949. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 323–325.
Three Mile Cross,
April 27, 1842.
No! my dear love, I am not now about to write on the subject of the South Seas. The first volume of any size that I printed was on the story—which came to me from a friend of the American captain who visited them—of Christian’s Colony on Pitcairn’s Island. A large edition was sold. Then I published a second edition of a volume of miscellaneous poems; then another volume of narrative poems called “Blanch and the Rival Sisters.” [1] All sold well, and might have been reprinted; but I had (of this proof of tolerable taste I am rather proud) the sense to see that they were good for nothing, so that I left off writing for twelve or fifteen years, and should never have committed any more pen-and-ink sins, had not our circumstances become such as to render the very humblest exertions right. My dear mother’s health was then almost what my father’s is now; only then we were three, so that, except by staying at home, I was not so absolutely chained as I am now.
Well, perhaps if I could be all the time I covet, among the sweet flowers and the fresh grass, I should not enjoy as I do the brief intervals into which I do contrive to concentrate so much childish felicity. Who is it that talks of “the cowslip vales of England?” [2] is it you, my beloved? The words are most true and most dear. Oh! how I love those meadows, yellow with cowslips and primroses; those winding brooks, or rather that winding brook, golden with the water ranunculus; those Silchester coppices, clothed with wood-sorrel, wood-anemone, wild hyacinth, and primroses in clusters as large as the table at which I write! I do not love musk—almost the only odour called sweet that I do not love; yet coming this evening on the night-scented odora with its beautiful green cups, I almost loved the scent for the form on which it grew. But the cowslips, the wild hyacinths, the primroses, the violet—oh, what scent may match with theirs? I try to like the garden, but my heart is in the fields and woods. I have been in the meadows to-night—I ran away, leaving my father asleep—I could not help it. And oh! what a three hours of enjoyment we had, Flush, and the puppies, and I! I myself, I verily believe, the youngest-hearted of all. Then I have been to Silchester too. My father went there; and I got out and ran round the walls and coppices one way, as he drove the other. [3] How grateful I am to that great gracious Providence who makes the most intense enjoyment the cheapest and the commonest! I do love the woods and fields! Oh! surely all the stars under the sun, even if they were brighter than those earthly stars ever seem to me, could not compare with the green grass and the sweet flowers of this delicious season!
I mistrust the feeling of poetry of all those who consent to pass the spring amongst brick walls, when they might come and saunter amongst lanes and coppices. To live in the country is, in my mind, to bring the poetry of Nature home to the eyes and the heart. And how can those who do love the country talk of autumn as rivalling the beauty of spring? Only look at the texture of the young leaves; see the sap mounting into the transparent twigs as you stand under an oak; feel the delicious buds; inhale the fragrance of bough and herb, of leaf and flower; listen to the birds and the happy insects; feel the fresh balmy air. This is a rhapsody; but I have no one to whom to talk, for if I mention it to my father, he talks of “my killing myself,” as if that which is balm and renovation were poison and suicide.
Heaven bless you, my most precious! My father’s love.
Ever most faithfully your own,
M. R. Mitford.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 146–148.
1. Miss Mitford’s first publication was Poems (1810), with a second edition in 1811, in which year she also published Christina, the Maid of the South Seas. The next work she mentions is not listed in the catalogue of the British Library or in The English Catalogue of Books; DNB gives its title as Blanch of Castile (1812).
2. We have not located the source of this quotation.
3. Silchester, about 6 miles S.W. of Three Mile Cross, was the site of the Roman town of Calleva Atrebatum; the walls, over a mile in circumference, still stand.
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