999. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 60–65.
[London]
August 30. 1842
My dearest friend’s letter must take from me a few words of answer today—altho’ so much of it is unanswerable—& the very ink seems to turn into water as I try to write– Thank you briefly for your dear affectionateness! I was almost uneasy after the impertinence of my petition to you [1] —but your ‘nos’ are soft as ‘yeses’.
I wish you had told me the day upon which you were to act chief Architect in Reading, so that I might be present in spirit. [2] In the meanwhile it is very pleasant to be sure of Dr Mitford’s being better enough to admit of this little absence; and even his desire for you to accept the honor intended by it, seems to me a satisfactory proof of his own consciousness of improvement– Do you not think so? Oh yes! he must be better. And now, I do hope & trust & pray, you are going to bed regularly again, & reposing yourself for his sake from this dreadful succession of fatigues whether of watching or emotion. ‘Three weeks without going to bed!’ Indeed I cannot bear to think of it,—& I cant choose but suspect, even from your own story of how it was, that you might have slept often & often when unnecessarily anxious thoughts kept you awake. And yet there shall be, ought to be no scolding. Unnecessarily anxious thoughts are too often necessary thoughts—and ministering angels will be true to their natures!–
But I must suggest one thing. Do have if you have not had, whenever these watchings become necessary again, a sofa by the bedside of the invalid, & lie on it when you do not sleep. During my worst of illness—at the time when sleep was the bare signal for fainting fits, & when it was dangerous to leave me lest death & sleep shd come together—there was a sofa by my bed—& my dear sister lay on it half the night & my kind Crow the other half—& in this way they exchanged & bore up against exhaustion for weeks & weeks. It was not my fault—I did what I could, when I was conscious,—& wanted a nurse to be hired; but that was not permitted—through too much kindness it was’nt: and the sofa provided a degree of repose which wd have been unattainable in the easiest chair in the world. If you were to undress to a dressing gown & lie on the sofa my beloved friend, I am sure it wd be better–
Flushie hates to see me write & has just settled himself half under my arm & half on my knee. How calligraphic I am likely to be! Oh Flushie! settling yourself to sleep too!
No, no, no!—my dearest friend!—I am perverse, I am adverse, & most perversely adverse to the out-of-town proposition. No, you wd not press it if you knew exactly how we all are, & how I am, above all. Dr Chambers did not think it desirable for me to leave London in the summer, before,––told me in fact “that I was as well here in the summer as anywhere”—& Dr Scully who writes to me occasionally, does not recommend beyond the wheeled chair. I always think that the opinion about what is called “London unhealthiness” is rather a sentiment than an opinion– If we were bricked up in the city, we might talk of thick airs or no airs—but here, on the very verge of the country, some two hundred yards from Regent’s Park which opens out to “Hampstead’s breezy heath” [3] it is all imagination to cry out for ‘air’. Then I have the whole breadth of the house & five windows through which to inhale—Papa’s door being always open now to admit a free current of … a whirlwind if it pleased to come .. & carry me away to the Surrey hills– Now how shd I be better in a little close lodging house—between a draught & a coup de soleil [4] .. being stifled—or, by a happy alternative, catching cold? And even if I avoided fatigue & went only a walk’s distance away—say, only to Hampstead! Still, I must give up a good deal—my evenings with Papa, for instance!—to say nothing of my vow. Oh no, no! Thank you a hundred times for your great & earnest kindness—but you must not try to send me away from my new found consolations. And I, so well too!—so wonderfully well!– Not strong, you will say– And indeed, feeble enough. But still, stronger, & likely to be stronger still, if the wheeled chair answers as I mean it to do, as soon as ever we can catch a day at once cool enough & warm enough for an experimental day– Observe,—you, my beloved friend who are not ‘perverse’,—that a chair likely to move smoothly upon a level pavement such as it is before our door, wd not move so smoothly upon gravel walks, such as may be commendable gravel walks in lodging house gardens. No, no! If you come to London, when you come to London—for the hypothesis is too dear to be put hypothetically—you shant come to make mischief between Papa & me, nor to scold me, but just to give the pleasure you cant help giving wherever you go,––that—& more than that!–
I heard this morning of dear Mr Kenyon’s having been seen at Ems. [5] He occurs as a witness to me—for he (I must tell you, lest I perish of perversity in your good opinion) quite approved of my remaining here all the summer, & seemed to think, nay, did think aloud, that I cdnt do a better or wiser thing.
