897. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 206–209.
[London]
Jany. 11. 1842
My beloved friend,
I should not have paused two days before I told you how very very glad & half-proud I felt about the chocolate. I never hoped for so much as that you shd be able to take it. I overpower myself with congratulations. “Benedetto sia il giorno” [1] when I thought of it! As to dear Dr Mitford, it is easier to meet his taste & capability,—but my ambition stopped short in its thoughts before it touched you—& now just in proportion to the surprise, is my gratitude, .. to your digestion! Oh I wish there were more shaddocks! And it is’nt the time of ships! [2] nor will it be (for the coming in of them I mean) until June!
Thank you my dearest friend, for the Key. [3] I used it with the eagerness of Blue Beard’s wife [4] ––& am satisfied, thank you, to the uttermost of the curiosity of my malice––or of the malice of my curiosity .. whichever it shd be philosophically. I had guessed a good many of the names—but, from the want of personal knowledge, was quite at a loss for many—for instance I stared myself blind at Lady Dort, Lady Stephens, Bradley! I did not guess Contrarius either the least—& mistook Rolfe for Roscoe [5] instead of Mathias! Willis appeared “in naturalibus” from the hearts & darts attributed to his poetry—to say nothing of the juxtaposition with Cooper in the quotation from Eve Effingham which I had read & recognized. Still the coarse American accents puzzled me—not that I ever heard or saw him—but that his writings produce an idea … scarcely so much of Shakespeare .. praying Miss Porter’s permission,—as of a literary petit maitre [6] .. very fine & finical .. lisping adroitly [‘]‘To make his English swete upon his tongue” [7] —peradventure with a diamond ring on his little finger & a rose in his button hole, & a “Thy pardon, fair London brides” [8] among his compliments!—in fact anything except a coarse man or a great genius! & one nearly as little as the other!– I remember! He went with Miss Porter on the pilgrimage to Stratford. [9] There he must have bewitched her! He a great writer!! How you astonish me! Pretty & fanciful he often is, graceful sometimes, vivacious generally! And there, is said the outside of all .. & perhaps you may think beyond it! How wonderful of Miss Porter!–
You cannot think how your letter has amused me. One [10] of the portraits of Miss Pardoe, engraved & attached to her work upon Hungary, suggests certainly twice eighteen. [11] And so she wd take Mr Henry Chorley in lieu of the Sultan! You know how he turned a longing lingering look upon her in the streets of Constantinople .. with a view probably to the seraglio! [12] And she wd catch Mr Chorley’s handkerchief after that .. & settle down into the armchair of an English matron! [13] —as if she had never touched a Turkish cushion—or seen a dervish spin!! Allah Kerim! [14] It is astonishing indeed!–
She has talent—she can even be eloquent occasionally—& word-painting is an art with her. And her last book (it is the last—is’nt it?—the Hungary?) has far less wordiness & affectation—a less smell of the theatre! As she grows older, my dearest friend, she may be worthier & truer, & more secure of your esteem. I hope she may. Not that I wish her ever to marry yr friend unless you desire it!–
Mrs Trollope’s book is clever, do you not admit?
And Bradley is Edwin Landseer! Well! I have heard only now, only today a dreadful story relating to him! Do you know that he is insane—has a keeper now, while I write?– The story is terrible! That he had been subject to cruel agitation through an attachment to the Duchess of Bedford—that they were secretly married—that after the murder of Ld William Russel, he was employed to paint a portrait of the dead .. to which effect he, & the Duchess only, were shut up with the murdered man—that the picture was never finished .. that the artist overcome by a dreadful complexity of feeling & emotion went mad at his task & has never recovered his mind from that dreary day to this. [15] Tell me, if you can, that there is’nt a word of truth in it. It makes me shudder while I write it. The fact is that no picture of his has been exhibited since,—& the rest, I do hope, rose up armed out of somebody’s tragic head. [16]
My dearest friend, what kind things you tell me of Miss Anderdon’s kindness of thought about my poetry. You knew it wd please me—& be sure that it did! Papa has sent you my ‘last appearance’ in some translations from Gregory, of which I shd like to hear yr full mind. You know they are not mine—except as far as the ‘doing into English’ goes—so your love for me need not pull at your sleeve when you wd give me a free opinion of the poetry. I have translated them almost literally. [17]
Since then, Mr Dilke has written to me very courteously, to ask me to send him some prose papers in the form of reviews .. to which I said a kind of ‘yea’ .. altho’ nothing is settled as to subjects. I ventured to propose a series of sketches of the Greek poets of the early Christian centuries with translations [18] —& have heard nothing. Of course whatever I write shall be sent to you my beloved friend!–
That cramp!—and that watching by night & day! I grieve to think of it– I pray that God’s dearest comforts may be with you, whether of earth or Heaven! How I love you! How I look up to you! Look down on me & love me my dearest friend!
