957. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 338–342.
[London]
Saturday– [7 May 1842] [1]
Thank you my beloved friend for the two bunches of pleasure .. nosegays of delight .. your two letters. I get your letters in time for breakfast, & have a fashion (doing all my eatings & drinking by myself) of reading & taking coffee .. that is, now sipping of the coffee & now of the nectar.
You frighten me by suggesting the possibility of Flushes being lost. [2] And my Flushie never contemplating such a thing, is very naughtily fond of running away from his two-footed companions, sometimes to the end of a street & back again, just for the pleasure I do believe, of achieving something very naughty. Flushie has that natural taste in him. He is, as Crow says, “just like a spoilt child”, & rejoices in his own way. Tell him to go to the chair—& altho’ he likes the chair in question very well under other circumstances, .. he wd rather,—being commanded,—lie down on the floor ten times over– Let him fancy that he is wished to be out of the way, .. instantly he siezes upon the opportunity to squeeze himself close to you with his head upon your shoulder. Ask him to eat his dinner & he wont touch it! or offer him bread & butter & buttered muffin or anything of the sort, & he recoils, shuts his mouth quite close, & looks another way. Pretend to submit to the coquetterie, .. in two minutes, the little paw will be patting on your arm, the first of a series of coaxings—“he will be glad to have the muffin now, if you .. dont please”–
So you see Flushie is pretty well altho’ I dont say,—have not said lately,—much about him. He is lying in his eternal place on my bed, close beside me now,—& when the time comes (which it will in half an hour) for me to go to the sofa, he will leap up full of vivacity to superintend my toilette, to kiss both my feet before I put on my shoes, & to sieze the moment of my reaching the sofa for kissing face & hands too with an obvious eagerness of congratulation, & instantly afterwards to throw himself quite into my arms as a settlement until one of us is tired .... I dont say which.– I mean every respect to Flushie, & in fact if I did’nt, he understands the readiest manner of enforcing it. But it is strange & dear of him—is it not?—that he shd without beck or word, move from the bed to the sofa the moment I move, & back again with the same exactness. Even when he was ill, [3] & unwilling to stir otherwise, he performed that migration of his own accord. I love him—dear little Flushie—as far as dog-love can go—& that is farther than I supposed possible before I had knowledge of him.
For the rest, .. he keeps to his resolve of never leaving this room upon any person’s invitation except Crow’s, unless the inviting person have a hat upon her or his head. He never will, even to dinner. And yesterday it happened as usual that Crow having spent the day out, with her family, it was found necessary to bring Mr Flush’s beefsteak up stairs to him, to my bedside—an attention which evidently by his manner was no more than he expected to be paid. & you wont think me hardhearted—but I am certainly amused sometimes at Crow’s mode of counteracting my spoiling system by her system of discipline. Flush is very fond of her, & also very afraid of offending her—& it is impossible to help smiling through one’s pity sometimes, to hear her scolding him, & his crying responses. He cries most piteously in response—& then comes to me to kiss me almost to death that I may persuade Crow to be friends with him!
And do you observe it of your Flush, that in respect to language, he understands words but not grammar. Nobody can say of my Flush as was said of Bentley to his great discontent,—that he is ‘magnus grammaticus.’ [4] His vocabulary is very much enlarged—but the ‘Ladie Grammere’ is no lady of his. [5] For instance—the word ‘cakes’ in his ear, is like Bruce in a Scotchman’s [6] —but if you say ‘You shant have any cakes’ or ‘I have not any cakes for you’ he leaps up in as much expectation as if you said ‘I will give you some cakes’! In the same way, it is with the phrase ‘go out’—‘kiss me’—& sundry verbs. The negative ‘no’, he understands perfectly—but ‘not’ in a sentence goes quite for nothing.
Behold! I submit all this learned observation to the subtlety of your philosophy.
