Correspondence

841.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 108–110.

[Torquay]

August 9th [1841] [1]

My beloved friend,

The pleasure with which I always put out my hand to clasp a letter of yours turned, today, soon indeed into pain. My dearest friend, you have been, you are still, very very unwell—& you are suffering in another besides! Do you exert yourself too much? Is the right care taken of a health so precious to more than yourself? Does Mr May come to see you?– Surely that remedy which costs so much as to appear a desease of itself, shd not be recurred to without absolute necessity. Without much experience in the sort of thing, I wonder at & fear it. Did you ever try castor oil administered the same way? Its properties are healing you know,—free from the acrimony of salts,—however taken: & I do venture to conjecture that if a small quantity were administered after your own custom, you wd suffer less & be freer from exhaustion than can be the case now. If you have not tried it in vain, will you?– Gruel is recommended sometimes, I know,—as being more active than water. But even that might not do. The oil surely wd–

Do ask Mr May about it, my dearest friend. Of course you shdnt trust such an ignoramus as I am—for with all my experimental philosophy on the subject of sickness, the kind of suffering which distresses you is not & never was mine. Indeed it sounds like a very peculiar case. But upon the face of it, lies the propriety of changing or modifying this terrible remedy. You ought to do it, indeed– And you go on, I do fear, week after week, suffering & suffering, & thinking, with all the suffering,—nothing at all in proportion to the real value of the thing lost, of the constitutional habit of good health you are losing. Let me hear how you are, by one word .. when it is not a strain upon your time to write it. God grant it may be a happy word for one who loves you as I do, to listen to!–

Here is your post[s]cript to Mr Kenyon back again!– No indeed,—I will not deliver it. He shall have the letter, & shall see me if he shd wish it & I am able– No indeed!– I shd seem even to myself, half unkind in refusing to see him. I almost fell under my own reproval for it last year, when I had better reasons on the side of my cowardice. If he comes before we go, I will unlock my iron mask [2] & put the iron on my heart & see him. As for your vexing me .. my dearest dearest friend, when did you do it—& how cd you do it?– You never did such a thing in yr life as vexing me! In all that I have received from you, that one thing is wanting .. vexation!– Dearest Miss Mitford, what did I say to make you fancy it? Vex me! I must be a vexable person indeed to be vexed by your tenderness to me, & your sacrifice of time & kindness to please me—me—who by retaining few pleasures am not likely to fall into the fault of undervaluing those left! Do not you undervalue the grateful thoughts you cannot see. I love you far more than you know of!– But if I did’nt, how cd I be vexed! There I come back to the key note of wonder.

Mr Kenyon is not here yet, & perhaps will not come until we go. I heard too from George & the circuit [3] this morning,—& he tells me of Papa’s having returned to London & of his pondering my “immediate” removal from Torquay. George is diplomatic & does not say a word about localities. Those are left as usual to my imagination.

But hope may spring up again you see—Papa is in London—and I may be about to remove immediately.

In the meantime he has had a pleasant excursion in Wales, George says, & looks the better for it, & I am the better pleased.

Think of Mr Flush yesterday, refusing to drink his milk out of a soup plate– He wdnt have it at all, except from a glass!– He’ll want silver soon!– I hear Crow talking to him sometimes after this fashion– “Ah Flush!—shdnt you like to see Aberleigh [4] again!” She is an excellent young woman—intelligent bright-tempered & feeling-hearted,—more to me than a mere servant; since her heart works more than her hand in all she does for me! And her delight in your Village which I gave her to read, was as true a thing as ever was that of readers of higher degree. She says to me that if we go to Reading, she means to visit the Village, and will know every house in it just as if it were an old place to her!– Flush’s love! I often make him kiss your letters—which he does readily, only fighting afterwards for a full possession!

Dont forget the word about yourself. I am anxious—& shall be, till I hear.

Yours in truest affection

EBB–

How glad I was to see the graceful stanzas in the Athenæum!—Lady Burlington’s I mean!– [5]

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 260–262.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. Year provided by the reference to The Athenæum.

2. A reference to the man, imprisoned for more than 40 years by Louis XIV, immortalized by Dumas. He is now thought to have been Count Girolamo Mattioli.

3. Letter 833 was addressed to him on the Hereford Assize circuit.

4. A “little hamlet” in Miss Mitford’s Our Village.

5. The Athenæum of 24 July 1841 (no. 717, p. 556) contained Miss Mitford’s verses “On the Portrait of the Countess of Burlington, Painted after her Death by Mr. Lucas.” She was Blanche Georgiana (née Howard), daughter of the 6th Earl of Carlisle. Born on 11 January 1812, she married William Cavendish, 2nd Earl of Burlington, on 6 August 1829; she had died on 27 April 1840.

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