1336. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 255–256.
[London]
[?late July 1843] [1]
<***>As you praise Charles O’Malley [2] so much, I really must try to get thro’ the thorns & read him. I tried only once certainly—& then my own humour might have been partly in fault. My conclusion then was, that I cdnt read him—that he was a very clever fellow & the very fellow to be written & read between the smoke of a cigar & the steam of a glass of brandy, & to be set down with the glass, as an unreadable without the fumigation! His noise made my head ache, & his loud laughing made me grave. In fact the book appeared to me a view of Life by the light of strong, somewhat coarse & altogether unworn animal spirits .. & not that touching, solemn, holy thing which Life is, in the eyes of that God who died for its purification, & those human beings who have learnt nearly all they know in the depth of its agonies. When my brothers say “Charles O Malley is a capital book” I quite understand what they mean & take my own way—but as you praise it, & Mrs Niven besides!—there must be something more than the spirit of practical joking; & I resolve on reconsidering my judgment– Pardon it up to this time!–
I tried the Log & cdnt quite get thro’ it. I shrink too from those maritime books now, for other reasons. [3]
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 261–262.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. The approximate date of this fragment is suggested by EBB’s reference to Lever in letter 1333.
2. Charles James Lever’s 1841 novel.
3. Probably Tom Cringle’s Log by Michael Scott (1789–1835). Well received when first published in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1829–33, it had been reissued in a new edition in 1842. EBB’s “other reasons” would be related to Bro’s death.
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