1010. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 79–81.
Three Mile Cross,
Monday night, September 17, 1842. [1]
My dearest,
Yesterday I had a curious letter from a dear friend now at Dresden, Mrs. H. Westmacott, whose husband is brother of the professor of sculpture, [2] and himself a sculptor of no mean rank. They are there for the purpose of educating their children; and she (a very clever woman) writes, that since the beginning of March not a drop of rain has fallen, that the drought is unparalleled in the memory of man, the fields looking like portions of the desert, the highways like roads of rock-work, the burning sky without a cloud, the light wind scorching like fire, the nights without dew, the trees without a leaf, the crops of turnip and beet devoured by field-mice, who swarm like the locusts of Egypt, [3] the cabbages destroyed by caterpillars, the watermills stopped (and there are no windmills in that part of Germany), navigation long at a stand, and horsemen riding through the Elbe, sheep and cattle fed with chopped straw, or killed for a hundredth part of their original cost, provisions of all kinds more than doubled, washing, bleaching, scouring of every sort prohibited, and water sold at a penny a quart in the streets. Mrs. Westmacott is a very clever woman; and her letter, as graphic and truthful as a bit of De Foe, really touches one to read. I hate heat and drought—really preferring rain and cold—and have not ceased since the arrival of her letter to thank God for living in our temperate climate.
Mr. May says that my father is better, if he would but think so. But that he is so far from doing, that to-day he refused any dinner, and, having risen at twelve o’clock, went to bed at two, so that we have been compelled to feed him with fruit, and brandy-and-water, and rich cake, sopped through one of those cups with covers to them, constructed for the bed-ridden, and I am now writing at his bed-side; when he would be so much better up! And he ought to get out to-morrow; but of that I have small hope. Every day, and twenty times a day, he says that he shall die before the sun rises again, that he shall never see me again, and so forth. I am sure that, in different forms, he repeats this a hundred times in the twenty-four hours; he says it much oftener than everything else put together. The strange thing is, that the effect upon me never changes; I hear it always with the same shock, and the power of saddening and depression which such words possess rather increases than diminishes with repetition. This is, of course, great weakness in me—a great proof of the nervousness which such unvaried anxiety and fatigue have induced. Nothing keeps me alive but air—my evening walk up the hill and through the trees (an avenue of splendid oaks three quarters of a mile long), then down another turfy hill, to an open grove of oak on one side, on the other a patch of varied groups of tall trees and underwood, hawthorn, wild rose, and holly; the holly rising into the forest trees, and yet fencing round the different clumps, so various in size and shape, with a short, uniform hedge about three feet high, most peculiar in its effect and most beautiful. Several artists to whom I have shown it say that they never before saw the holly assume such a character—two characters united so singularly—full twenty of these patches of oak, beech, and elm rising out of the turf being filled to the very bottom with hoary hawthorn, tall holly, and pendent bramble and briar, while this hedge of holly, uniform as box in a garden, surrounds every clump. Fancy how beautiful these patches of woodland—all diversified in size and shape, rising from fine green turf, and divided by a road from an open grove—stand, with a distance of small enclosures, some arable, some water meadow; and imagine the comfort I find in the absolute solitude, the repose, the silence of such a walk!
Some of my neighbours (kind people in the main) are unreasonable enough to expect that my one hour of liberty should be spent in calling upon them; but that is out of the question. Even for Mrs. Niven I could not make that sacrifice. That one walk keeps me alive. To-night it was much troubled; Flush found a hare, and quested it for two miles. I heard him the whole time, and could follow by the ear every step that they took, and called in desperate fear, lest some keeper should kill my pet. (To be sure, as Ben and my father said when I returned and told my fright, “Flush is too well known for that.”) But you can comprehend my alarm at finding that, the more I called, the more Flushie would not come; whilst he was making the welkin ring with a tongue unrivalled amongst all the spaniels that ever followed game. Instead of pitying me, both my father and Ben were charmed at the adventure. The most provoking part of it was that when, after following the hare to a copse on the other side of the avenue, he had at length come back to me, he actually, upon crossing the scent again, as we were returning homeward, retraced his steps and followed the game back to cover again. This, which was the most trying circumstance of all to me, was exactly what, as proving the fineness of his nose, Ben and his master gloried in. Indeed Ben caught him up in his arms, and declared that he would back him against any spaniel in England for all that he was worth in the world. So, I suppose, to-morrow he’ll run away again!
Text: L’Estrange (1), II, 75–78.
1. As 1011 is a reply to this letter, 17 September is obviously the correct date, but it was a Saturday, not Monday as given by L’Estrange.
2. Mrs. Horatio Westmacott, whose brother-in-law was Sir Richard Westmacott (1775–1856), professor of sculpture at the Royal Academy 1827–54; his public works included the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park (1822) and that of the Duke of York atop the column in Waterloo Place (1833).
3. Cf. Exodus, 10:12.
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