Correspondence

886.  EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 191–194.

[London]

[23–25 December 1841] [1]

My dearest dearest Miss Mitford,

You spoil me for even the kindness of the common world by the subtlety & sweetness of yours. But dont—dont—(hear my prayer against myself!) dont let me be one of the multitudinous things congregated together for the work of your weariness. Dont write such long letters to me, my beloved friend! You have too much to do & think of without me—& indeed I cant give up being thought of now & then for all of it; & so I only ask you not to write long letters to me when you have other charities heavy upon your dear hands! How is Ben’s mother! How kind you are! & how precious your kindness must be to her! When you write, mind you dont forget to tell me how she is.

I will let Mr Kenyon understand your preference about the period of his visit: but you know, my dearest friend, he mentioned his intention as an unfixed thing & in a cursory manner,—and it seems to me as likely as possible that he may not work it out for months. Talking of you made him think as it wd anybody that he wd like to see you!– “I shd like,” he said, “to go & see her. I must write some day & beg her to take a lodging for me.” So dont vex your thoughts over the hypothesis of the hope of it. Even hopes are vexing sometimes, when the spirits are worn & the heart, occupied!—and dont you be vexed with the hope of it. He seems & professes to be, deep in engagements, besides law-business .. and I am sure it is by an effort of good nature, that he throws it aside for a moment & walks to this door– He has a more ‘gentle river’ [2] than “Styx nine times round him” [3] —& there is’nt a ferry to it!——

Mrs Jameson’s early writings—the Ennuyèe for instance—have an adroit leaning to sentiment, which is sentimentality, & provokes one the more for the excellent artistic taste observable & admirable even there. In her later books, I do, I confess, see much to admire. The conversations, for instance, on the state of art & literature in Germany .. oh surely, we cannot all but admire their acuteness & eloquence & high intonation. [4] Of herself individually I know nothing & have not heard much—& what I have heard has the advantage of being self contradictory at every sentence. Now I will tell you my story of Mrs Jameson, which Mr Kenyon said something to confirm the other morning. Mr Jameson proposed to her & was rejected—upon which, goaded by vanity into hatred, he vowed to win her & be avenged. By the apparent devotion of years the first object became attainable. They were married—when, at two steps from the altar, he broke upon the echo of his own oath to love, by words of this kind .. “I have overcome—I am avenged– Farewell for ever.”!– [5]

This is my story—close, you see, upon Ld Lyttelton’s, [6] but not, perhaps, less true for the resemblance—it may be true twice: and it goes on to describe how the lady, cast out so abruptly & cruelly from the sphere of her conjugal duties, devoted herself with a brave & high tho’ sad heart to the discharge of all filial & sisterly ones, .. & in possession of an independent income su°cing for social enjoyment among her chosen friends in Germany, sacrificed taste & comparative luxury in order to inhabit & brighten a poor lodging at Notting Hill which is the home of her family. There, her father lies bedridden, [7] & her sister keeps a little school,—& she supplies a necessary in one place & a comfort in another by her literary industry—reserving one morning (thursday) in every week for the reception of those friends who crowd in to her society with emulous respect & admiration. This is my story—& if like Troy, it[’]s to fall to the ground & leave .. Mrs Sherborne!!! [8] … why I must remain very sorry! Who is the romancer? Do tell me! But Mrs Sherbourne! my dearest friend, Mrs Sherbourne, Mrs Sherbourne! She is everything of a devil but it’s sublime! I can scarcely catch & carry the idea of such a thing!– As to Marchmont, I suspected before, the identity you speak of. Between Mrs Trollope & her “grateful though obliged friend” Lady Bulwer, poor Mr Foster is done to no gentle death! [9] But he consoles himself I suppose by dining en trois [10] with Charles Dickens & Mr Kenyon!– It was an arrangement of not many days ago, I assure you!–

Have you read the “Blue Belles”? Do– It is very clever—and besides I want you to send me the little key which belongs to the personalities. Who is Lady Dort?—& Mrs Stewart Gardiner? Who is the painter? It is very clever—good for its bad class! Nevertheless the poet’s character, Mortimer’s .. I must believe to be altogether unnatural & impossible, indeed self contradictory from first to last. [11] She goes upon that falsest of all fallacies .. that poetry is fiction,—but which, being the commonest as well as the falsest, can scarcely surprise us from a quarter the most antipodic to poetry, of any on ‘mortal ground’. [12]

My beloved friend—I have kept back my letter that I might send you Stilling’s Autobiography! But I cant—I cant get it anywhere. Dear George went for me .. with an under-hope of pleasing you .. to sixteen shops the day before yesterday, & to fifteen shops yesterday—& the only bookseller of all who knew the book, told him that probably it was not to [be] met with in London. I am so disappointed. Cant Mrs Cox [13] get it for you from the place where she read it herself?– I am so sorry. I shd like to make you read that first volume—but like the bodiless monumental cherubim, I have not, you see, de quoi. [14]

This goes to you on Christmas day! May God bless & love you my beloved friend & your beloved!– Would that I cd look at you for one moment!

Your attached EBB.

Dear little Flush is not well .. out of spirits & appetite. It is however only since yesterday, & we hope he is better already. Dear little Flush! The queen seems happier I think, than she shd be, with her new friends! [15] What do you think? Oh—for me—I did feel those cold days, but am safely over them my dearest friend.

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

Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 320–323.

Manuscript: Wellesley College.

1. EBB has dated the envelope “Decr 25th 1841.”

2. Byron, Don Juan, canto III, verse LVIòf2ó, line 6.

3. Cf. Pope, Ode for Musick. On St. Cecilia’s Day (1713), line 91.

4. The Diary of an Ennuyée was published in 1826 (after prior publication anonymously as A Lady’s Diary); her later works included Loves of the Poets (1829); Characteristics of Women (1832); Visits and Sketches (1834); Conversations on the State of Art and Literature in Germany (1837) and Social Life in Germany (1840).

5. Whether or not Kenyon’s anecdote be true, Mrs. Jameson’s marriage was certainly uncongenial. She was engaged to Robert Jameson in 1821, but the engagement was broken off and she went to Italy. She was later reconciled to him, and they married in 1825, but a few days after the wedding, Jameson went off to visit friends without her (see Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson, by her niece, Gerardine Macpherson, 1878, chapters II and III).

6. George William Lyttleton (1817–76), 4th Baron Lyttleton of Frankley, Lord Lieutenant of Worcestershire; his version of Mrs. Jameson’s misfortunes is not known.

7. Denis Brownell Murphy, Painter-in-Ordinary to Princess Charlotte, died in March 1842.

8. Unidentified.

9. Marchmont is a character in Frances Trollope’s The Blue Belles of England (1841). We cannot guess at the identity which EBB “suspected,” or at Mrs. Trollope’s participation in John Forster’s “gentle death.” He had been unkindly portrayed as Fuzboz in Lady Bulwer-Lytton’s Cheveley, or the Man of Honour.

10. “As a threesome.”

11. See letter 896 for Miss Mitford’s key to the personalities in The Blue Belles of England.

12. Cf. Donne, “Holy Sonnet” (1633), VII, 12.

13. Mrs. Cox is mentioned several times in the correspondence as a friend of Miss Mitford, but has not been further identified.

14. “The wherewithal.”

15. A reference to the new Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, whom EBB disliked, and his administration, formed as a result of the general election criticized by EBB in letters 826 and 827.

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