941. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 305–310.
[London]
April 6. 1842.
My beloved friend,–
Your delightful letter reconciles me to myself, for the pleasure I used to take in Anna Seward. That you can be attracted by her now, is my absolution.
Her filial sentiment & your’s have often occurred to me together [1] —but otherwise you are easts & wests—the expression of her warmest friendships being attended to my mind with a certain self-conscious folding of the robes which is altogether opposed to your abandon & heart-impulsiveness .. & the characteristics of mind & style & outward developments in every manner being opposite as pole to pole. As to the obstinacy,—my beloved friend .. do you really set up for being obstinate? I have seen no type or symbol of it in anything I have seen in you—& really .. if it is lawful to disappoint you so far .. I am afraid that you cannot be qualified. Obstinacy of the forehead as marked to your observation in Miss Seward’s, you certainly have not—& the inward quality you must pardon me for putting no sort of trust in, until “proven”.
A moment ago & Crow brought me a little parcel from Mr Haydon containing a gift of his late Lecture on Fresco. And now I am in a doubt! “With Mr Haydon’s respects to Miss Barrett”– “Miss Barrett” quite plain. But is it really for me? Perhaps for one of my sisters, both of whom he knows while of me he is innocent. Perhaps for Arabel, because she paints & he means to be good-natured. That he shd mean to be goodnatured to me is more unlikely perhaps, & I dont know what to do with my thanks, & I am afraid of standing out in the foreground with both hands open when all the time my rightful place may be to be blacked out of sight in the far background. Tell me—is the Lecture for me do you suppose, or not? Because if it is for me I must write & thank him for it—while if for my sister, she must. [2] There is the difference. Very kind of him, either way!–
I know very little of many of Miss Seward’s gods & goddesses—& nothing at all of the “domestic epic—” [3] but that same Whalley is shown I think in Madme d’Ar<blay’s> Bath picture-gallery under a languishing aspect. [4] Even Helen Williams I have not caught a glimpse of out of those letters [5] —altho’ trying once or twice or thrice. No—& I dont know the Lives of Milton & Romney—nor the Pleader’s Guide nor the Siege of Gibralter (but shall) nor any of Jephson’s play[s], [6] but wd gladly if you have any to lend—mo<st> gladly if you have any to bring. There’s a list of alibis. I am almost ashamed of them. I always liked Hayley’s Life of Cowper altho’ he did not understand the man. [7] Of Cowper as a religious man he was intensely ignorant—& the sort of confusion which he made between the sentiment & the insanity is obvious & unphilosophical everywhere. There is a Life of Cowper written by a biographer of his own opinions whose name has quite escaped me, but insufficient in a literary point of view—in one volume & nearly as one-sided as Hayley’s, only of a different side. I met with it & lost sight of it at Sidmouth. [8] The best & fullest biography in all ways appears to me to be poor Southey’s—the life published together with the works a few years ago. [9] Do try to get it from Reading. It extends over four or five volumes I think or more, including the letters & every detail known on the subject of the insanity. You will see the conclusion clear .. without room for a vapor of scepticism .. that poor Cowper was mad, not in consequence of his theological views but altogether apartly from them—so apartly, that before he entertained them or was the subject of any strong devotional impressions of whatever character, he was mad enough to attempt his own life. [10] It is very important that the truth shd be rightly apprehended on all accounts—& you will admit unhesitatingly from the testimony of these volumes that no modification of religious belief can be charged with the madness. Southey does indeed say that he was treated injudiciously by his religious friends—but really he could scarcely believe so from his evidence as it strikes my perceptions. I read the book some years ago—Mr Kenyon lent it to me—& that is my impression now. Mr Southey is far too steeple-high & stiff as a theologian for me, & there are traces of the churchyard in the biography. [11] Still, his love of truth was stronger than his hatred of Calvinism [12] —& there are traces of that superiority in the biography too. What is called the doctrine of reprobation is a very evil one certainly, & pestiferous with the fruit of its cruelty—but the doctrine is rather imputed to the highest Calvinists than believed by them; & I, having known many high calvinists, many who call themselves high calvinists & are so,—have yet never stood face to face with any human being who confessed to a belief in that reprobative doctrine [13] except once—& then its believer was a woman. It was however held obviously by Luther himself.
But Cowper did not hold the doctrine of reprobation in the Lutheran, Calvinistical, or any other ordinary sense—& is wrongly represented in the common opinion as a victim to it. His belief was, his madness was, that he alone of all the universe stood without hope—never to be accepted into the bosom of God’s mercy,—though clinging to it in his despair!—never to be cleansed by the dropping of the Sacrificial blood, though waiting in its fall, with the whole patience of his desolation. His belief was a madness in its obvious nature.
