832. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 88–92.
[Torquay]
July 25. 1841
My kindest, ever beloved friend,
I understand, I acknowledge, I love all your love. It was only you. And yet I thank you as if it were more than you! The frankness & truthfulness of it are so dear to me, that I say once more, .. Ever be so with me, my beloved friend, and do not suffer a reserve to deprive me of an advantage.
I have sent for the book [1] —that is, I have asked Papa to send it to me directly—without telling him the ‘because’. Of all particularly particular people he is chief; and I shd not like for obvious reasons, to startle him in his particularity by what may prove, as I hope & believe it will, the shadow of a silence, the negative of a negative & to be treated negatively. If it shdnt .. why what shall I do? How difficult, yet how necessary, to retreat from this poetic alliance—which has been so long pending—& the papers preparatory to which, are actually prepared!– How shall I get up a ‘caprice’ dramatically, & not ungratefully?– Well—it is my own fault as my vexation!
I see too that you think the John Bull-Fraser-people may say all sorts of disagreeable things, even if the black book turn out a Biblical commentary. But then, shd we mind it? Mr Horne means to say in the preface [2] (so he wrote to me once) that the work is the joint production of two persons who had never seen each other. Now if he said so, nobody wd have the power to dissert upon our degree of forgone intimacy—wd they?–
After all, as I told you before, the whole thing if left to itself, may & probably will, break like a bubble. I said to him some time ago, that if his delays were so abundant, it wd take several generations of people like me, to work with him to the end of Psyche. He is overwhelmed with business of various kinds– That work of Tyas’s, the history of Napoleon, is his you know—besides the preliminary Essay to Schlegel—besides some Mexican directorship [3] —besides, oh I cant tell you what!–
Yes—the disadvantage is to me. I shall say afterwards—‘Tout est perdu hormis l’honneur.’ [4] There is honor to my own consciousness in working with him, but when we have both done, everybody will ascribe the weak parts of the performance to my responsibility, & all the good to my coadjutor’s. When a man & a woman write together, it’s almost always so—to say nothing of poetic degrees– But this I shd not mind. The critics could never mortify me out of heart—because I love poetry for its own sake,—and, tho’ with no stoicism & some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.
Does it sound vain?—or will you understand the plain verity of it? Indifference to golden opinions, even when not yours, even when not associated with love, is not philosophy for me—or rather I am not a philosopher for it! Not even now, .. when the green leaves have fallen from my tree. But I mean that revelations of the beautiful are reward enough for the desiring. Let those sit, who please, among the laurels—as long as I catch sight of the Egeria!– [5]
And this, bringing me to Leigh Hunt, reminds me that I do not wholly agree with you in regard to him. I think he has been wronged by many,—& that even you, your own just truthful & appreciating self, do not choose soft words enough to suit his case. For instance—it never was proved either to my reason or my feelings that Rimini had an immoral tendency. [6] Indeed my belief is exactly the reverse. The final impression of that poem, most beautiful surely as a poem, appears to me morally unexceptionable. The ‘poetical justice’ [7] is worked out too from the sin itself,—& not from a cause independent of it,—after the fashion of those pseudo moralists who place the serpent’s sting anywhere but in the serpent. We are made to feel & see that apart from the discovery, apart from the husband’s vengeance on the lover, both sinners are miserable & one must die. She was dying, without that blow– The sin involved the death-agony!– Who can read these things tearless, & without a deep enforced sense of [‘]‘the sinfulness of sin”? [8]
I admit that there are here & elsewhere, descriptions too glowing: sometimes perhaps but very seldom (—I believe very seldom ..) expressions less delicate than might be chosen– But comparing Parisina [9] & Rimini, what is the conclusion? Or comparing Moore’s early, yes, & later performances with Hunt’s collected poems, what is the conclusion? Why to my mind Hunt sings like a seraph beside Moore!– Yet he, born beneath a bright star is looked upon brightly– It is “respectable” & something better to be the friend of Moore!
The Examiner under the Hunts, [10] came a step before me—but I have here, in the house, a volume of his collected poems—the effect of which, to judge from my own pulses, is for beauty & for good. Now I shd like to lecture you out of that book! My text book shd make amends for my impudence!– I wd begin with the verses to his sick child
“Sleep breathes at last from out thee
My little patient boy—” [11]
I wd dare you to read that without a tear! & then again as a prose gossipping essayist—his delightful Indicator!– [12] Oh I plead for Leigh Hunt. He has been very unfortunate, & very imprudent as to money affairs—but it is the way of poets, as a race,—and we cdnt be very hard upon him for wasting too much money (one story went so!) upon a stair-carpet,—could we—should we, dearest Miss Mitford?– Now how I am teazing you.
Thank God for the escape, my beloved friend—the second escape within so short a time!– The thought of that flame mounting & burning, made me tremble almost like your Flush! [13] Do tell me that you are really none the worse for the fright. Such frights do not do good—although your mind is comparatively safe, in the sevenfold wrapping of care for others.
