776. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 301–302.
[Torquay]
Decr 10th 1840
Day after day my beloved friend, have I been meaning & dreaming to write to you. Here at last & now, I begin. Thanks oh thanks for your delightful gleams of letters. They bring light to me,—& if it goes again, that is, because I cannot think of you & your kindness always–
Another little note today. I almost feel guilty– But I lean for rest upon a pleasanter feeling, .. one of gladness at hearing of the amendment in dear Dr Mitford’s health, & your consequent relief from immediate anxieties. The note makes me glad too, in a secondary way,—to think of his caring for my cream .. & me. Give my love to him—will you, dearest Miss Mitford?–
You cant guess what my business has been lately. Chaucer?– No!—not Chaucer. Chaucer was done with some time since, & I received him the evening before last, with a vernally green back like “a sweet new poem”. [1] No—my business has been retracing my steps in the Village, your village,—step by step, up & down, & never feeling tired. You cannot realize,—you the writer—cannot,—the peculiar effect of that delightful book, upon one in a prison like me, shut up from air & light, & to whom even the captive of Chillon’s bird does not come to sing– [2] It is not sadness—it is not regret. On the contrary. It frees me at once, for the moment—shows me the flowers & the grass they grow by, & pours into my face the sweetness & freshness & refreshment of the whole summer in a breath.
Oh do tell me whatever more may be decided in respect to Otto. [3] I care so much.
You were in London!– When I read that I began to dream what joy your going wd have been to me if I had been in London too! But perhaps my turn may come to take joy in your being in London. Perhaps. If such a word as joy is ever to come to my lips again with a meaning in it—for indeed the three letters in that word, seemed to mock me as I wrote them. And yet, I have thanked God tonight for a deeply-felt mercy—, for the safe arrival of my beloved brother Charles John from the West Indies. [4] I thank God for his abundant mercies. Abundant, past my deserts, they are always. Only hearts in a manner broken, do not hold the right & full sense of them—I fear, not.
Papa wrote this news to me–
But dearest dearest Miss Mitford, what have you thought of my dumb tongue in regard to the Tableaux? Dont think that I am not pleased—not very pleased. It wd be ‘foul & unnatural’ [5] of me, not to be very very pleased. Your stories are delightful [6] —pass all your old Tableaux stories, with a turn-the-corner & out-of-sight passing,—& wd win the obduratest heart of the best annual hater in her Majesty’s dominions—win or bewitch, I wont be sure which. And then Mr Darley’s poem– It is very very beautiful—poetry in the full word.– [7] There can be no room for hoping anything about the work’s success, because none for fearing. So I wont hope. I’ll be sure. I am sure.
Mr Kenyon is likely after all to purchase a house here, although not for a bride. At least Dr Scully told me yesterday that things were in progress as to purchase—or rather that the purchase remains a probability,—for I dont know that a step upon solid ground has been actually taking [sic]. And the object of the purchase is said to be—a home for his brother—who is, you know, a great invalid, & about, as you may not know, to settle in England. This solves the problem,—of the why of dear Mr Kenyon’s turning his face towards Torquay.
Can you tell me if Mrs Jamieson is married—I mean—if her husband lives, & lives with her. There is a strangeness in her Canada-book which makes me curious, & inclined to be gossiped to. [8]
In such haste, dearest dearest Miss Mitford!– You see it, without my saying it!! If besides you see Chaucer anywhere tell me what you think of us!– Mr Horne’s Introduction has delighted me– I am tolerably well—&
ever your attached
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 205–207.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, Modernized. Horne, believing that Chaucer was unjustly neglected owing to his archaic language, had invited several poets, including Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt, and EBB, to produce a modern version of The Canterbury Tales. EBB contributed “Queen Annelida and False Arcite” and “The Complaint of Annelida to False Arcite.”
2. The captive was François de Bonivard (1493–1571), whose imprisonment was the subject of Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon (1816). The episode of the bird occurs at lines 251–270.
3. The hope that Miss Mitford’s play would be produced in April (see letter 729, note 4) came to nothing. Apparently, Miss Mitford still was optimistic that it might be staged.
4. SD1142 reports his safe arrival after a 60-day passage. He had gone to Jamaica with Sam in July 1839.
5. Cf. Hamlet, I, 5, 25.
6. The 1841 Findens’ Tableaux, published on 2 November 1840, contained six prose stories by Miss Mitford.
7. George Darley had contributed “Harvest-Home.”
8. Anna Brownell Jameson (née Murphy, 1794–1860) had been living apart from her husband, Robert Jameson, since she returned to England in 1838, leaving him in Canada, where he was Vice-Chancellor of Upper Canada.
Her book, Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (3 vols.), had been published in 1838.
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