I do not know why I shd ask you to read that book of Southey’s—except that you were speaking to me of Cowper—for when I had done I felt sorry myself that I had read it. I never had doubted at all about the madness & the physical causes of it—& really that book lay upon my heart like a weight of lead for days & days. It is the dreariest, most melancholy, most pathetic story I ever read, & drew tears enough from me to serve the sorrows of six romances. Do not read it when your spirits are not strong. The only consolation is the certainty of his consolation now—& the only bearable manner of realizing to one’s own soul the sunless moonless darkness of his, is to regard it as a sign of the inward cross of martyrdom, conferred rather than inflicted, in preparation for its perpetual crown. Otherwise there is no hope—no comfort! no view beyond! The curtains of his desolation are drawn close.
How singular in its mournful coincidence is the fact that this biography should be almost the last work from his hands—the very last being (was it not) a final collection of his works. Yet even the head of our poor Laureate is not bent as low as Cowper’s was. [14]
You will love Cowper very much in that book. I never loved him so much, setting no high enthusiasm upon his poems, as when I closed it. Moreover it is very beautiful, written with the full Southey charm.
I agree with you altogether about Mason. [15] He is a Mason to me & I am a stone to him– As to Gray—do you not know my heresy about Gray? Was I always afraid to tell you of it? Yet Mr Horne told me once that I was right in it—yet you wont—yet you must hear the truth, if only for conscience’s sake. Suppose me then to be a stone to Gray too—quite cold, quite impenetrable—not a breath quickened, or pulse stirred! It is true! I am a stone to Gray. He seems to me to be elaborate rather than inspired, worked up & made up—artificial .. yet too far from Nature to admit of true Art. There seems to me in his poetry what Horace Walpole complained of in his manhood .. a fine cold pride .. an hauteur which is by no means height. [16] Oh—I know it is heresy. But I cannot help it. The fault may be in me—but the misfortune is on me surely—he does not act on me.
Speaking of Horace Walpole, Mr Kenyon in his great kindness took both my sisters with him yesterday .. with him & Mrs Jameson—to Strawberry hill [17] —& they came home in the full glow of all the pleasure he had given them. I asked a good deal about Mrs Jameson .. & have her now in her whole anatomy. No!—the externities have nothing very striking or graceful—but the countenance has its intelligence & the voice its agreeableness .. & the bearing is unassuming & not unpleasing. I asked if there was eloquence—or anything else brilliant in the conversation—“No,”—they said—“they did’nt observe anything peculiar in any way”—they wd not have guessed if they had not known!–
What do you want to puff me up into doing? About Carlyle .. I mean! [18] Oh no, no, no!
And now tell me– There is a mystic phrase in your letter [19] —something to the effect that you wd not have had me praise another, who …!
Do tell me if you have a meaning in particular! I catch at a sort of meaning I see a glimpse of. Do tell me the whole of it—& believe me my beloved friend, that you could not vex me by speaking out to the uttermost word.
Mrs Jameson was praising yesterday her dear friends the Kembles, [20] but said that ‘Adelaide was the cleverest of the sisters.’ Did you ever hear it? She was speaking of their comic powers in conversation—drawing a general inference which the premises I heard of, seemed to disclaim.
My dearest dearest friend!—you say little of yourself—& I am anxious about you. Can I ever cease to love you? Do you think it possible? Did anyone ever cease to love you? They have done so to me oftener than once!—but you!–
No sooner do you think a thought than the thought lightens upon me thro’ a quicker electricity than the post’s– Blake! Mr Kenyon had just lent me those curious “Songs of innocense” [21] &c with their wild glances of the poetical faculty thro’ the chasms of the singer’s shattered intellect—& also his life by Cunningham. [22] The particular book you mention I have not seen.
Oh the post, the post!– I must go! Papa came while I was writing & told me to mention his name to you!–
May God bless you! I love you more & more.
Your own EBB–
Do you know Madme de Genlis in her Memoires? [23] They are very amusingly characteristic—amusing indeed in all ways!
Dear <Occ>y has the meazles now, but is pretty well. How you amused me about Mrs Dupuy’s mistake in my antiquities! You see how it is possible to be mistaken in me in all sorts of ways– How is Mrs Dupuy? You spoke of her being out of health. Tell me of Mr Haydon.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 388–393.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Like Miss Mitford, Anna Seward was a devoted attendant during her father’s declining years. Thomas Seward (1708–90), a friend of Dr. Johnson, was Canon of Lichfield and of Salisbury and had collaborated—not very successfully—on an edition of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher. After his death, she wrote to Cary that she had lost “the helpless object of those sweet, though anxious cares, that were their own reward” and other letters abound in lamentations (see The Singing Swan: An Account of Anna Seward, by Margaret Ashmun, 1931, pp. 187–188).
