989. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 43–44.
Three Mile Cross,
July 25, 1842. [1]
I have had two or three interesting visits lately, dearest. One, the last (to-day), from a Dr. Carter, [2] a friend of Dr. Elliotson, and a believer in, if not a practiser of, animal magnetism. He has travelled all through America, North and South, visiting Chili and Mexico, doubling Cape Horn, rambling over Juan Fernandez, &c., &c. He says that, allowing for a little colouring, Stephens’s “Central America” [3] comes very near the truth; prefers South America to North; but declares that, after rambling over all that is fairest in Europe, Greece, Italy, the Peninsula, the lovely islands of the Pacific, all that is called finest in point of scenery, he knows nothing so beautiful, for mere beauty, as our own dear England. The Americas are on too large a scale, he says; neither the eye nor the mind can take in a whole. I can understand this. And the result of their too bright skies is a want of atmospheric illusion—of shifting shadow—of that transition which is as expression to a lovely face.
I wish you had seen Dr. Carter, you would have been pleased with him. He told me what I did not before know, that Mrs. Trollope is a thorough-going mesmerite, constantly at Dr. Elliotson’s, and believing through thick and thin. Another thing which he told me gratified me greatly: being ill in Spain, home-sick and longing for some English or English-like book, he sent to see if such a treat could be procured, and received a Spanish translation of “Our Village!” So few English works are published in a Spanish dress that it is a real compliment, and I tell you of it just as I told my father, because I know that it will please your dear heart.
Another visitor is Lord Brougham’s thrice-charming and thrice-excellent sister. [4] She is full of life, and spirit, and brilliancy—as clever, Marianne [Skerrett] says, as her brother, and kind, cordial, generous, frank, and full of all that is admirable and all that is charming. We have only spent one afternoon together, and I feel that we are friends for life. She says that her brother’s health and spirits are better than she once feared they would be. He finds in constant employment a medicine for great grief—the loss of his mother weighing even more heavily than the loss of his daughter. [5] Both were to be expected, but Miss Brougham said that she believed her brother had reconciled himself to the one as inevitable—had even assigned to it (through the foresight of the medical men) something very near the actual date; whilst the green old age of his mother, the absence of change or decay either of health, spirits, or faculty, had blinded him to the danger, so that the shock, the surprise, was greater in the death of the very old than of the very young.
He has lost one eye, and the other fails him, so that he dictates instead of writing. His newspaper is the “Sun.” He has never had the courage to revisit Brougham [6] since his mother’s death, and Miss B. says she doubts if he ever will. His place in the south of France is his great amusement; [7] and the giving judgments in the House of Peers. How I wished for you during Miss Brougham’s visit! God bless them both!
Ever your own,
M.R.M.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 156–157.
1. Given the excellent postal facilities existing at this time, it is possible that EBB received this letter and answered it the day following its dispatch; however, we feel that it is quite likely that L’Estrange misread Miss Mitford’s handwriting and that the letter was, in fact, written on 23 July.
2. Not identified.
3. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841) by John L. Stephens.
4. Mary Brougham.
5. Brougham’s mother, Eleanor Brougham (née Syme, b. 1750) died on 31 December 1839. He had lost one daughter in infancy; the other, Eleanor Louisa (b. 1821), died on 30 November 1839.
6. Brougham Hall, near Penrith, Westmorland, was the family’s seat.
7. Brougham had bought land in Cannes in 1835, when it was a mere village. He built a house, which he named Château Eleanor Louisa, where he spent some months each year after the deaths of his mother and daughter. He was buried in Cannes, where, in 1878, a statue to his memory was erected on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
___________________
