Mitford’s contributions to the 1839 Findens’ Tableaux.
10. i.e., to ask Miss Mitford to edit another Findens’ Tableaux.
11. Isaac Van Amburgh (1811–65), an American lion-tamer, was having a successful season in London; Queen Victoria went to see his performance six times.
12. John, 3:8.
13. Die Räuber was published in 1781; EBB presumably read an English translation, perhaps that of Benjamin Thompson (1776?–1816), published in 1801.
14. Francis Leveson-Gower (1800–57), later (1846) 1st Earl of Ellesmere, had published his translation of Faust in 1823. The English version mentioned by Miss Mitford cannot be identified positively, as there were at least seven translations, in addition to Gower’s, published between 1833 and 1839. In view of the earlier comment about Retzsch, her reference might be to the translation by Jonathan Birch (1783–1847), with illustrations by Retzsch, the first part of which was published in 1839.
15. i.e., of sales of The Seraphim.
16. The Deluge (1839) was another of John Edmund Reade’s derivative poems, owing much to Byron’s Heaven and Earth. Landor told Lady Blessington that Reade “is now about to publish a drama of the Deluge, on which he tells me he has been employed for twenty years. You cannot be surprised that he is grievously and hopelessly afflicted, having had water on the brain so long” (Richard Chenevix Trench, Letters and Memorials, 1888, I, 195).
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