Correspondence

872.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 167–170.

[London]

Novr 12. 1841

Thank you my ever beloved friend for what did not after all go nearest to my heart, but which I must thank you for first if I mean to do so at all today—your kindness to Nelly Bordman, & the milk for Flushie & me, & the cream, & the lovely flowers!– Oh but it was too good of you to make such a struggle with the Fates for those two bottles, after they had spun them away into Kent out of my reach! I never once thought to have them again,—indeed—& you shdnt have sent them. Such milk & cream, with the “flower & the lefe” [1] in them!– Worth all the Devonshire cream .. which—between you & me .. does look & taste most insipidly nasty—I never cd bear that liquidity of butter! never did try to bear it, after the first trial! But your cream is real cream—the natural crown of the milk—& clear of the artifice of fingers. While for the milk .. I shd leave the praise of it to Flush if he cd but talk. Flush estimates it infinitely—& watches me with large suspicious stedfast eyes lest I overstep the modesty of justice & take more than my half. And oh the flowers! How lovely—how kind! I shd sing instead of say about them—& that reminds me of a verse in a little flower lyric I wrote once, some time ago, allusive to your flowers. Probably it will be printed hereafter—but thus runs the verse belonging to you. I had been praising the Devonshire gardens—when mindful of the rival garden in the east, without thr climate, I diverge in a natural apostrophe—

 

“Yet, gifted friend!– The flowers are fair

By Loddon’s stream, that meet thy care

With prodigal rewarding–

 

For Beauty is too used to run

To Mitford’s bower, to want the sun

To light her thro’ the garden.[”] [2]

Nelly Bordman is ’ware by this time of your munificence. How she will clap her hands & look pleased! Thank you my dearest friend.

No—I have not seen dear Mr Kenyon. I ebb & flow about him. I think if I were encouraged, I cd work myself up into a wrath. Scarcely had I written a note to escort the parcel left in my care, when he came—called—stayed one minute in the drawing room. Arabel said—“I will run up stairs & see if Ba is ready.” Oh no—he wdnt hear of it. He had come just for a moment, & cdnt wait to see me—but wd come another day on purpose. There it remains! To be sure he may come!– I sent your book & letters to him that night.

During the moment he was here, he told them he had changed his mind about going to Torquay immediately. He found his home so pleasant that he cdnt part with it immediately. But, that he actually offered a sum of money (in vain) for a certain house there, we have heard from himself—& that he is likely to be persuaded or tempted into the purchase of an uncertain one, we may derive from the circumstances. He admires the scenery passionately—& then that is not all. [3]

As to seclusion—it is not that, believe me. There is not such a dancing, fiddling cardplaying gossipping place in all the rest of England as Torquay is—there is not such a dissipated place, in the strongest sense. And it’s a ghastly merriment. Almost every family has a member either threatened with illness or ill. Whoever is merry, is so in a hospital. They carry away the dead, to take in benches for the company.

I do not say this from a soreness of individual feeling, which perhaps you may suspect—because long before my own miserable associations with that miserable place, I had a strong apprehension of the ghastliness of the collision there between life & death, merriment & wailing. It has made my flesh creep sometimes.

“Wretches hang that jurymen may dine” [4] being a fainter antithesis than is suggested on everyside. Think of a grand ball being given, where Moses stood .. between the dead & the living? [5] —no!—between the dead & the dying– A woman in the last agony in one house—a corpse laid out in another—& the whole of surviving Torquay dancing intermediately!– And this not a case to observe, but an instance of a general custom. There is not at any rate a question of seclusion—while the sort of society, with the exception of Mr Bezzi & the Garrows, I cannot imagine to be suitable to a taste formed among the intellectual. I shall be sorry if he goes there—that is, if he settles there.

In the last Keepsake, which I must try to let you see, there is besides Mr Kenyon’s graphic philosophy upon “Lower Austria,” a long poem of Miss Garrow’s, superior in force & picturesqueness (the Athenæum commends it for “picturesque power”) to anything I had seen of hers. [6] It is a story in Scott’s manner—at least the opening is—& I have been thinking that you may like it better than I do,—even while I admit the accession of force. I wd not cheat anybody of that precious thing, your praise—far less a woman—& a student in the great Art I love so devoutly. What I miss myself is individuality & inspiration—the poet’s power over the pulses. Individuality & inspiration I do not find in her. Enclosed is a paper I laid my hand on this morning—some stanzas of hers on poor LEL’s death, & in her own autograph. [7] Read it & tell me what you think—& I will try & borrow the Keepsake for another day.

To think of dear Dr Mitford remembering me in the midst of the pain! How kind! Do say how earnestly I hope he may be better—& tell me whether he is so.

And now, in reply to your question, my beloved kindest sympathizing friend–– Yes. Yes—you did—& you were estimated aright & fully.

There, went a high soul to God!—high talents—only not distinguished among men, because the heart was too tender for energy– Only God who is love, knew how tender to me. [8]

I cannot write of these things—you see I cannot—I cannot write or speak– I never have spoken—not one word—not to Papa—never named that name anymore. He was & is the dearest in the world to me—the first dear & dearest—& because he loved me too well to leave me I am thus—& he is thus—earth’s sorrows & God’s angels between us. The great Will be done. I am weak & ignorant, & cannot speak of the doing of it–

Thank you for saying it was not I—& for your tender tears. It was not I in a sense. I wd have laid down this worthless life ten times, & thanked God—but the sacrifice was unacceptable. On the contrary, I was used, I & my love were used as the wretched ever miserable instruments of crushing ourselves in another.

I beseech you to say no more. I love you more dearly for what you have said—but do not say any more. My head turns to write. I never knew despair before those days—never. And the grief I had felt before so lately, [9] —nay, all my former griefs & I have had many, were bruised out of my heart by one.

‘Let us praise God in Christ’ [10] for the hereafter—His hereafter—the place of meeting & everlasting union–

Your own attached

EBB–

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 304–307.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. The Flower and the Leaf is a 15th-century anonymous allegorical poem, long attributed erroneously to Chaucer.

2. EBB’s reference is to “A Madrigal of Flowers,” submitted to The Monthly Chronicle (but not published) in 1839 (see letter 710). These lines appeared in a modified form as stanza XI of “A Flower in a Letter” in Poems (1844).

3. EBB’s comment, “& then that is not all”, probably refers to the rumours of Kenyon’s romantic involvement with some lady in Torquay, quite possibly the subject of the “scandal” about him, mentioned in letter 860.

4. Pope, The Rape of the Lock (1712), III, 22.

5. Numbers, 16:48.

6. The Athenæum of 6 November 1841 (no. 732, p. 852), in reviewing The Keepsake for 1842, said Miss Garrow’s contribution, “The Doom of Cheynholme,” had a “picturesque power, far beyond the common range of young poets.” EBB’s reference to Kenyon’s poem is incorrect; its title was “Upper Austria.” For other comments on Miss Garrow’s poem, see letter 847.

7. The manuscript was presumably returned by Miss Mitford, as it is not at Wellesley with this letter. We have not traced any publication of this poem.

8. EBB’s writing becomes very erratic at this point, as was always the case when referring to Bro’s death. The introduction of this painful subject suggests that Miss Mitford’s question related to her having met Bro (see letter 662).

9. EBB was still grieving over the death of her brother Sam, in February 1840, when she was prostrated by Bro’s loss in July.

10. Cf. II Corinthians, 12:19.

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