Henrietta & George & Alfred were at Mr Kenyon’s yesterday evening—& heard him speak his joy & satisfaction in your ‘graceful & gratifying note’. Mr Forster was there—whom he calls ‘a tribune of the people’––(ah! that’s a high name—& I something doubt the application!) & Mr Fellowes from Lycia, [7] & heaps of other celebrities, inclusive of the poet Mr Reade. The latter spoke in such a kind tone of interest of me, that I have been in sackcloth & ashes of selfreproach ever since I heard what he said. But after all, is it my fault to be afflicted with that particular impression? Is’nt the feeling of admiration far pleasanter than any of the critical faculty can be? Even you think as I do!– And if he wd but give to his heart, his soul, the active pre-eminence which he bestows upon his memory—if he would but feel & think outwards in his poetry, it might be poetry still. For sentiment there is nothing to find fault with. The moral intonation of what he utters is always excellent & elevated—& the thoughts are those of the cultivated, the too well cultivated, & the rightminded. I hear that he is remarkably gentlemanly—the most strikingly so, say the dear people who belong to me,—of any in the room last night saving Mr Kenyon himself.
Yes—the business with Fraser was terrible. [8] Even I, who do not understand the heartbreakingness of an illnatured criticism, quite shrank within myself at the thought of what that mortification must have been. Two notes if not three, one upon another, presupposing the lost estate at the postoffice of its predecessor, & all crying out for mercy—& all with the author’s name & dated from his private residence at Bath! And then, Fraser’s commentary upon these humble petitions! His inference that Mr Reade who never wd be read (such was the joke!) had used the same process of eloquent coercion upon every periodical editor with a heart to be worked upon,—& how Fraser having only brains, responded to them … thus! If it had’nt been for the anticipated glories of another age, surely Mr Reade in his morbid sensitiveness might have cut his melodious throat on the provocation of it. I was really really sorry for him. But Fraser is twice a savage. The wonder is, how the victim could in the first instance, through his very sensitiveness, debase himself to such an application!—& to ‘such a Roman’!! [9]
Dearest dearest Miss Mitford, believe me I have felt deeply the shock which poor Lady Sidmouth’s death must have been to you [10] —altho’ trusting that from the circumstance of her long painful illness, you may be more quickly reconciled to grief involving that valued friend’s release from a hopeless degree of suffering. You are tried many ways my beloved friend—but not one of them can be more than enough—& while my eyes are fullest of tears for you, the conviction is strong with me. May the comfort be present always & as near as the pain! May God bless you twice for every trial—I pray that for you, my dearest dearest friend!–
Thank you for letting me see the characteristic letters! [11] I understand what you observe in Miss Niven—& both understand & agree with your reasoning upon the phenomenon. Few things in ordinary life are more provoking to me than that impassiveness—that dull insensateness—which some people call quietness, & others want of animal spirits, & I, want of sensibility. Do you remember Burns–
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe. [12]
And yet—it is possible, I have been thinking—is it possible?—that she may be a little afraid of you? You who forget yourself, forget also that other people remember you.
By the way—Mr Kenyon’s friends, he told me, have taken to Silchester both Belford & the Village, in order to saturate themselves with Miss Mitford! Happy people! By the time the saturation is accomplished, I shall be ready to love them—& then .. dear people!–
Your story of Silchester, [13] being saturated with you of course, I love very much. Shall I—shall I indeed, ever be there with you? Ah! but I say so, as if I looked up to the stars & fancied … [‘]‘shall I ever be there with you?”
My heart has been better for two days—altho, tremulous as a candle low in the socket, even now. Still I shall avoid—if you will let me, the catastrophe of Dr Chambers: & as to enquiring about the liberties of the summer prophetically, I know like an Irish sybil that I will do what I can. Certainly if it proves possible in any way, I shall be in the drawing room if it were only to please Papa! & I am very wonderfully well, all but the heart—& that is better—“upon my honor,” as the peers say with their right hand to their left side! [14]
I was stupid about the leaf—never doubting that it came by an accident. Yet I remember the odor—I did not particularly like it, I do believe! Was it wrong of me? Do tell me, whether the fashion is to talk of it & Arabia together? [15] What do you think of it?
