Correspondence

819.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 57–61.

[Torquay]

June 14. 1841

Thank you my beloved friend for your kindness in writing & wishing to have me within teazing distance– Ah!—I hope you would’nt have reason to repent it if I were to go!– I should be on my guard, and never say “Do come,” and look it as seldom as possible.

I have told Papa about the house, but have urged nothing,—because under the circumstances & in the state of feeling natural to me at this time, my only full contentment can be in his doing his own full pleasure. I want to be with him & in a situation which wd least threaten a future separation—a want which involved the objection to Clifton, I cd not keep concealed. But if his wish remain fixed upon Clifton, even to Clifton I must go. And in any other case, the reason is strengthened for my suspending every form of interference.

I came here, you see, not indeed against his desire, but against the bias of his desire. I was persuaded—he was entreated. On his side, it was at last a mere yielding to a majority.

Well!—& what has been the end?– The place .. no! I will not say that it was accursed to me—but the bitterness suffered in it has been bitter, (in regard to present endurance) as any curse. All the sorrow of my life besides, & that life not free from sorrow, showed without sting or agony in comparison with the deep deep woe of last year. It was the sharpest laceration of the tenderest affection—an affection never agitated till then except with its own delight. Oh my beloved friend—There was no harsh word, no unkind look—never from my babyhood till I stood alone– A leaf never shook till the tree fell. The shade was over me softly till it fell. And although what I cannot help feeling as an unnatural tenacity to life, prevented my following my beloved, quickly quickly as I thought I shd,—and although I have learnt even to be calm & to talk lightly sometimes, yet the heavy sense of loss weighs at my heart day & night, and will, till my last night or day. [1]

There is much much to love, left to me, close to me always– But there is no one close to me always, to whom I can say ‘Is this which I have written, good? Is it worth anything?’ and, be sure of the just answer. The nearest sympathy, the natural love which was friendship too, is not close to me now.

I have thrown down my paper & taken it up again. It was wrong, very wrong, to write so– It has pained your kindness, & done no good to me—except indeed for the pleasure’s sake of speaking out a pain. Take no notice of it dearest friend!—ever kindest & dearest you are!—— I know that the stroke fell in blessing & not in cursing, & that when we see each other’s smiles again in the light of God’s throne, not one will be fainter for the tears shed here. Blessed be God in Christ Jesus, who consummates grief in glory.

But you will understand from all, that my poor most beloved Papa’s biases are sacred to me, & that I wd not stir them with a breath. [2] Yet he says to me “Decide”. He is so kind, .. so tender. No love of mine can echo back his, as far as the demonstration goes– I love him inwardly, I was going to say better than my life .. but that is worthless, was so always, & is now so most of all.

I shall like you to know Papa—ah, you smile at my saying Papa—I am too old for such a baby-word I know—but he likes to be called so, & therefore I dont like to call him otherwise even in thought– I heard him say once “If they leave off calling me ‘Papa’, I shall think they have left off loving me”. I shall like you to know him. You will certainly like & estimate him. Mr Kenyon does thoroughly– Mr Horne, who has seen him once, [3] has begun to do it already. He is not poetical, or literary even in the strict sense—but he has strong & clear natural faculties & is full of all sorts of general information. I have consoled myself sometimes when you were abusing the professional literati with the thought that you wd be sure to like ‘Papa’. You like, you know, sensible men who dont make a trade of their sense,—reading country-gentlemen who dont write books. I have hopes of you.

Well—and thus then it remains. I have put him in possession of your report about the pretty house—but have received no notice of his decision, or of any sort of decision about any place. Thank you, thank you, for thinking of me in reference to the Chiswick show. [4] How kind! how welcomely kind! and how probable it is, as far as any pleasure can be probable, that I may see you somewhere this summer!–

Ever dearest Miss Mitford, I dont like what you say of yourself—I fear you are very far from being well, to say nothing of the ‘strong’. Do you ask Mr May’s advice—and take it?– Do you ever try gruel instead of warm water?– It is considered more soothing & effective. Reading so much aloud must be wearing & bad for you—& if I were near, I could’nt help being mischief-maker enough, just to hint to dear Dr Mitford the injury it must do to you, & to him because to you. Can there be nobody in the village or a little without it, whose reading he wd listen to & spare your’s? Not that anybody cd do it as well—oh I understand the whole!—but that anything were better than your suffering. Tell me how you are, & how he is.

