Correspondence

865.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 154–157.

[London]

Monday Oct. 25 1841

My beloved friend,

I am in a straight—& know not what to do or say. You are coming on thursday, and I must be glad—overjoyed—that is certain! But you will know what it is that I dont know what to say about!– There’s an “about & about” [1] for you!

I suffer under one terror—that being lest I may have expressed myself coldly or awkwardly or mysteriously in relation to the room in this house which awaits your acceptance, or, worse than all, to the will of this house’s inhabitants to make it available. Dearest dearest Miss Mitford—my ever beloved friend—if I have been so guilty, or say rather so unfortunate, I do entreat you by that dear loving heart of yours to forgive my misfortune. There is a room—without disturbing any separate bandbox belonging to any individual petticoat or long coat. There is a desire on everybody’s part (petticoated or longcoated) to have you here. We all feel the honor of it & desire the gladness of it! If I spoke obscurely at first, it was through my ignorance, & because the subject had not been talked over with Papa. Will you believe this; however you determine?– And will you be sure that in the case of your coming, it shd be our ambition to give you an ‘at home’ feeling—that you shd dine at luncheontime, and go in & out to your friends or receive them here just as you pleased?– We have not a carriage at present—altho’ Papa talks of getting horses—but if you dont mind the lack of “purple pall & array” [2] there is the carriage which our people use when they want one, & which looks ‘respectable’, they say although falling short of ‘an equipage’. If you condescend to it, my sisters will be too glad to take you anywhere & everywhere, & leave you with your friends, calling again for you—and this they wd too gladly do, in the case of your sleeping here or elsewhere, should it be the slightest convenience. As to your walking about London—oh no no—indeed my dearest friend, you must’nt think of it. There is excitement & fatigue enough, without walking even from one street to another. And now I have told you all!

What remains?– Just that you shd decide according to your own preferences. I say preferences, you see—& not in a passion or a jealousy! I promise not to forget (how cd I?) that you my dearest dearest friend are coming all this way to see me—and so I could’nt be jealous of anybody in the world. My heart is bare to you my beloved friend. I want you first to believe that a room here is open & prepared for you—& next .. to do as you please. Decide exactly as you think best. I quite see some reasons leaning to the Chapel Street plan. Your friend may claim a promise [3] —and she may help to lighten your evenings—while I (luckless wretch!) am shut up myself between eight & nine .. soon after sunset!– Altogether I leave it to you—promising to be contented with your finality-measure. I do promise. And now I shall turn my face to the full light, & think of nothing but the great great joy which I am sure to have on thursday. Thank you a thousand times, my beloved friend! ‘Ready to see you?’ Yes, to be sure. Ready & eager. And as to your tiring me—oh never think of it. I wish there were time to be tired in!– I shall throw away all pruderies of costume & place,—& not mind intruding myself upon you before I get up. I wish there were time for etiquettes—but being on the sofa only for two hours, I cant afford to waste all the rest—can I?

Talking of pruderies,—I agree with you my beloved friend altogether upon that particular matter. Your expression “such are exactly they who wd not go to balls” is pregnant—and we may look to it for the precise restriction between mercy & licentiousness. For my own part I do think somewhat differently from many on this very subject. The censure ‘with a difference [4] extended by our gracious world to male & female offenders—the crushing into dust for the woman—and the ‘oh you naughty man’ism for the betrayer—appears to me an injustice which cries upwards from the earth. Fair wives of honorable husbands who shrink from breathing the same air with a betrayed woman, yet bend their graceful heads & sit in quiet association with such arch-traitors as Lord Fitzharding,—him of Berkeley Castle. [5] The offence is rank, & smells not merely to heaven but in our own nostrils. [6] For my own part & apart from this ‘difference’, I should not dare to refuse either my forgiveness or my society to a repentant sinner—even altho’ that sinner be a woman. I shd not dare. And the world’s reasoning against the moral policy of it, weighs lightly as all such expedient arguments do, against the whole grand system of Christian truth. Still the penitence must be as overt as the crime—and as you say, the so penitent “wd not go to balls”– You are not “prudish” my beloved friend, but wise & generous. I never read Leigh Hunt’s book—but I will. I never read it—because (now comes a foolish reason) I had understood that he said cruel things & ungrateful of poor Byron & I hated to read them. [7] Lately, wishing to think Leigh Hunt above that shame, I have been wishing to myself to get the book & make it out ‘not so bad’. [8] Strange, that you shd read it only now!—just now!– I tell you everything, you see.

The post—I shall be too late—& really I cant & must’nt today.

My dearest friend, may God bless you! May God bless both of you–

Your ever & ever attached

Elizabeth B Barrett–

Kind Mr Haydon!—— [9]

Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 294–296.

Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library and Wellesley College.

1. Cf. Donne, “Satyre III” (1633), line 81.

2. Cf. “The Cherry Tree Carol,” verse 13, line 2 (The Oxford Book of Carols).

3. It is apparent that Miss Mitford was considering staying with a friend in Chapel Street during her visit to London, rather than with the Moulton-Barretts. Unfortunately, an examination of a contemporary street directory does not reveal any immediately recognizable name as her potential hostess.

4. Hamlet, IV, 5, 183.

5. William FitzHardinge Berkeley (1786–1857) was the eldest son of the 5th Earl of Berkeley by Mary Cole, whom the Earl married in May 1796. After the Earl’s death, when William claimed the title, his mother swore before a committee of the House of Lords that there had been an earlier marriage ceremony in March 1785, but the Lords declared the issue of legitimacy “not to be proved” and the title devolved upon the fifth son, born in October 1796.

EBB’s reference to FitzHardinge as an “arch-traitor” probably reflects the widely-held belief that his being created Earl FitzHardinge in August 1841 was contingent upon his securing Parliamentary seats for his four brothers in the 1841 elections. They were returned, for Gloucester, Bristol, West Gloucestershire and Cheltenham (see Vicary Gibbs, The Complete Peerage, 1926, V, 411, note c).

6. Cf. Hamlet, III, 3, 36.

7. Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries (1828). The picture Hunt delineated of his relationship with Byron certainly showed the latter “warts and all.” The Athenæum of 23 January 1828 (no. 4, p. 55) said “Mr. Hunt has done a bold deed by publishing this work.... Mr. Hunt says, and we firmly believe him, that he has withheld much which we might have been told; but he has also told much which many will think, or say, that he ought to have withheld. He has presented us with a totally different view of Lord Byron’s character from any that has previously appeared in print … There are hosts of persons who … will be eager … to pour upon him, in every imaginable variety of outrage, the accusations of treachery and ingratitude … [but we] give the most implicit credit to all his assertions.”

8. EBB did obtain the book; it formed lot 538 in Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A1269).

9. Perhaps an allusion to his undertaking to encourage and advise Arabella Moulton-Barrett on her painting (see letter 874).

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