Is Mr De Vere given to literature at all—I mean as a reading man, not a pen & ink man? [6] I can quite understand the effect of the re-action of a generous impulse,—& to such, that bitter hard-cored & hard-rinded orange Protestantism [7] must indeed give very sufficient incitement. Still, where a man thinks as well as feels, & where his first religious impressions are not associated with Roman Catholicism, it is wonderful to me where he finds the energetic credulity necessary to the act of becoming a Roman Catholic. There is a great distinction .. do you not admit?—between a R Catholic by birth & education—and one by choice & conversion—inversion I wd rather say! Not that a man, or woman either, shd remain in any sect or persuasion, because he was born in it—(we are all bound to consider & examine, & find, if possible, better reasons for our belief, than the habit of it ..)—but that habit & association will have & use a certain weight & bias, which if not good, yet excuses partially the evil. I hope that your Mr De Vere may resist his impulse. [8]
As to Charlotte Elizabeth—yes, I have read that little book you speak of, & several of her little books besides. [9] Her bitterness & narrowness towards the R Catholics,—her bitterness both in religion & politics,—I admit & lament to the roots of my heart. She is a very devoted woman, & lives to God nearly as if she lived with Him—and I believe that in exciting to religious feeling her books have done much good & especially among the young. She is not deceived, my dearest friend, I think. Her high & worthy object has been to incite to religious feeling—& her little books which are otherwise graceful enough & of a prettiness very pleasing to a youthful taste, have been taken to the hearts of many for teaching & blessing. The plague, the curse on them is their sectarianism!—a word, by the way, which wd drive the poor woman mad if she cd see me apply it to her—to her who rejoiceth in the Church of England “the whole & nothing but”! [10] —, & opines that ‘sectarianism’ means simply the other side of the Church door. Poor unconscious Charlotte Elizabeth!—she is intensely sectarian after all!–
I do not know her personally, & although I have heard her name, I have forgotten it. But my traditions tell me that she is very excellent & amiable—unmarried, elderly,—& so deaf as scarcely to hear through a trumpet. Her friends talk to her with their fingers. You learn by her books how fond she is of flowers.
For the rest, be sure that I do not count her prevailing fault a slight one—& that, on the contrary, often & often when I have wished to choose a giftbook for a little friend of mine, & held Charlotte Elizabeth’s graceful stories with their heavenly aspiration, in my hands longingly as “the very thing”, .. I have put them down again with a sigh for ‘the fault’. When the ‘milk of the gospel’ [11] grows sour, pestilent is the sourness!–
As to Wilberforce & his memoirs, [12] I agree with you very much, both as to him & them. He was a good man but made of narrow stuff. And then,—if the keeping of spiritual journals be advisable—which I very much doubt!—the publication of them cannot certainly be so. Even Dr Johnson cd not bear that exposure [13] —far less cd Wilberforce, who was a man so little in all things that his very wings were scant.–
Romilly’s memoirs [14] have interest—but “Let my soul be with” [15] Wilberforce, altho’ Romilly was the greater & more intellectual man. Not that I am an enthusiast about him—& not that “great” appears in any sense a word for him: & it is wonderful & chilling to me, his unconsciousness,—apparent at least & unbroken to the observation, by voice or sign, throughout these memoirs,—of the Spiritual Realities beyond his humanity. Is it not so? I think it was my impression.
I quite pity you in your chief masonship! [16] Oh my dearest friend, how nervous it is sure to make you!– And yet I, a little enter into the pride of the honor & glory of it, just as Dr Mitford & K. do—& I am glad of the judicious discernment of the Reading people. Tell me more!–
And now I must gather together & count up my little sheets. Surely I have written half a quire to you—Miserere!– [17]
Ever your attached EBB–
Did I tell you from Nelly Bordman who constantly enquires about you & dear Dr Mitford, that your seeds & plants have done full justice, in her garden & greenhouse, to your kindness—& that “the Miss Barrett” has flourished first in cream-colored satin, & then by the miraculous transition of “a single night,” [18] in scarlet—so as to belie her namesake for ever?
And did I tell you (no!) how kindly the North American review has just treated the namesake—kindly & at length?– I & Mr Milnes & Mr Sterling (the Archæus of Blackwood) & Sir Francis Doyle are ‘treated of’ together, and I do believe that the most graciousness falls to my share. Mr Milnes has good reason to complain of what is said of him. At least I think so. Do you think that he is cold. Is the ‘Lay of the Lowly’ cold? [19]
Mind, you get the Fraser for July, & read the “Damned tragedies”. [20]
And now I have really done!–
No! I have’nt!– I put off the only thing I had to say of real importance to the last, & I think I had better say it now, unsatisfactory as it remains. George has been searching for Mr Fricknell, & is confounded in the courtguide by the multitude of Fricknell’s. [21] It will be scarcely possible for him to make out a ‘local habitation’ [22] for the real one, until Mr Ellis the solicitor [23] returns to London, which will not be for several days,—but afterwards George will lose no time in calling on him. He is rather averse to calling on March on account of those threatening letters which he perpetrated lately & March despised. [24]
Mr Ellis is the solicitor employed by the March party against Finden—and I believe that £3000 were actually paid to Finden, the discovery being made subsequently that two previous mortgages subsisted on the property.
