899. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 211–214.
[London]
Jany. 12. 1842
I do not take a breath my beloved friend, between finishing your last word & writing my first. I am too anxious to explain what requires explanation—in the first place, first & chiefly, how such an idea as your hinting about anything, never entered my head. Oh I speak for the head’s credit, I assure you .. to exonerate my own self rather than you—& in my proper defence I must iterate & re-iterate the assurance of it. You hint! No indeed. But I was writing out my thoughts just as they came, just as I always do when I turn my face towards you, & so it happened that the idea of the chocolate brought the idea of the ships in its train. Save me, my dearest friend, from the thought of such a thought any more!—& do believe me now, that it was my pleasure I was dreaming of, in wishing to send you something, & not yours!–
And then again my old obscurity must have muffled the sense of my sentences to admiration, on the subject of Mr Willis. [1] I pefectly understood that you did not partake Miss Porter’s idolatry before that very inadequate idol, [2] —& that your mediation between its defacement & Mrs Trollope’s iconoclasticism was limited to his manners & mode of pronunciation. I understood perfectly, however I may have appeared misunderstanding, & so have been misunderstood, my own self, in turn!
But, after all, I wont quite liken him to Moore! I keep a pace behind you, after all! If Moore be not a better poet than Willis, he is surely a better artist. As a versifier to a particular tune, with a fancy singing through it, there never was or will be or can be, I shd think, an equal to Moore! “Born, with a nightingale singing in his ear”—as somebody said of him! [3] And quite truly! A tame nightingale, & in the place of Nature’s universal harmonies! Still he is excellent in his department—an accomplished artist—the very snuff-box musician of poetry– And such, Mr Willis is not—or is he?
Mr Kenyon has told me something to the effect of what you have told me as to Trans-Atlanticism. It is surprising that the Americans who hold in their hands the same talisman of literature with ourselves, shd not be preserved by it from such corruptions of speech. The cultivated man or woman here, however cut off from society & the acquisition through society of colloquial elegance, does not become provincial in the loss of it. Why shd it be otherwise with them? I do not understand.
Still they are a noble people, speak how they may. I love America for its brotherhood with us—& venerate it for its separated brotherhood—and look on to the day when, as its chief glory still lies in our literature, our increased glory may be reflected from its own. The day has not dawned yet—but the red light is in the sky–
No. The beloved relative who loved me & whom I loved & love on so tenderly, [4] was not the Speaker of the House of Assembly. The Speaker was a cousin of ours, between whom & us there was no love [5] .. a man of talent & violence & some malice, who did what he could, at one time, to trample poor papa down .. did trample him at one moment when he felt him under his feet .. but when the moment passed & the Law gave the triumph to other hands, & the Speaker died .. to the astonishment of everybody his will testified, by a particular mention of Papa in which the sentiment only was of importance, .. that he bore to his old victim much esteem & a tendency to friendship. I remember seeing him, when I was a child—& he gave me a subject for a poem about a run away negro which I still have somewhere, in his handwriting. [6] He was a handsome man .. after a fashion!—good features & the short upper lip, full, in his case, of expression. Still it was a face, that I, as a child, did not care to look upon. The perpetual scowl spoilt it—and the smile was worse. It was a face, not for a bandit .. oh no—but perhaps (altho’ I really shd not speak so of my cousin, an old enemy too,—& no more!) perhaps, .. between us two, .. of an “honest honest Iago”!– [7] But it was good natured of him to write out ‘a subject’ for me; & I thought so even then!–
My beloved uncle, the only one of my uncles I really loved, & so I may say emphatically, as it wd be tenderly & gratefully in any case, my beloved uncle .. was for many years a member of the English House of Commons, a dear & affectionate friend of Ld Grey’s & Ld Durham’s, [8] & at one time himself a man of large fortune. He might have lived like a Duke—he would live like a Prince—Jamaica failed. Then, he was talked into the new South sea bubbles of some years ago—it was his defect to be easily talked over & into. The great failures came—& he found himself responsible for companies to whom he had simply given his name. It was a situation full of perplexity & distress [9] .. & he was not made, like Papa, for battling with adversity. He left it & went to the West—& so ended all!–
Oh to look back & think!– What he might have been! What he was ever! For the talents of general society, I do not know his rival. For playful brilliant persiflage .... , Mr Kenyon, the most brilliant talker I can think of, was nought to him! And then, that high & delicate sense of honor, agonized by an unpropitious situation till it helped to drive him to the wilderness! A bright, gifted being! His letters worthy of his faculty! His affections—for that memory clings the closest—so tender & strong—passionate yet something wayward. All gone down, like so much else! How awful it is to love!–
I have saddened myself now, my beloved friend, for writing any more. I will speak to Papa & secure the Gregory for you [10] .. quite vexed as I am that you shd’nt have had it long ago. The bookseller perhaps neglected to send it—for that Papa directed it right, I cannot doubt.
