Correspondence

880.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 184–186.

[London]

Decr 8th 1841

Oh my dearest friend, how you prove to me day by day (if I wanted other proof than my own self conviction) that you measure out a broad bright ideality with a rood of your own, [1] & call it me! [2] But supposing one fault you speak of, to be yours, .. why, not so much in truth & honesty, as in pride & selfgloriousness, do I claim it for mine also!– An Italian said to me once—“There’s an expressive word in your language which just expresses you. I cant pronounce it, & I cant give an Italian synonyme to it, .. but I can Italianize it into testa lunga”. He meant of course ‘headlong’. [3] Well then—one of the dearest I have loved & lost—one who loved me most dearly & indulgently—Papa’s only brother .. he told me years & years since, that I ought to thank God everyday for being born a woman—for that otherwise I shd achieve mortal scrapes for myself by my rashness & impetuousity. How proud I am to liken myself to you in that last sentence!– It is like—is’nt it?—what was said of you. So take back your praise, and leave me the dear likeness.

I have not read Self formation,—& have read ‘Gaston de Blondeville’. [4] Perhaps you dont know it, but I am, have been .. in all sorts of tenses—a profound reader of romances. I have read Gaston—and now I am going to disagree with you about him a very little. The fault of Mrs Radcliffe’s preceding works was her want of courage in not following back the instincts of our nature to their possible causes. She made the instinct toward the supernatural too prominent, to deny & belie the thing. It was want of courage & power in her imaginative faculty, and want of skill in her artistic, which reduced her books from the high poetic standard to which they aspired, down to the low vulgar level of a satire upon cowardice!– Can anything be much more irritating than the Key to her mysteries,—& the undressing rooms of her ghosts?– [5]

Just in proportion to the degree of this disagreeableness, is Gaston better & nobler in design. Inasmuch as the ghost is real, it is excellent—but inasmuch as the book hath three volumes (or two)—it is naught. It did hang upon me [6] (with all its advantages as a ghost story) with a weight from which her preceding works are sacred. It quite disappointed me!– There are fine things—fine glimpses of the spiritual world! But the whole appeared to me heavy & not impressive—&, what is strange, not so terrible with its actual marvels, as were the waxen mimicries of the Castle of Otranto– [7] You are right, I dare say, my dearest friend—& I am wrong. Still it wd be more wrong to hold back my thoughts unfrankly—& thus spoil the pleasure, when it occurs as it does so frequently, of agreement & sympathy. And I have been reading your Mr Serle’s Joan of Arc—confessing with you the talent of the book, while I groaned a little under the heaviness. That art of interesting, does not lie upon the surface. I have read books with scarcely the hundredth part of the talent of this book, which yet were a thousand times more interesting: the proportions being scarcely exaggerated!– Even Joan is not very interesting—true & beautiful as is the aspect she wears. She is seen as in a picture—attitude, countenance—but we dont feel her heart beat—we know nothing of her inward life. Our faith in her is drawn from circumstantial evidence, & not direct knowledge—and the author himself evidently doubts whether it is’nt rather genius than Heavenly illumination after all.

How is dear Dr Mitford’s cough? How are you my beloved friend? Miss Clarke is surprised to see me looking & seeming so well—remembering how I was at Torquay. Did I tell you of my having achieved a walk .. a yard long?– Crow held me up of course—I cant say, “alone I did it” [8] —but it was a great thing to do with any help–

God bless you, dearest dearest friend! Ah how I wish you were as near as Mr Kenyon! How I wish it! But it wd be too much gladness for such as I am. I have not seen him yet—he has not been here.

Mrs Niven must indeed be a delightful companion. Does she write? Has she written? Or are her hands clean before you? [9] And shd I be afraid of her? Is she a person to be afraid of? Those brilliant conversational people are frightful sometimes.

Mr Haydon did not see Papa, but Mr James Clarke, my uncle. His golden opinions [10] are of price.

With the kindest regards of this house to yours, & my love to dear Dr Mitford—I must be the most intimate, out of impudence you see, ..

ever & ever your EBB—

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

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 317–319.

Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum and Wellesley College.

1. The rood was a linear measure, varying from locality to locality between six and eight yards.

2. Underscored three times.

3. This was said of her by her Italian teacher (see letter 705).

4. Self-formation or the History of an Individual Mind (1839) was written by “A Fellow of a College.” Mrs. Radcliffe’s Gaston de Blondeville was published posthumously in 1826.

5. Mrs. Radcliffe’s Gothic novels dealt with frightening and solitary adventures, building up suspense and terror by apparently supernatural incidents, but ending with a rational explanation of these events.

6. Cf. Much Ado About Nothing, I, 1, 86.

7. Horace Walpole (1717–97), in his Castle of Otranto (1764), also used the popular Gothic form, but without attempting any rational explanation of supernatural events.

8. Coriolanus, V, 6, 116.

9. Cf. Job, 18:9.

10. Macbeth, I, 7, 33.

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