702. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 169–172.
Torquay–
Thursday. [11 July 1839] [1]
Ever dearest Miss Mitford,
As you cant see me blush thro’ all England, you can have nothing but my word for it, that I am ashamed of the proportions of this Patagonian [2] ballad– I am ashamed– Do take my word for it. Yes! and if I were not sure enough of your love to be able to trust to your candour, I shd hang back as to letting you see these sheets at all,—instead of begging you as I earnestly do, not to mind returning them & desiring me to accomplish the matter in half the space.
Is it not Montaigne who says that a horse shows blood by his power of stopping readily & with grace? [3] I am afraid, if it is, that he would “mean me by an ass”. [4] I regularly run away with myself in poems & letters—waiting till my own breath & everybody’s patience are exhausted before I stop, to wish I had stopped before.
But no horse is a type of my ballad. It is an ichthyosaurus of a ballad. Dr Buckland wd refer it to the earliest stratum of “base ballads”, and I may very possibly have to go back for readers, to the antedeluvians, correspondingly. [5]
So dearest dearest Miss Mitford, I do adjure you by your kindness for me not to let it lie in the way of your readers. It would not be longer than last year’s Romaunt, nor perhaps so long, were it not for the dreadful long lines, the dreadful “wounded snakes” [6] of lines, which I fear will never coil up into columns. Could you put them out of the way into very small type? The types are not uniform, I think, in the preceding volumes. At any rate I adjure you by your kindness for me, (that Styx nine times round me) [7] not to put out a word of a line of a page of your beautiful stories for me. I couldn’t bear the remorse of it.
All this time I am modestly appearing to confine your probable objections, to the quality of length! Appearing! I know too well that you are not likely to approve of me in any way as much or nearly as much as you did last year. Indeed I have my own private fears as to being approved of at all. Deal truly by me. I have lived upon ass’s milk since January, & it is likely to tell. And whether you approve of me or not, I know you love me, & while you do so, I can afford to lose your sunshine for a ballad. Only dont pray dont, let me do harm even by a ballad, to anything of yours. I trust to you for safety from this danger, my beloved friend!—and you may trust to me that all the writing has done me no harm. Indeed I have been better lately, & was out in the boat four times last week. So concluded, for a time at least, my nine months imprisonment in this house—but the exertion was felt very much of course, marked by faintings, & an exhaustion which delayed me a little longer in sending this packet to you. When the sea is calm again, I am to repeat my visits to it– What tires me is the process of going down to it, not the dear sea itself, that being too sublime not to be gentle & harmless to the weak– And the intervening distance is not of many yards—not fifty, I shd think—only the chairs have earthquakes in them.
I forgot to answer a question put in a late letter of yours. I do not know whether Miss Garrow does or does not write ballads—but anybody who writes anything would climb at a ballad nor “fear to fall”. [8] I have seen no writing of her’s except what was published in Lady Blessington’s annual last year, & some stanzas in MS. upon LEL’s death, which appeared to me rather inferior to the rest. Her verses are, in my mind, to judge from these specimens, graceful & feeling, without much indication of either mounting or sinking into other characteristics—but it is scarcely possible or at least just to make a judgment of faculties, upon such scanty data. I have seen her only once– And of her accomplishments in Italian German & music, have heard much.
Oh my dearest Miss Mitford, I am in such a ‘fuss,’ (to use an expressive word, which means here however something sadder than itself) about “my people” in Wimpole Street—about their coming here to spend the summer with me. George at any rate is coming next week—& my dearest Papa will I know, do what he can about packing up the others—but nobody deals in positives & universals, & says “we are coming”. The end of it is, naturally, that I am in a fuss. Do you think that I can really stay here until next spring—here, comparatively alone? That is proposed to me. I am told that I cant go back to London this winter without performing a suicide! If they wd but come, I might think temperately of these things—but indeed it is necessary to gather strength of heart from the sight of everybody, to be able to look forwards to another year of exile.
In the meantime my dear relatives the Hedleys have taken a pretty place (under my particular ban, so if you ever heard any good of it, dont praise it to me) Merry Oak two miles from Southampton—leaving me as an inheritance, the flowers growing from your seeds in their Torquay garden, to make up into nosegays & sad morals. The worst grief of all (a very heavy grief at first—until I learnt to be wise & submissive about it) has been the departure for the West Indies of two of my dear brothers, who went from London without a last word or look from me. [9] It was all kindly done––and I am reconciled––but I cant write of it now–
May God bless you & yours my own dear friend! I venture to send some cream to Dr Mitford, notwithstanding his prohibition & the hot weather. The fruit season may make it welcome, if it can but be kept in good order from the sun. Tell me if it is spoilt or not.