It is arranged between Mr Dilke & me, that I am “to do” the Greek Christian poets, & then pass on to the English. [11] I really am half afraid that it’s conceited of me to let myself be lifted up to this “bad eminence” [12] of criticism. Nay—& who knows what evil spirit haunting the place, may render me “seven times worse than before”? [13] At any rate the Athenæum wont be ‘cold to poetry’, [14] as long as I may burn it with my little finger. Love to Dr Mitford. To yrself dearest love from
your EBB–
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 330–333.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Willis is one of the figures in Miss Mitford’s key to The Blue Belles of England (see letter 896).
2. Jane Porter secured an invitation for Willis to Sir Charles Throckmorton’s seat in Warwickshire while she herself was a guest there (see Nathaniel Parker Willis, by Henry A. Beers, 1885, p. 172).
3. We have not traced the author of this particular remark, but on the quality of Moore’s singing “the evidence is unanimous. Lockhart, Scott’s biographer, said that Moore’s was ‘the most exquisite warbling’ he ever heard. Leigh Hunt compared his voice to a flute … Sydney Smith declared … ‘what is your singing but beautiful poetry floating in fine music and guided by exquisite feeling?’” (The Minstrel Boy. A Portrait of Tom Moore, by L.A.G. Strong, 1937, p. 134.)
4. Her late uncle Sam.
5. Richard Barrett (1789–1839), although of illegitimate birth, was in effect a first cousin of EBB’s father. Her antipathy stems from the long and costly litigation he instituted against her father and uncle, regarding ownership of slaves and stock in Jamaica; after more than 25 years, judgement was finally given in his favour, resulting in severe financial reverses for Edward and Samuel Moulton-Barrett. He was thrice elected Speaker of Jamaica’s House of Assembly. (See vol. 1, pp. xxix–xxx, and Richard Barrett’s Journal, 1983, pp. xi–xiii.) Miss Mitford’s query arose from reading about him (see SD1165).
6. This is assumed to be the manuscript in Richard Barrett’s hand left among EBB’s papers at Wimpole Street when she went to Italy; it is now in the Berg Collection. It was published in his Journal, pp. 121–123.
7. Othello, V, 2, 154.
8. Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845), an ardent proponent of parliamentary reform, had been Prime Minister, 1830–34; SD355 is a letter from him to Samuel Moulton-Barrett. John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham (1792–1840), Lord Privy Seal in Grey’s administration, also strongly supported the reform legislation.
9. Specific details of his difficulties are not known; apart from the burden of the judgement referred to in note 5 above, he was obviously greatly affected by the financial and economic upheaval consequent upon the emancipation of slaves, together with sugar’s steadily-declining price.
10. i.e., her translation of three of Gregory’s hymns in The Athenæum of 8 January (no. 741, pp. 39–40).
12. Paradise Lost, II, 6.
13. Cf. Matthew, 12:45.
14. A repetition of her opinion that literature fared less well than music in the magazine’s reviews (see letter 829, note 15).
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