942. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 310–311.
Three Mile Cross,
April 9, 1842.
It will help you to understand how impossible it is for me to earn money as I ought to do, when I tell you that this very day I received your dear letter, and sixteen others; that then my dear father brought into my room the newspaper to hear the ten or twelve columns of news from India; [1] then I dined and breakfasted in one, then I got up. By that time there were three parties of people in the garden; eight others arrived soon after—some friends, some acquaintances, and some strangers; the two first classes went away, and I was forced to leave two sets of the last, being engaged to call upon Lady Madalina Palmer, who has an old friend of both on a visit at her house. [2] She took me some six miles (on foot) in Mr. Palmer’s beautiful plantations in search of that exquisite wild flower the buck-bean (do you know it—most beautiful of flowers? wild, or as K_____ puts it, “tame?”). After long search we found the plant, not yet in bloom. Then I hurried home, threw my own cocoa down my throat, and read to my father Mrs. Cowley’s comedy, “Which is the Man?” [3] and here I am (after answering, as briefly as I can, many very kind letters), talking to you.
My father sees me greatly fatigued—much worn—losing my voice even in common conversation; and he lays it all to the last drive or walk—the only thing that keeps me alive—and tells everybody he sees that I am killing myself by walking or driving; and he hopes that I shall at last take some little care of myself and not stir beyond the garden. Is not this the perfection of self-deception? And yet I would not awaken him from this dream—no, not for all the world—so strong a hold sometimes does a light word take of his memory and his heart—he broods over it—cries over it! No, my beloved friend, we must for the present submit. There may be some happy change. He may himself wish me to go to town, and then—. In the meanwhile my heart is with you.
Ever yours,
M.R.M.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 144–145.
1. Details had just reached England of the massacre in January of a force of British and Indian troops, support personnel, and camp followers, during its withdrawal from the Afghan city of Kabul. According to the first reports, of more than 13,000 men, women and children, only one English doctor and three Indians reached the safety of the English fort at Jalalabad.
2. Lady Madalina Palmer (née Gordon, 1772?–1847) was the daughter of the 4th Duke of Gordon and sister of the 5th Duke. In 1805 she married, as her second husband, Charles Fyshe Palmer (d. 1843) who, until 1841, represented Reading in Parliament. In a letter of 12 March 1842 to Miss Harrison, Miss Mitford speaks of Lady Madalina’s house as East Court [4 miles from Wokingham], and identifies Mr. Palmer as being related to Elizabeth Fyshe Gisborne (née Palmer), the wife of Thomas Gisborne, the politician (Chorley, I, 288).
3. Hannah Cowley (née Parkhouse, 1743–1809) was the author of several volumes of poetry and numerous plays, the best of which were “sprightly and vivacious” (DNB). Her comedy, Which is the Man?, was first performed at Covent Garden in 1782.
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