896. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 203–206.
Three Mile Cross
January 9th 1842
My dear love—I have just looked through the Blue Belles—and so far as I can guess at Mrs Trollope’s people [1] —not of course myself thinking of all of them as she does—I should say that Lady Dort was Mrs Skinner of Portland Place [2] —who is really quite as absurd if not more so– Lady Stephens Lady Hessey [3] —Lockhart Miller of course Lockhart Milman [4] and I suppose Lady Robinson Lady Morgan– Jane Beresford Joanna Baillie[—]Lenient and Contrarius, Sidney Smith and Rogers (very like)—Bradley Edwin Landseer, [5] like but a caricature– Lord Willoughby Lord Normanby– [6] The position and description of Henry Mortimer, especially the conceit and affectation resemble Henry Taylor, author of Philip van Artevelde– The extract from an American book is really an extract from Cooper’s Eve Effingham [7] —a book worth reading since it shows exactly what the-highest-in-pretention-society of New York is—very much what that of Birmingham or Manchester or Liverpool people may be I suppose at this time– Do read it. That the picture is true can be in no way better proved than by the fact that the book gave such disgust to our Transatlantic friends that Cooper was well nigh as unpopular in America in consequence of it as his American impertinences had long ago made him in Europe. Mrs. Trollope had conceived herself to have an especial cause of offence—on being asked to meet her in Paris he declined adding “No woman on earth is worth talking to—nor is any one worth looking at after fifteen”– He added another saying that he had also been invited to meet Sismondi [8] but had refused as having no opinion of European Republicanism or European liberty– In fact our friend Mr. Cooper is a Cooperite in the sense in which Douce Davie Deans [9] was a Deansite—he believes in no one’s talent or virtue except his own. Do read Eve Effingham—the book as a fiction is worthless but very curious as a true and unconscious picture of society amongst these pretenders. Lady Georgina is Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley– [10] Mr. Rolfe doubtless Mr. Matthias now dead[,] Marianne Skerrett’s uncle—author of the Pursuits of Literature and of many fine translations into Italian– [11] Till forty he did not know a word of the language and had never been in Italy and although living there during the latter years of his life and finally dying at Naples could not either talk or understand Italian. —My friend Mrs Fitzgerald told me that she one day invited him to dinner by some idiomatic phrase (which I have forgotten) tantamount to our potluck and was obliged after twice repeating to translate it into English for the benefit of the great Italian Poet. By the way the stuff about Petrarch and the disgusting flattery of Lady Dacre whose translations are just ladylike is perhaps the most offensive and the most degrading thing that I have known Mrs Trollope do. [12] —Let me see– These seem to me the principal people– One puzzles me—the official man whom she represents somewhere (I can’t find the passage) as giving glimpses through some glass of character etc. —It’s somewhere in the early part of the volume– The American reading Cooper’s book [13] is meant for Willis [14] —but a flagrant caricature because in accent and conversation you would not have distinguished him from an Englishman. —Where Lady Dort is making her memoranda about her coachman [15] she of course means a hit at Dickens—and I think this is pretty nearly all the mystery that the book contains. As a story it seems to me a very bad copy of Miss Edgeworth’s excellent Manoeuvring [16] —and the “dear friend” and “Do you understand me?” of Mrs Hartley are chiefly curious as being what especially the first Mrs Trollope uses the affectation herself[—]“Sons are expensive, dear friend” and so forth I have heard from her lips and read in letters over and over– As to Mrs Skinner (I don’t know if she be extant still) her absurdity cannot be overcharged– I must tell you one calamity that befel her in her love of lionizing– General Pepe [17] and she met at some I expect watering place she having seen him in London—forthwith she hooked her arm under his and finding that he had not yet been to the Library insisted on his accompanying her there that their names might be inscribed close to each other on the book—the lady’s was of course first written and after some slight hesitation the unfortunate exile wrote a short inscription immediately after– “My name” said the General “is unhappily so notorious just now that I have borrowed that of another exile one of my aide-de-camps”– Mrs Skinner much disappointed (for the notoriety was what she wanted) looked—and imagine her horror when she saw that all unconscious of its Sadler’s Wells celebrity the General had written down the name of “Grimaldi” [18] and so they stood poised upon the Library book Mrs Skinner—Mr. Grimaldi!!!
Yours ever
M.R.M.
What does Mr. Kenyon say to Moxon’s having produced a cheap edition of Miss Sedgwick? [19]
Publication: None traced.
Source: Transcript supplied by Mrs. E.E. Duncan-Jones.
1. In letter 886, EBB had asked Miss Mitford for “the little key” to the personalities in Mrs. Trollope’s book, The Blue Belles of England (1841). In the following notes, we only deal with those people not identified previously.
2. We have not been able to trace Mrs. Skinner; contemporary directories do not list anybody of that name in Portland Place.
3. Unidentified.
4. We have not traced anybody of this name. Perhaps Miss Mitford meant that the character was a compound of John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) and Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868), the poet, Canon of Westminster and (1849) Dean of St. Paul’s.
5. Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–73), the painter, discussed in more detail in the following letter.
6. Constantine Henry Phipps, 1st Marquis of Normanby (1797–1863), had been successively Lord Privy Seal (1834), Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1835), Secretary of War (1839) and Home Secretary (1839). After Melbourne’s administration fell in 1841, he held no further ministerial office.
7. Eve Effingham; or, Home (1838), first published as Home as Found, by James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), who is now best remembered for The Last of the Mohicans (1826).
8. Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi (1773–1842), Swiss historian and economist, was the author of Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age (16 vols., 1807–18) and Histoire des Français (31 vols., 1821–24).
9. In Scott’s novel, The Heart of Midlothian (1818), Douce Davie Deans was the father of the accused child-murderer, Effie Deans.
10. Lady Emmeline Charlotte Elizabeth Stuart-Wortley (1806–55), poetess and playwright.
11. Thomas James Mathias (1754?–1835), satirist and Italian scholar, had published The Pursuits of Literature, or What You Will in 1794–97. He composed and published verses in Italian, edited the works of a number of Italian writers, and translated English works into Italian, including Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Milton’s “Lycidas.”
12. In chapter XIX of Blue Belles, Mr. Rolfe expatiates on Petrarch, his idol, observing “How strangely impossible, too, has it ever seemed (excepting in one miraculous instance) for any language in the world to produce a translation of Petrarch! … impossible, save … in one single case, wherein a Maga … has produced an echo which startles one into the belief that the disembodied spirit of Petrarch has revisited the earth.” His listener responds “you can only mean the translations of Lady Dacre” (pp. 201–202).
13. “Mister Wilmot of New York” (ch. XXV).
14. Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–67), American author and journalist, wrote Pencillings by the Way (1835) and Melanie, and Other Poems (1837). He is discussed in more detail in the following letter.
15. In chapter XIII.
16. Published in Tales of a Fashionable Life (1809) by Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849).
17. Baron Guglielmo Pepe (1783–1855), a Neapolitan general who served under Napoleon, fled to London in 1821 to escape the sentence of death passed on him after the Bourbon restoration.
18. We have not been able to identify the Grimaldi who was Pepe’s aide-de-camp. The Sadler’s Wells Grimaldi was the actor and pantomimist Joseph Grimaldi (1779–1837). When ill-health prevented his continued appearance on the stage, he was appointed assistant manager at Sadler’s Wells (1825).
19. Moxon was advertising a four-shilling edition of Letters from Abroad in The Athenæum.
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