Did Mr Landor vow on a brown rosary to Lady Blessington? I am quite out of humour about it.
Oh yes! I did like Mr Chorley!– Have you applied to him?—& did you, at all to Mr Kenyon?
Is the Legend of the Brown rosary a good name! or wd you like Lenora, the Ballad of Lenora, better? [10] But I quite expect to have it back to me—& in the meantime you may be perfectly sure that if I have done you no good, I have done myself no harm!——
Do you like Mr Horne’s poetry? [11] It has to my judgment, great power & genius—and I was fancying some time ago that if you had wished to make him useful to you, access might be had to him through a friend of mine, a former governess of mine & my sisters, who used to talk to me about him when I was in dear Wimpole Street. But everything must be settled about the Tableaux for this year, by this time! and I am sure magnificently, were it not for my rags draggling on to the broaches!——
Poor poor Lady Flora Hastings!– Was it the Queen’s doing? Do you think she really has no feeling? [12]
May God ever bless you!——
Your attached
Elizabeth B Barrett.
By the way I have written that name at the last year’s place of assurance. Shd you keep the papers, you will put it for me wherever it ought to be– Is not Mr Naylor too like & too unlike Tennyson?—— [13]
The cream would’nt come in time & has detained the packet– Arabel in her last letter particularly begged me to tell you that your flowers were growing beautifully—“Not one has died.”
I cd not put George out of admiration with you, if I tried. [14] Am I likely to try?——
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 135–139.
Manuscript: Boston Public Library and Wellesley College.
1. Dated by the following letter, which mentions the despatch of EBB’s ballad.
2. i.e., huge. EBB’s poem occupied seven pages when printed in Findens’ Tableaux.
3. “And there is nothing whereby the cleane strength of a horse is more knowne, than to make a readie and cleane stop” (Essayes … by Michael, Lord of Montaigne, Done Into English by John Florio, 1613, bk. I, ch. 9, p. 42).
4. Cf. Much Ado About Nothing, IV, 2, 76.
5. William Buckland, Miss Mitford’s friend, was President of the Geological Society, and was the author of several works on geology and palæontology.
6. Pope, Essay on Criticism (1711), line 357: “That like a wounded Snake, drags its slow length along.” In the second section of the poem, EBB used a 14-syllable line extensively.
7. Cf. Pope, Ode for Musick. On St. Cecilia’s Day (1713), line 91.
8. Sir Walter Raleigh (1552?–1618), “Fain would I climb, / Yet fear I to fall” (written on a window-pane; quoted in Thomas Fuller’s The History of the Worthies of England, 1662, p. 261).
9. Sam and Charles John sailed from London on 26 June. The former died in Jamaica on 17 February 1840, from a tropical fever; the latter returned to England in December 1840.
10. When the poem was reprinted in Poems (1844), EBB changed the title to “The Lay of the Brown Rosary” and the heroine’s name to Onora.
11. Richard Hengist Horne (1802–84), who later became one of EBB’s major correspondents, contributed “The Fetches” to the 1840 Findens’ Tableaux. As EBB indicates later in the paragraph, he was known to Mrs. Orme, her former governess at Hope End.
12. Lady Flora Elizabeth Hastings (1806–39), the eldest child of the Marquis of Hastings, resided at Buckingham Palace as Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent. In January, she had consulted Sir James Clark, the Queen’s physician, and subsequently the rumour arose that she was pregnant, and this suspicion was communicated to the Queen and to the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. Lady Flora was subsequently required to undergo a further examination at Clark’s hands, which resulted in a written statement from Clark, also signed by Lady Flora’s personal physician, refuting the rumours. Her illness (later found to be due to enlargement of the liver) was aggravated by the mental suffering inflicted on her, and she died on 5 July. The Queen was much criticized for not taking a more supportive attitude.
13. Naylor’s themes and imagery were similar to Tennyson’s, but he employed a different metre. See EBB’s additional comments in the following letter.
14. In letter 679, EBB had told George that Miss Mitford had said “I hate the law & all its professors.”
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