Correspondence

716.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 205–208.

[Torquay]

18th Nov [1839] [1]

My beloved friend,

Your note has distressed me & made me uneasy until I can have another. May God bless & restore the health so precious to many—& grant that even while I write, the cause of the painfulness with which I do so, may be passing away. Where is Mr May? You are obedient to him—are you not, my beloved friend? Does he not tell you to lie down or to walk—never to sit, when you can choose a posture.? Tell me what he says. Is a warm bath—a hip bath—considered good for you? a question to which, ignorant as I am, I almost fancy a ‘yes’– Above all it must be injurious to you, if your mind continues haunted by uneasy thoughts of possible, surely not of probable disappointments & consequent difficulties—& I beat myself against the wires of my cage in wonderings & wishings about how I can ask you not to be uneasy under such circumstances, without saying a mockery. But surely dearest dearest Miss Mitford, these Messrs Finden who deserve to be drawn & quartered like their own ‘tableaux’ and your stories, cant meditate any pecuniary treason towards you. [2] They have done their worst, now—surely—and you have only to vow against forming any similar engagement without being secured against similar annoyances & disrespect. What your agreement is with them, of what nature & after what manner, I can know nothing—but I must hope them (at least) into being honest men, albeit for the nonce no gentlemen. The cutting down of your beautiful stories is lese majestè [3] —& unpardonable—& then cries for vengeance the omission of the dedication—indeed the whole series of their discourtesies towards you!– But—after all, dearest Miss Mitford, a fatality & you are in it, & the book will sell,—& then you see, these magnificent ‘proprietors’ however wilfully they may annoy you, will take care .. “stepping east & stepping west” [4]  .. as far as America .. in their magnificent calculations, will take care not to offend & lose you irrepareably. Your popularity in America must raise your value as an editor: and for the rest I understand from a bookseller here that ‘Finden’s Tableaux’ sells better than any of the annuals—that the ‘trade’ winds set in, in such a sort. Thank you for the copy in Wimpole Street– [5] It is quite right in being there instead of here, inasmuch as it belongs to Papa—who, before your letter came, had bought & given one to my aunt Bell, Miss Clarke—so that I had both seen & read it. It is a beautiful book—& I hope the Messrs Finden may behave pretty well, were it only to give me the pleasure of admiring comfortably the engravings, vignettes & all. For I have quite (at heart) forgiven the vignettes—they are so graceful & have such an aerial significance. Your stories are full of beauty—cant be mutilated out of beauty. I am pleased with all; but with the ‘king’s page’ most of all .. which last, I shall wonder about, if it do not find its way into the theatre. It has an inimitable spirit & delicacy—& is likely to be siezed upon for a ‘petite piece’––is it not?—only the lovely blush wherein is involved the denoument, wd vanish away before the footlamps.

Thank you for all this pleasure! Did you see a favorable notice in the Metropolitan which said in my ears some pleasant justice of you? [6] Indeed it spoke very graciously of more than you—of everybody I think or almost so, connected with the late green ladye.

I am so glad in your satisfaction with Mr Horne’s tragedy, & glad besides in the tragedy itself. The love scene by moonlight has to my apprehension a Jessica feel in it [7] —& that music of broken cadences is quite Shakesperian, which is to be recognized there also. Mr Horne has not denied himself in this composition, notwithstanding some obvious marks & results, of haste & confusion. Mr Chorley’s ballad is too near the Ancient Mariner, not to be the Mariner himself. [8] Otherwise I shd admire it much. But ‘Hence avaunt this holy ground’. [9] The Mariner must have his ship to himself.