My dearest friend, I am distressed at my folly about the Tableaux. Long & long ago, one of my brothers heard at some bookseller’s, that Finden—(no—that is not right!) [16] that Finden was about to reissue the Tableaux, engravings & all, in monthly numbers. I heard it giddily, taking for granted that he had a right to do it, & never thought one word more of it either in writing to you or in meditation with myself. I am distressed & ashamed of my dulness! It never struck the obtusity of me, that you cd be ignorant of the disposal of your mss [17] —& this was long ago! Do tell me how you dis-arrange it all––& good bye—or I shall be late for the post. Take in change for all your abundant kindness, the grateful
affection of your EBB——
Oh yes—you introduced me to the strange letters in Fraser—including Miss Edgeworth’s! [18] So unlike her book Miss Edgeworth!
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 404–409.
Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library and Wellesley College.
1. Internal references show that this is a reply to letter 956.
2. In a postscript to the previous letter, Miss Mitford had told of one of her Flush’s offspring being stolen four times.
3. EBB had mentioned Flush’s illness in letters 886 and 893.
4. “A great philologist.” Richard Bentley (1662–1742), Master of Trinity, Fellow of the Royal Society, and Keeper of the Royal Libraries, established his reputation as a scholar by addressing a long letter, in Latin, to Dr. John Mill, who was editing The Chronicle of Malelas, correcting many of the references in the Greek text. When the Chronicle was published in 1691, Bentley’s letter was included as a 98-page appendix. In 1697–99, Bentley engaged in a celebrated feud with Charles Boyle regarding the authenticity of The Letters of Phalaris.
5. An allegorical figure in The Passetyme of Pleasure (1506) by Stephen Hawes (d. 1523?).
6. Robert de Bruce (1274–1329), the national hero of Scotland, took up arms against Edward I in an effort to gain Scottish independence. Crowned Robert I of Scotland in 1296, he suffered defeat and excommunication before finally winning Scotland’s freedom from Edward III in 1327.
7. Charles Fellows (1799–1860), traveller and archæologist, had discovered the ruins of Xanthus, the ancient capital of Lycia in Asia Minor. He published his findings in An Account of Discoveries in Lycia (1841).
8. EBB refers to some scathing remarks about Reade in Fraser’s Magazine (see letter 732, note 8).
9. Julius Caesar, IV, 3, 28.
11. Subsequent letters show that these were from Darley, Chorley and Miss Anderdon.
12. “Sensibility How Charming” (1792), lines 15–16.
13. Miss Mitford had described a visit to Silchester in letter 956.
14. A reference to a peer’s oath on taking his seat in the House of Lords.
15. EBB refers to the leaf of humea elegans sent with the previous letter, and Miss Mitford’s enquiry regarding its scent; not herself liking its odour, in asking whether it is “the fashion,” she apparently had in mind Shakespeare’s “all the perfumes of Arabia” (Macbeth, V, 1, 50–51).
16. After “Finden” EBB had written and deleted “as having sold the last c[opy].”
17. The Finden brothers were infringing what Miss Mitford believed to be her copyright by reprinting material from Findens’ Tableaux. This problem is dealt with in more detail in the following letter, and crops up in the correspondence periodically for some months.
18. The “strange letters” were “A Letther from Mr. Barney Brallaghan, Piper at the Paddy’s Goose Public-House, Ratcliffe Highway, to Oliver Yorke, Exquire” and “A Sickund Letther …” in Fraser’s Magazine (January 1842, pp. 65–80 and February 1842, pp. 160–179). Two letters from Miss Edgeworth appeared in the issue of November 1833 (pp. 633–634).
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