Ever your attached EBB–
O my forgetfulness! I saw Mr Kenyon on Saturday—when he was on the verge of a departure for Hastings—an unwilling one, he said, but for friendship’s sake. We talke<d of> you stedfastly—& agreed so well in measuring you [19] some cubits higher than your books .. high as they are! He means to write to you soon.
I am tolerably well for the weather but not very comfortable. I have sent twice to Saunders & Ottley for Aurelian [20] & must have it soon.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 327-330.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. “Blessed be the day.”
2. i.e., from Jamaica.
3. Miss Mitford’s interpretation of Mrs. Trollope’s The Blue Belles of England, contained in the previous letter.
4. Blue Beard’s wife, entrusted with all the keys of the castle during his absence, but ordered not to enter one particular room, cannot master her curiosity. On opening the forbidden door, she finds the bodies of his former wives.
5. Thomas Roscoe (1791–1871) had, like Mathias with whom EBB confused him, published several translations from the Italian, including Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini (1822) and Sismondi’s Literature of the South of Europe (1823).
6. “Fop.”
7. The Canterbury Tales, Prologue, 265.
8. We have not located the source of this quotation.
9. In a letter to Miss Mitford, 22 September 1835, Willis told of visiting Kenilworth, Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon with Miss Porter while both were guests of Sir Charles Throckmorton (L’Estrange (1), I, 295–296).
10. Underscored three times.
11. The frontispiece of The City of the Magyar, or Hungary and Her Institutions in 1839–40 (1840) shows Miss Pardoe as a somewhat mature woman. EBB was, in fact, exactly right, as Miss Pardoe was born in 1806.
12. In The City of the Sultan; and Domestic Manners of the Turks in 1836 (1837), Miss Pardoe relates how she and her party went to observe the entry of “Mahmoud the Powerful, the Brother of the Sun, and Emperor of the East” into Sultan Achmet’s Mosque: “his eyes wandered on all sides, until they fell upon our party, when a bright smile lit up his features … and [he] looked long and fixedly at us.” The Sultan then directed an officer to enquire “who I was and what had brought me to Constantinople” (bk. I, ch. XI).
13. Miss Pardoe had recently visited Reading while Chorley was also there, this providing her with an opportunity to further her supposed pursuit of him.
14. “Allah the Generous.”
15. Edwin Henry Landseer (1802–73) showed his talent for drawing and painting at an early age, exhibiting at the Royal Academy when he was only 15. He was still in his teens when he first met Georgiana (1781–1853), the second wife of the 6th Duke of Bedford, and fell in love with her. He is now acknowledged to have been the father of the last two of her ten children, Alexander George (1821) and Rachel (1826), although at the time they were accepted as the Duke’s offspring. The Duke died in 1839, and, after a proper interval, Landseer proposed to the Duchess, who was then in her 59th year, but she declined his offer. Following her refusal, his physical and mental health declined, and in 1840 he went to the Continent to recuperate.
Lord William Russell (b. 1767), younger brother of the 5th and 6th Dukes of Bedford, was murdered on 6 May 1840 by his valet, who was executed for the crime. We have found no corroboration of EBB’s story of his portrait being painted posthumously by Landseer.
16. According to legend, Minerva, goddess of war, sprang armed and fully grown from the head of Jove when Vulcan split it open with his axe. EBB presumably means that she hopes the story about Landseer is equally fanciful. He resumed exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1841, after his sojourn on the continent.
17. EBB’s translations of three of Gregory’s hymns appeared in The Athenæum, 8 January 1842 (no. 741, pp. 39–40).
19. Underscored three times.
20. The Last Days of Aurelian; or, the Nazarenes of Rome (1838) by William Ware (1797–1852), an American Unitarian Minister, author of Zenobia: or, the Fall of Palmyra (1837) and editor of The Christian Examiner (1839–44). EBB and RB met him in Italy in 1848.
___________________
