Correspondence

733.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 238–242.

Torquay.

Thursday. [20 February 1840] [1]

My ever dearest Miss Mitford–

Two welcome letters from you, & one of them more than usually delightful—& no gratitude in the shape of an answer!! It does seem very abominable of me—& if I am black & blue with the “cudgelling” of “your hard thoughts”, [2] I cannot say but that I deserve it to all appearances. Yet dearest dearest Miss Mitford, do forgive this mask of neglect, behind which I have loved, & thought of you much!– Do.

Your letters found me saddened by the death here of a friend with whom I had had little personal intercourse indeed, but who did not interest me the less on that account,—after a long illness of the same character as my own. [3] So that the end was affecting to me in many ways! But he is with God—passing tranquilly as one moves in a dream, from this earth to that Heaven .. almost, without the sign of transition. He walked to Beacon Terrace & up stairs very kindly last spring to see me upon my sofa. It was an exertion to him—but I cd not stand: and I remember thinking within myself that if I were as well as he I shd be more sanguine about recovery than he seemed to be. How little we can count upon what will be!– He rallied in the summer as usual .. was looking almost well, Papa says .. in London: & returned here to die– But it was best & happiest for him—& even so his poor widow has strength to say with the smile upon her face!——

Well then!– I never received Mr Merry’s book until a very few days since. [4] Was’nt it too bad of my dear people in Wimpole Street? I told you of their genius for “waiting for opportunities”—& in accordance with it, they opened the parcel, enclosed your letter to me, & kept the book until boots, & shoes enough for a colony cd be made—allowing for that corresponding genius of procrastination common to shoemakers. I really was ashamed to write to you until I had the book—& when I had it & read it off my conscience & wrote to Mr Merry .. then came Dr Scully with the martyrdom of a perpetual blister in his right hand!–

Now do my dearest Miss Mitford, write & tell me all about yourself & dear Dr Mitford! It wd revive me like an inward spring, to hear a great deal of good about you. Is it to be heard? God grant that. I have asked all I have access to about the maid, & cannot hear of a place for her,—& I do hope that by this time your success has been greater. My own maid & my sisters’ is faultless in kindness & attention to me—or—had there been a vacancy near myself,—I shd have very much liked to fill it with anybody consecrated by association with you!–– Papa has not come yet!! so that I am not as silly as Dr Scully fancied, when he found me with tears running down my cheeks because of “a fortnight’s absence”,—& sate down in a kind of despair at my bedside, with his “Well Miss Barrett—there is no reasoning on such subjects!”– But I knew very well how these “fortnights” are apt to grow. That was a fortnight before Christmas!– Dearest Papa has so much occupation, & so many to care about & discipline in London, that it is very difficult for him to go two hundred miles away from it!—though Styx be ‘nine times round him’ [5] with promises!

I am tolerably well—but there is an east wind, & I feel it—& I feel too, by way of accessory in the way of inconvenience, this perpetual blister .. which is to do me good perhaps, & which in the meantime keeps me very quiet & uncomfortable!——

Thank you for all your amusing Mitfordiana. I will tell you as a secret, that a Mr Henry Mitford (in the navy, I think he is) behaved nearly as ill to Mr Boyd’s daughter as his uncle did to the Greeks. [6] (Forgive me—but I am sure you dont admire that history (pro mystery) of iniquity!–) [7] She is married now .. but she did at one time feel the cruelty very deeply—at least as deeply as a woman of rather quick than profound feelings cd be supposed to do. They met at Malvern—she, a singularly pretty girl & very young: & a guitar between them & a great deal of flirtation .. causing them to separate under a tacit sort of engagement & with exchanged locks of hair, she received back a few days afterwards her ringlet wrapt up in an old newspaper, & without a word!– So I say “cruelty”– They met again after years & years; & he told a long tale about a plot against them both .. how he was persuaded that she had married, .. & was married himself in a kind of trance .. an absolute state of unconsciousness, he maintained it was!– Altogether the explanation sounded to me rather worse than the thing supposed to be explained—but she believed it, poor thing, of course– That a woman shd fancy herself beloved, & be mistaken, .. wd always seem to her a stranger thing, than that a man shd. be married in a trance,—or any other miracle!–