Dearest dearest Miss Mitford, how I rejoice in your story of revived friendship, or rather of reunited friends. [10] It is a favorite doxy of mine––a favorite dream—do not speak loudly & wake me from it––that friendship—that love,—cannot by a law of its nature pass away, die away, as is the manner of mortal things, however we may look sometimes upon something dark & low, & call it ashes, & say “this is all that is left”. Those who have once loved must love on in their hearts, if not in their words & faces &––alas, lives! And if this were otherwise, I cd not yet willingly receive as a possibility, that Mr Sergeant Talfourd shd dishonor Ion by forgetting & denying you, & without recall & forgetfulness! “Cd such things, be?” [11] Your story of how it all came to pass touched & charmed me. That Ion did his part warmly & nobly I do not doubt,—your own nobleness & generosity being witness!—your own nobleness & generosity as seen in that relation!——

You have dated your letter, & I shall remember (if it please God for me to live) Dr Mitford’s birthday on the 15th of next Novr [12] May God bless him & you—both of you in each other!—my love to him always!–

How will you read what I write on the 18th of this Nov?—what I scratch rather than write?– I have not been out of bed except for an hour at a time & once a day, & never to dress, since the first of October—& Dr Scully seems afraid to permit me to do it or even to permit himself to think of my doing it. He called the pulse better this morning than it had been for a week—but indeed I am a useless & helpless person,—scarcely worth taking such care of, & not at all, except for love’s sake. Do write to me for love’s sake, & say how you are—that is, if you can without much inconvenience. Just a word will do. God make it a happy one for me—that is, a better one, of you!– Mr Talfourd kindly called me your “dear friend”– With or without such praise,—in any case,

Your most affectionate

Elizabeth B Barrett.

Thank you for your kindness (how ever kind you are) in charming a copy of Pedro from its author for me. [13]

I know I have faintly said everything I wished to say today—I have written so in the dark & so brokenly in all ways—not excepting my pleasure from the stories the beautiful stories in Finden. Believe how I love them & you!——

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 160–163.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Year provided by the references to Findens’ Tableaux.

2. The Finden brothers were apparently contemplating re-issuing the earlier Tableaux without Miss Mitford’s sanction, even though it was her understanding that copyright had been assigned to her. The later legal wrangles over this matter are dealt with in letters to Miss Mitford between May and August 1842.

3. “Treason.” Miss Mitford’s stories had been somewhat arbitrarily edited to conform to the predetermined number of pages allocated to the book.

4. Cf. “I’ve wandered east, I’ve wandered west” (line 1 of “Jeanie Morrison” in Poems Narrative and Lyrical, 1832, by William Motherwell, 1797–1835).

5. Miss Mitford wrote a note (see SD1073) sending copies of the Tableaux to Wimpole Street.

6. The Metropolitan Magazine, November 1839, said “The literature of the volume is far superior in quality to any that we have lately seen in Annuals, and does infinite credit to Miss Mitford’s taste.... ‘The Dream,’ by E.B. Barret [sic]; ‘Venice,’ by Barry Cornwall; and ‘The King’s Forrester,’ by J. Hughes, are beautiful little poems. The ‘Legend of the Brown Rosarie,’ also by Miss Barret, seems to have been inspired by a part of the genius which suggested Goethe’s Faust.” (For the full text of the review, see p. 412.)

7. i.e., is reminiscent of the scene between Jessica and Lorenzo in act V, sc. 1 of The Merchant of Venice. See letter 717, note 3.

8. Several elements in John Chorley’s contribution, “The Maid’s Trial,” parallel Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

9. Cf. line 1 of Gray’s poem, “The Installation Ode” (1769).

10. There had been an estrangement between Miss Mitford and Talfourd following the first performance of his Ion (see “‘This Happy Evening’: The Story of Ion” in The Twentieth Century, July 1953, pp. 53–61). On 29 October, Miss Mitford wrote to William Harness, saying she had received from Talfourd an “affectionate and cordial note” (see L’Estrange (2), III, 104).

11. Cf. Macbeth, III, 4, 109.

12. Dr. Mitford had just celebrated his 79th birthday.

13. Pedro of Castile, which EBB said, in letter 710, she had not read.

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