955. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 333–334.
Three Mile Cross,
May 4, 1842.
Charlotte Smith’s works, with all their faults, have yet a love of external nature, and a power of describing it, which I never take a spring walk without feeling. [1] Only yesterday I strolled round the park-like paddock of an old place in our neighbourhood—an old neglected ride, overgrown with moss, and grass, and primroses, and wild strawberries—overshadowed by horse-chestnuts, and lilacs, and huge firs, and roses, and sweet-briar, shot up to the height of forest trees. Exquisitely beautiful was that wild, rude walk, terminating in a decayed carthouse, covered with ivy; and, oh! so like some of her descriptions of scenery! My mother knew her when her husband [2] was sheriff of Hampshire; and she lived in a place (about four miles from the little town of Alresford, where I was born) where the scenery and the story of the “Old Manor House” [3] may still be traced. There was a true feeling of nature about Charlotte Smith.
Of the three—Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge—how very much the greater poet Coleridge seems to me! Poor Cowper! [4] I never doubted his insanity, knowing as I did his kinswoman, whose melancholy tale I must have told you (Mrs. Frances Hill, sister to the Eve Hill of the letters, and his first cousin) whose madness was always said to be hereditary. There could be no question of the taint in the blood. That the hands into which he fell were not likely to administer the best remedies, even with the best and purest motives, there can be as little doubt. So you have actually seen and known one who believed in that melancholy tenet! [5] I always held the imputation to be untrue: it seemed to be so impossible that any one mind could at once believe that and the mediation.
Yours ever,
M.R.M.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 148–149.
1. Charlotte Smith (née Turner, 1749–1806) was a popular and prolific poetess and novelist. Her earliest publication was Elegiac Sonnets and Other Essays (1784), followed in 1785 by a translation of Manon Lescaut. Her first novel, Emmeline, or the Orphan of the Castle, appeared in 1788 and met with great success.
2. In 1765, she had entered into an arranged marriage with Benjamin Smith (d. 1806), the son of a director of the East India Company. His extravagance and enthusiasm for impractical schemes caused the couple to fall into debt, for which both were imprisoned for seven months in 1782.
3. The Old Manor House, held by Scott to be Mrs. Smith’s best work, was published in four volumes in 1793.
4. Miss Mitford is responding to EBB’s comments about Cowper in letter 941.
5. i.e., the reprobative doctrine mentioned by EBB in letter 941.
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