Your “Annie” of yore & my Ibbit Jane must have a great deal in common. There never was a more absolute flirt than Ibbit. Indeed her love for “jeloms” as opposed to “wadys” [8] is honestly devulged upon every fitting opportunity—& her indignation too, wherever she cd say of mortal man “he never speaked one word to me”! Nay! the very trick she has of catching the light with that lovely golden hair of hers, which hangs like a net of curls from brow to waist, is instinct with flirtation!– I wish you cd see Ibbit!——

Mr Merry’s little book pleased me much, for the most part. I have written to him just my thoughts: & if they get me into a scrape & he says to you “What a forward wrongheaded wrongmannered person she is” you are bound my dearest Miss Mitford to take my part & answer “Dont be angry—I spoilt her”. Of course I made no reference to his letter to yrself—which is here returned to you .. so that altogether I am blameless before you, & you must take my part. Did’nt you encourage me into this particular mischief, besides the general spoiling—now did’nt you?——

Mr Horne since I named him last to you, has sent me his Marlowe [9] —& moreover written in the very kindest way to propose amusing me to the end of the cold weather by sending anything amusable that might pass thro’ his hands & thoughts—a proposition arising from his having heard something of the closeness of my imprisonment, through a mutual friend. [10] The whole manner of it was most abundantly kind .. most singularly so considering that we are strangers to each other. I am in a fit of gratitude—& believe more than ever in my edition of the Tales of the genii. [11] Your ordinary ladies & gentlemen wd never think of doing such things– In the first place they coul’dnt make their way so close to a stranger as to make their kind feelings audible—they coul’dnt for conventionalisms—for the rustling of their petticoats & the creaking of their shoes.–

Mr Horne has told me too of what I never dreamt .. that I am named in Leigh Hunt’s Feast of the Violets .. published two years ago!! [12] —& very kindly named. Some lines he extracted .. but not those in relation to you, altho’ he refers to them besides. Did you ever see the poem,—A pendant to the Feast of the Poets? [13] And have you seen the new tragedy .. this Legend of Florence? To judge from very scanty extracts it seems to have deep pathos & poetry—but rather, I shd fancy, an ultra laxity of versification. [14] Where is Otto? [15] Are you arranging anything? Do tell me all—& with my love to dear Dr Mitford,

believe me ever & ever gratefully

yours, in true affection

EBB–

Do mention your health very particularly!——

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 174–177.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Dated by the reference to A Legend of Florence.

2. Cf. As You Like It, I, 2, 183–184.

3. See letter 728.

4. The Philosophy of a Happy Futurity est. on the Sure Evidence of the Bible (1839), by William Merry, who lived at “The Highlands,” near Reading and was a friend of Miss Mitford.

5. Pope, Ode for Musick. On St. Cecilia’s Day (1713), 90–92.

6. For EBB’s earlier comments on William Mitford’s History of Greece, see letter 568, note 5. Nothing is known of his nephew’s alleged ill-treatment of Boyd’s daughter.

7. II Thessalonians, 2:7.

8. i.e., “gentlemans” and “ladies.”

9. The Death of Marlowe first appeared in The Monthly Repository, August 1837, pp. 128–140. It was published in book form that same year. EBB’s copy formed part of lot 764 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1247).

10. i.e., Mrs. Orme, the one-time governess at Hope End.

11. James Ridley (1736–65), using the pseudonym Sir Charles Morell, had published in 1764 The Tales of the Genii, or the delightful Lessons of Horan, the son of Asmar, purporting to be translations from a Persian manuscript but being, in reality, Ridley’s own inventions, inspired by The Arabian Nights. EBB is equating the element of magic and improbability with the generosity of Horne.

12. See letter 538, note 20, and SD825.1.

13. The Feast of the Poets … By the Editor of the Examiner [Leigh Hunt] had been published in 1814.

14. Leigh Hunt’s play, A Legend of Florence, was produced at Covent Garden on 7 February 1840. EBB’s reference to reading “scanty extracts” suggests that her knowledge of the play came from The Athenæum, which reviewed the play, with extracts, in the issue of 15 February (no. 642, pp. 138–139).

15. There was a possiblity that Miss Mitford’s play would be presented in April. See letter 729, note 4.

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