No– The picture, they said in Wimpole Street, was not like. The head was too large, & the features too large, & the expression a void. So said the critics there. Those here, consisting of my sisters & two brothers & one or two persons who had looked at me (some time ago) for an hour or two, vowed deeply on the other hand that no picture ever was will or could be a more complete facsimile of the thing pictured.– Well—but it was for Papa, & Papa was dissatisfied. So I begged him to return it & let the artist muse upon the means of amendment. She mused,—drew out her brushes, perhaps in some little fluttering of annoyance,—& straightway made all the critics of one mind—straightway everybody said “Oh, it is’nt like at all now!” Was’nt it provoking?–

And then my sisters went to her & prayed her to come again & do something—& she came & did it, took away something of the wooden look, & left the whole under improvement. So “the critics here” say now “It is very like—only not quite so like as it was at first”,—and what they will say “there”, remains yet unknown. A satisfactory business altogether! [5]

Is your picture like?– I mean the one you yourself had painted—happier in its destination than mine. I liked to hear of my thought being your thought once on a time. Love will do the same things.

You dont very much like the tragedy-subject, I discern without wonder [6] —but there may be time for looking further. Of what “prose thing” do you speak? Of the novel I do trust? Will there be Tableaux for 1842—or will you embark, as I wish earnestly, in some work of a new character, illustrated, if you please, annual-wise and as fit for the drawing room as any that ever walked in purple & gold,—but not an annual nor of its grade nevertheless?– [7]

My dearest friend, in what you say of me you speak wisely & truly as far as your kindness lets you. A cold mystical poetry strikes & falls from us like the hail—it does not penetrate or abide. And in this work, if Mr Horne & I ever compass it, as well as in others, I will try to clasp & keep in mind what you tell me, & make my access to human feelings through human feelings– The plan of the work in question admits of the natural workings of humanity: there are real persons & events—there is not a naked allegory, or a mere embodiment of abstractions. Even the Psyche herself, with her persecutions & her terrors, is intended to present an absolute & universal truth, not barely incident to our humanity but common to every thinking human being. However I sometimes fancy that the work, whether for good or evil, will never pass much beyond the threshold of its conception. Mr Horne lingers– He seems quite earnest about it—but he has been oppressed with business (England never cares you know, to give leisure to her poets) & is just now suffering from the hooping cough. I had a letter from him to say so two days since, from Broadstairs where he fled for change of air. He says “There’s a re-juvenility for you.”!—but I really fear that he has been & is still exceedingly unwell.

But although I admit your verities, I will not deny my mysticism. The known & the unknown both enter into our nature & our world. Our guesses at the invisible belong as much, & more nobly, to the part played here by the spirit within us, as do our familiar thoughts upon the flowers of June– Our terror before ‘Psyche’, (as in my view of her revelation) is not surely more alien to our humanity, than a child’s or a poet’s pleasure in a daisy.

At the same time I quite submit to the truth of your remarks—only entreating that your view (& it need not) may not exclude mine. I confess to a love & reverence for Goëthe above any to which Schiller cd move me. Goëthe was surely the greater genius—and he did not, as you admit, neglect the humanities, in their strict human sense. It was Shelley that high, & yet too low, elemental poet, who froze in cold glory between Heaven & earth, neither dealing with man’s heart, beneath, nor aspiring to communion with supernal Humanity, the heart of the God-Man. Therefore his poetry glitters & is cold—and it is only by momentary stirrings that we can discern the power of sweet human love & deep pathos which was in him & shd have been in it.

Do you call me ungrateful, or stupid? Have I not the sense of kindness or its memory, never to thank you until now for the geraniums? Ah Papa did better. He told me that the gift, together with the recollection of all your goodnesses to me, touched him so, that he could’nt help intruding a note upon you. It was well done of him—and you did not call it an intrusion, I know as well as if you told me.

They will take great care of the geraniums—they must: and if Wimpole St is left to itself this summer, the pots must transmigrate to me with the gardeners.

I have been up day after day, & an hour at a time, & bore it gallantly. I am going away. Pray for us, my beloved friend, that we may meet really, & not in hope alone.

Your ever attached

E B Barrett–

Give my love to dear Dr Mitford—& some cream is going to him. Have you seen Blanchard’s life of LEL? [8] —& what is your mind?–

I am ashamed of this quire of little sheets [9] & wonder if you ever will get through it. God bless you– I truly & gratefully love you indeed!

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 225–230.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. EBB is referring, of course, to Bro’s death.

2. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 214.

3. Letter 829 describes their meeting.

4. An annual flower show.

5. Matilda Carter’s miniature of EBB (see letter 805).

6. i.e., that suggested by EBB in letter 816.

7. Miss Mitford was not involved in the 1842 edition of Findens’ Tableaux. She turned her attention instead to the editing of Schloss’s English Bijou Almanac for 1843, to which EBB contributed.

8. Samuel Laman Blanchard, as literary executor of Letitia Elizabeth Landon (Mrs. Maclean), had just published his Life and Literary Remains of L.E.L. EBB’s copy formed part of lot 813 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A257).

9. EBB’s letter was written on 32mo stationery, and covered 20 sides (10 sheets).

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