1074. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 198–199.
Three Mile Cross,
Dec. 5, 1842.
It is great presumption to differ from you, my dearest; but we love one another all the better, I think, for the truth, with which each tells the impression made by books and people; and for the differences as well as the similarities of our taste. Some day or other I shall certainly read these books; but I doubt if I shall be much smitten by works so extravagant. It seems to me that the real test of power is to produce great effects by seemingly small and ordinary means—by truth, not by excess. Moreover, I delight in the bright and the cheerful. Next to Molière, the French dramatist that I like best is Beaumarchais, whose two plays, “Le Barbier” and “Le Mariage,” [1] seem to me amongst the most delightful pieces of gaiety ever dreamt by poet. Now, these new people have no notion of chiaroscuro. They are all oscuro—dark, dark shade, with as little light as may be, and that little moonlight—not the bright beams of the sun. No! there is no danger of my being ever smitten by these sorts of naughtinesses. And yet I shall most assuredly read them, as soon as I can without dishonesty; because, as you do not say, my dearest, there is no sending me Saunders & Otley’s books. The time will come when you shall make me a list of the best. Surely the one you last mention cannot be amongst them?
Do me the justice to believe that my real feeling is one of intense thankfulness, that what I have has lasted so as to furnish to my dear father all that he has wanted; that for the last twenty years he has known no want in this poor cottage. What I earned and what I had has been enough. It was before. In the terrible embarrassment of falling circumstances:—first, in the struggle after appearances, with a great establishment in a fine place; then with that long law-suit [2] and the up-hill striving in literature and the drama (always a series of expectations unfulfilled, and blighted hopes, and sharp, sudden, cutting disappointments); and more or less even during these last twenty years—although want, actual want, has not come, yet fear and anxiety have never been absent.
I may truly say that ever since I was a very young girl I have never, although for some years living apparently in affluence, been without pecuniary care—a care that pressed upon my thoughts the last thing at night, and woke in the morning with a dreary, heavy sense of pain and pressure of something which weighed me to the earth—which I would fain cast off, but could not. Oh, my dear friend! be sure that poverty is indeed a most real and clinging evil. Here, I think, is one reason of the difference of taste between us—I like the sunny and the bright, because my own thoughts are full of sadness, and I require the change. You know what Coleridge says of Genévieve,
“Few sorrows had she of her own.” [3]
Now I have always had many, and therefore I love things that make me gay—therefore, amongst other reasons, I love Miss Austen. I shall be sure to read the Swedish book, and sure to like it; but Mary Howitt’s English will be one take-off; and is there not some strange morbid tale woven in with it, for another? [4] Oh! if it were indeed Miss Austen, that would be discovering a mine of diamonds.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 164–166.
1. Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732–99) published Le Barbier de Seville in 1775 and Le Mariage de Figaro in 1784.
2. i.e., the litigation arising from the sale of Bertram House (see letter 981, note 12).
3. “Love” (1799), line 17.
4. In letter 1070, EBB had said that Fredrika Bremer had been compared to Jane Austen. The “strange morbid tale” in Mrs. Howitt’s translation (The Neighbours) was that of Bruno, the black sheep of the family, who was “prone to dissipation … He purloined what he could not obtain voluntarily … but no one dared punish him.” Having stolen money, he was cursed by his mother and left home.
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