2. EBB was persuaded that the gift was indeed meant for her, and she acknowledged it with letter 945.
3. The phrase “gods and goddesses” refers to the eminent persons who were known to the Sewards; apart from Dr. Johnson, they included Boswell, Darwin and Hayley. The “domestic epic” is Anna Seward’s 1784 poetical novel, Louisa.
4. Thomas Sedgwick Whalley (1746–1828), author and Rector of Hagworthingham, was described by Mme. d’Arblay as “a young man who has a house on the Crescent … He is immensely tall, thin, and handsome, but affected, delicate, and sentimentally pathetic” (Diary and Letters, I, 306).
5. Helen Maria Williams (1762–1827) was a friend of Miss Seward. She passed much of her adult life in France, espousing revolutionary ideals and spending some time in prison. She published three separate collections of letters written from France, describing her impressions and experiences.
6. EBB’s references are to The Poetical Works of John Milton. With a Life of the Author (1794–97) and The Life of George Romney (1809), by William Hayley; The Pleader’s Guide: a Didactic Poem (1796), by John Surrebutter, Esq. (i.e., John Anstey); The Siege of Gibraltar, a Poem (1795), by Joseph Budworth; and the plays of Robert Jephson (1736–1803), which included Braganza (1775), The Count of Narbonne (1781) and Conspiracy (1796).
7. The Life and Posthumous Writings of W. Cowper, 3 vols., 1803–04.
8. One-volume accounts of Cowper’s life were written by John Corry (1803), Samuel Greatheed (1803, revised 1814), and Thomas Taylor (1833); we cannot deduce which one EBB had read.
9. The Works of William Cowper, Esq., … With a Life of the Author, by Robert Southey (15 vols., 1835–37).
10. In November 1763, Cowper had attempted to hang himself; his life was saved only because the strap he was using for the purpose broke and he fell to the floor, unconscious. Following this, “symptoms of a violent attack of madness rapidly developed themselves.... He was convinced that he was damned” (DNB); in December, he was confined in a private asylum, where he remained for more than a year. After this episode, Cowper, previously caring little for religion, became intensely devout. Late in 1772, his madness returned, together with a recurrence of suicidal tendencies, and he was again confined until 1774. Yet another attack, and a further attempt at hanging himself, occurred in 1787, and thereafter he was subject to frequent strange fancies and delusions.
11. Southey’s religious views were contained in The Book of the Church (3 vols., 1824). By the play on churchyard, EBB is probably suggesting that his 15-volume work on Cowper suffered from the prolixity of which Thomas Churchyard (1520?–1604) was accused. In the second part of her review of The Book of the Poets in The Athenæum (no. 763, 11 June 1842, pp. 520–523), she said that Churchyard was one of the poets “who had their hand upon the ore if they did not clasp it!”
12. The principal tenet of the Calvinists was that the Bible was the only authority in matters of belief. (See letter 499, note 1.)
13. i.e., rejected by God and thus condemned to eternal misery, as in Cowper’s belief (note 10 above) that he was damned.
14. Southey also suffered from mental ill-health, the last year of his life being “one of insensibility to external things” (DNB). An edition of his works, “collected by himself,” had appeared in 1838.
15. William Mason (1724–97), a friend and disciple of Thomas Gray, published The Life and Letters of Gray in 1774. He was a prolific poet, his writings including Elfrida, a poem in classical style (1752), Caractacus (1759), and collections of poems in 1762 and 1764.
16. In a letter of 3 September 1748, Walpole said of Gray: “he is the worst company in the world—from a melancholy turn, from living reclusively, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily—all his words are measured, and chosen, and formed into sentences; his writings are admirable; he himself is not agreeable” (Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with George Montagu, ed. W.S. Lewis and R.S. Brown, Jr., 1941, I, 76).
17. The Twickenham estate of Horace Walpole, the house resembling a miniature Gothic castle.
18. Whether or not Miss Mitford encouraged EBB, she did write some thoughts on Carlyle in 1843, used by Horne for A New Spirit of the Age (1844); see Reconstruction, D1282 and the 1900 Porter and Clarke edition of EBB’s Complete Works (VI, 312–321).
19. Letter 944 makes clear that the “mystic phrase” referred to Queen Victoria.
20. Charles Kemble (1775–1854), his daughters Frances Anne (“Fanny”) Butler (1809–93) and Adelaide (1815–79, later Mrs. Sartoris), and his son John Mitchell Kemble (1807–57). In 1826, Kemble had created the title role in Miss Mitford’s Foscari.
21. Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789, 1794), by William Blake.
22. Blake is one of the subjects of the second volume (pp. 143–188) of The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (6 vols., 1829–33), by Allan Cunningham (1784–1842).
23. The Mémoires Inédits of Stéphanie Félicité, Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830) were published in 8 vols. in 1825–26, together with an English edition produced by Colburn.
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