866. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 157–159.
[London]
Tuesday [Postmark: 26 October 1841]
I broke off so abruptly yesterday, my dearest friend, the post constraining me, that I forgot one word which must be said today. If you decide upon coming directly to us—which I dont expect—so do not vex yourself by prefiguring my disappointment—but if you do decide upon this unlikely step,—ought we not to meet you at the station? Say the hour. One word to say it by, & in reply to this!–
Miss M A Browne’s poems I never saw collected—but a few snatches of her lyrics, which reached my knowledge, appeared to me, not original, not powerful, rather perhaps the contrary,—however touched with a cordial natural sweetness. I am sorry to hear so sad a story of her. [1] That she was ever one of Mr Jerdan’s fair poetic saints I never heard before—& assuredly it is a pity he left her for Eliza Cook. Her hand is fitter for the palm– He may have desecrated Eliza by this time—I never see the Literary Gazette—and if so the [‘]Brutus’ in the frontispiece looked very likely to rise up in every particular hair with very particular indignation. [2]
To think of how much you have written & edited which has floated away from me, out of my reach, down the current!– Your American stories of children, I bought for Mary Hunter, much to her delight– [3] Your memorials of Lucretia Davidson I do not remember to have heard of even!– [4]
Much of the verse of the day, rather poetic than poetry, rather tuneful than music, stands in the same relation to poems of endurant construction, as the soft sweet moanings of the Æolian harp [5] do to the works of Handel or Beethoven.
Keats—yes—Keats—he was a poet. But Jove is recognized by his thunder. A true true poet, from his first words to his last, when he said he “felt the daisies growing over him.” [6] Poor Keats! Do you know, did I ever tell you, that Mr Horne was at school with him & that they were intimate friends? “The divine Keats”—he says of him—and will not hear the common tale, which I for one thought deteriorative to the dead poet’s memory, that he suffered himself to be slain outright & ingloriously by the Quarterly reviewer’s tomahawk. [7] No, said Mr Horne to me once—“He was already bending over his grave in sweet & solemn contemplation, when the satyrs hoofed him into it.” [8]
I am going to confess to you my dearest friend, & when you come you must advise me—for I have a weary conscience about a person whom I heartily admire—Lady Dacre. Three years ago, after the passing between us of a few notes which left me her debtor for much graceful & gracious kindness, she called upon me. It was a strange sort of visit. Oh I do believe she thought me in a strange sort of situation, if not strange myself. She was announced one Sunday, when we were all together in the drawing room, & I, very unwell & helpless, had’nt time to crawl into another room & receive her as I should have done. There was a crowd in the drawing room. Two of my cousins, the Mr Clarkes of Kinnersley castle were there—& in addition to our ordinary household helped to produce the effect of a crowd of young men—besides two lady-neighb[o]urs of ours when we lived in the country, country neighbours of Irish extraction who had come to town ‘to see the lions’—the sort of people who look quite out of place in town,—very kind, very warm-hearted, very broad Irish, anything but very refined,—what is worse than all, very præternaturally smart,—looking as if they had just emerged from a bog into a rainbow! Well—Lady Dacre found us just so! [9] And I, proud & pleased to see her, yet a little vexed at the combination, & very vexed with myself at my own half consciousness of being ashamed of my friends,—(& really I could’nt help being the very least in the world ashamed of the blues & pinks & lilacs) had not half the pleasure from her visit which under ordinary circumstances I shd have had.– Well—but, here proceeds the confession. You know how unwell I was—& how distressed to be forced away from home. I was not able to return Lady Dacre’s visit, but I might have sent a card, & I [10] did’nt. Never from that day to this hour has her visit been returned or acknowledged. What should I do? Nothing, I suppose. I cant go now—that is sure—and as to sending a card, it wd be out of time & tune now. She wd finish thinking me out of my wits. Have’nt I disgraced you?
God bless you, my beloved friend– My love to dear kind Dr Mitford. How I do thank him!– But it seems like the dream of a dream, this thought of seeing you on thursday. I return your suggestion of High Priestess-ship & thank Mr Haydon for his kindness to a friend of yours!– That is a prouder name th<an “High> priestess” for your attached
EBB
Thank you (how gratefully!) for your smile on my verses. [11] That is always a crown to them. I have directed the few still worse rhymes in the last Athenæum to be sent to you—not for a smile but a pardon[.] [12]
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 297–299.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Mary Anne Browne (afterwards Gray, 1812–45) had published several volumes of verse, including Mont Blanc (1827), The Birth-Day Gift (1834) and Sacred Poetry (1840). We cannot shed light on the sad story to which EBB refers.
2. See letter 720.
3. American Stories for Children had been published in 1832.
4. We have not found any record of a work by Miss Mitford about Lucretia Davidson.
5. Æolus was the god of the winds. An Æolian harp, usually placed in an open window, produced sounds by the passage of the wind over its strings.
6. Joseph Severn, in a letter to John Taylor, 6 March [1821], told how Keats, four days before his death, had said “I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave—thank God for the quiet grave— O! I can feel the cold earth upon me—the daisies growing over me— O for this quiet—it will be my first.”
7. The Quarterly Review (April 1818) said of Endymion “we have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it; but … we are forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists.... we are no better acquainted with the meaning of the book through which we have so painfully toiled, than we are with that of the three which we have not looked into.” The article later said that Keats “is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language.”
8. Although Keats did not die until February 1821, it was generally believed that the harsh reviews of his work had hastened his death.
9. For EBB’s comments on Lady Dacre’s visit, see letter 651.
10. Underscored twice.
11. “The House of Clouds” in The Athenæum of 21 August (no. 721, p. 643).
12. “Lessons from the Gorse” in The Athenæum of 23 October (no. 730, p. 810).
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