How sorry I am for poor Miss Martineau! Dying with her intellect in her hand—wielding it to the last, bravely!– The very fortitude makes us shrink a little. I have not seen her last work. [14]
But if an operation be possible, will she not endure it?– May there not be a hope?–
Thank you for your delightful letters! Thank you for the “royal gossip”– They do not need a royal gossip or a gossip royal of any sort to be delightful—to be three times welcome—to be my fairy gifts of sunshine for the hour on which they fall! A word about the garden—about Flush,—how it beams & makes me glad! Still the long Windsor letter had its charm. I sate down with you & Miss Skennet in the Monkey heat, & saw the queen & the queen’s baby, & the prime minister musing in a scene to himself!– [15] I enjoyed it all—& wont deny my entertainment,—for all your “fishing” questions with large hooks!–
Seriously—gravely, gratefully, I feel deeply my dearest kindest friend how many golden guineas of time I cost your dear kindness. I give them back to you in more golden affection—but my hand strikes against your gift in that kind also, & I find myself still your debtor.
And so let it be!– There is a tender pleasure, you shall not grudge me, in remaining
Your indebted as attached
E B Barrett–
Oh I hope I may know Ben some time. Will you tell him, that I hope to know him & to ask him whether Flush is better or worse for my company!– Everybody admires Flush—& in my private opinion, he grows prettier & prettier every day,—although as Ben says, the beauty is quite secondary. I sometimes comb his glossy golden ears myself—but I always think that. His intelligence is a wonderful thing– But there is such a noise again. They are letting off fireworks!– I cant write any more—my tales of Flush must be for another day & letter.
There has been the dreadful regatta today—& through shut windows & close-drawn curtains I could’nt help hearing the cannons firing & the people shouting! It has been so painful—so hard to bear! [16] And I hoping all was over, took up this letter to turn aside my thoughts from the morning’s sadness. This house is the lowest down on the beach, of all! Wd we were gone!——
God bless you! I knew your sympathy before you uttered it.
Ever yours.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 244–248.
Manuscript: Eton College Library. Folger Shakespeare Library, and Wellesley College.
1. Horne’s Exposition of the False Medium, mentioned in letter 829. EBB’s copy formed lot 766 of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1248).
2. To “Psyche Apocalypté.”
3. Robert Tyas, of 50 Cheapside, was publishing Tyas’s Illustrated History of Napoleon in parts, the first two having been announced in May 1839, with text by Horne. The Spectator (no. 557, 2 March 1839, p. 211) said it was “clearly and concisely written, in a vigorous and racy style, combining anecdotical liveliness of narration with compression of facts.” Horne had also contributed the introduction to A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (1840), by August Wilhelm von Schlegel, translated by John Black (1783–1855), author and editor of The Morning Chronicle. Details of Horne’s Mexican directorship are not known, but it was presumably a result of his visit to Mexico in 1825.
4. “All is lost but honour”; said by François I (1508–65) after the French forces were defeated at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. Dryden used the phrase in connection with King Charles’s defeat at the Battle of Worcester in Astræa Redux (1660), line 74.
5. The nymph Egeria gave advice to Numa Pompilius, King of Rome; hence her name has come to signify a woman counsellor.
6. Hunt’s The Story of Rimini (1816) was based on Dante’s tale of Francesca’s adulterous love for Paolo. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine (October 1817) said that “The story of Rimini is not wholly undeserving of praise … But such is the wretched taste in which the greater part of the work is executed, that most certainly no man who reads it once will ever be able to prevail upon himself to read it again.... [Mr. Hunt’s] works exhibit no reverence either for God or man.” After speaking of “those glittering and rancid obscenities which float on the surface of Mr Hunt’s Hippocrene” the writer observed that “The author has voluntarily chosen a subject … in which his mind seems absolutely to gloat over all the details of adultery and incest” (pp. 38–40).
7. Cf. Pope, The Dunciad, I, 1, 52.
8. “Jesus, If Still Thou Art Today” (line 32), by John Wesley (1703–91).
9. Byron’s Parisina (1816) tells of Parisina’s incestuous love for her husband’s illegitimate son and of his consequent execution.
10. Leigh Hunt, with his brother John (1775–1848), established The Examiner in 1808 and both remained associated with it until 1821. They espoused liberal causes and were frequently in trouble with the authorities for their outspokenness; both were imprisoned for two years after being found guilty of libelling the Prince Regent.
11. EBB had previously quoted these lines (to Thornton Leigh Hunt at age six) in letter 737.
12. The Indicator, a non-political magazine, was founded and edited by Leigh Hunt in 1819; it ceased publication in 1821.
13. Writing to William Harness on 22 July 1841, Miss Mitford told him how “two nights ago I was writing with a low candle by the side of the desk when the frill of my nightcap … took fire.... I flung myself upon the ground and extinguished it with the hearth-rug; frightening nobody except poor dear little Flush, who was asleep on my father’s chair … My head was a good deal scorched” (L’Estrange (2), III, 123–124).
14. Miss Martineau had just finished “Feats on the Fiords,” the third volume of The Playfellow, and was engaged with “The Crofton Boys,” the last volume, which, she later said, “was written under the belief that it was my last word through the press” (Chapman, II, 169).
15. EBB has again misread Miss Mitford’s writing, taking “Skennet” for “Skerret,” the name of the Queen’s Dresser. Victoria Adelaide, the Princess Royal, had been born on 21 November 1840. The current Prime Minister was Victoria’s favourite, Lord Melbourne. The reference to “Monkey heat” is not clear; it may have to do with a summer outing to Monkey Island on the Thames, not far from Windsor.
16. These activities would have brought painful memories of Bro’s death, just over a year before.
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