My dearest friend, I never thought for a moment of your leaving Colburn in ignorance of the state of the case,—but simply that upon its being submitted to him he might not care much to modify much less wish to withdraw from his engagement with you. [25]
Certain numbers of the Tableaux have been published & George has seen them.
Finden is very bad I fear—very dishonest. There is one dishonesty within another!——
Well—but we will ascertain what can be done when Mr Ellis returns & Mr Fricknel becomes visible.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 21–26.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum and Folger Shakespeare Library.
1. i.e., the offer of £20 in letter 997.
2. The Reading Mercury of 27 August announced the laying of the “corner stone of the New Public Rooms, in London-street” on 31 August by “our distinguished neighbour Miss Mitford.”
3. Wordsworth, “Extempore Effusion Upon the Death of James Hogg” (1835), line 32.
4. “Sunstroke.”
5. In West Germany.
6. From the context, this reference must be to the Irish poet Aubrey Thomas De Vere (1814–1902), who had just published The Waldenses and Other Poems.
7. The militant Orange Order, taking its name from William of Orange (William III) who defeated the Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne, was formed in 1795 to uphold “the Protestant Constitution, and to defend the King and his heirs as long as they maintain the Protestant ascendancy.”
8. Although De Vere offered no objections to his father’s wish that he take orders in the established church, he never did so. His religious views were influenced by his friend Newman, one of the principal figures in the Oxford Movement, and, like Newman, De Vere was eventually (1851) received into the Roman Catholic church.
9. Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna (née Browne, 1790–1846) was a prolific author and sometime editor of The Protestant Annual, The Christian Lady’s Magazine, and The Protestant Magazine; she also wrote two songs specially for the Orange Order. Many of her works, particularly her religious tracts, displayed hostility to the church of Rome.
10. Cf. the wording of the oath taken by witnesses in a court of law, swearing “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
11. We have not located the source of this quotation.
12. William Wilberforce (1759–1833) entered Parliament in 1780 and in 1787 became the anti-slavery spokesman, but it was not until 1807 that his attempts to legislate the abolition of the slave trade succeeded. His sons published Memoirs of William Wilberforce in 1838.
13. Boswell, telling how Johnson, at the end of his life, became concerned about his papers, writes “it is much to be lamented that he had not entrusted some faithful and discreet person with the care and selection of them; instead of which, he, in a precipitate manner, burnt large masses of them” (Life of Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 1934, IV, 404–405).
14. Samuel Romilly (1757–1818), Solicitor-General in Grenville’s 1806–07 administration, was a determined advocate of law reform. Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly, Written by Himself appeared in 1840.
15. We have not located the source of this quotation.
16. See note 2 above.
17. “Have mercy!”
18. Byron, The Prisoner of Chillon, line 3.
19. The article appeared in The North American Review of July 1842 (pp. 201–245). Although the remarks on Milnes were generally favourable, the reviewer felt that “His poetry is the poetry of reflection and not of passion … of trains of thought rather than of moods of feeling … To the endowments of a great poet … he can hardly lay claim … He is sometimes tame and monotonous.” However, the comment that “The tone of his mind seems too cold for poetry, and more adapted to philosophy” was applied to Sterling, not Milnes.
The review was of Poetry for the People, and Other Poems (1840) by Milnes; Poetical Works (1842) by the Irish poet John Sterling (1806–44); and Miscellaneous Verses (1841) by Francis Hastings Charles Doyle (1810–88), in addition to An Essay on Mind, Prometheus Bound and The Seraphim of EBB. For that portion of the text relating to the latter, see pp. 373–379.
The reviewer was identified as George Stillman Hillard (1808–79), lawyer, editor and translator, by the American politician Charles Sumner (1811–74) when sending a copy of the article to Milnes on 1 August 1842.
21. Like George, we have not identified Mr. Fricknell.
22. The Merchant of Venice, V, 1, 17.
23. Law directories of the period list nine solicitors of this name. As Mr. March’s address was given as Hanover Street, Hanover Square (letter 967), it is possible that the Ellis retained by him in the copyright dispute was Arthur Ellis, who was nearby at 48 Conduit Street, Hanover Square.
25. As stated in letter 975, Miss Mitford was concerned that the reprinting of the Tableaux would affect the price that Colburn had agreed to pay.
___________________
