1113. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 263–267.
[London]
Jany. 4. 1843–
The post offices must be bewitched, my beloved friend, & I do begin to have certain misgivings as to the evil being attachable to ours as well as your’s, seeing that two letters of mine sent to Brighton some five & three days since, were, one of them, three days on the road, &, the other, unreceived at all– It is quite too bad & vexatious—I could foam at the mouth about it– I wrote a long letter to you the day before yesterday, principally about the ring—& my apparent silence, considering everything, must have struck you as peculiarly ungracious & ungrateful. Only you dont believe in the posts, & you do, I trust, believe in me—& altho’ you dont say that you conjectured I must have written, I hope you had a secret supposition on the subject—because I have no manner of intention to pay for messrs Postmasters’ insufferable negligences by one hard thought of yours– Tell me if you receive that letter at all. It is full of remonstrance against your exaggerated kindness on the subject of the ring; & my hope was that it wd prevail, & win from you the hair of your dear father without the supererogatory onyx & gold—& it prayed besides that in the case of your remaining unpersuadable, you wd combine a little tress of your own hair with his & so complete the association to my heart. And I tried to say how deeply I was touched & am, by your having such a thought!—ah! & you have not received that letter? I hope you will at least receive it .. to prove that I am not a stone, a dead root beneath the shower—& to prevail with you against this foolishness of kindness—(for indeed & indeed I will call it by all the hard names I can think of!) & persuade you to suffer me to keep that ring (better than an onyx ring, better than any queen’s ring in the world) of your continual friendship for me, & forgo the other. In the meanwhile, somebody came here this morning to admeasure my finger, & sent up a hundred & fifty hoops to me that I might distinguish the fitting one– My dearest friend, I really quite blushed to do it—blushed as if I was going to be married! I felt quite ashamed—& unworthy besides of this dreadful preparation for your onyx ring. An onyx ring!– Like the queen’s!. Ah my dearest dearest friend, even if you persisted in this thought about a ring at all, why not select a common hoop & a glass? How cd you think of this hyper-generosity? this overflow of the chalice?– I am as “angry”, be sure, as my sensibility to your dear affection will render possible. Yes, be sure of it.
I quite agree with you about Mrs Niven that she wd do well & wisely to have advice respecting her eye. Did she ever hear of Dr Turnbull? [1] —and wd she shrink from coming up to London to take his opinion? I know that in the profession there are evil voices which cry “Quack” at him—but I know besides that his new remedy of the outward application of prussic acid to the eyes, has worked miracles both in & out of the hospitals, causing the hopelessly blind to see—& without an intermediate operation. I wish she wd consult Dr Turnbull. There wd be no harm—no suffering & no injury in it,—let the restoration of the eye take place or not—& the probability is that it wd take place. Try to persuade your Mrs Niven to come to London & consult Dr Turnbull.
And this reminds me that I have been much grieved lately by an affection of the eyes which has manifested itself in poor Nelly Bordman. You remember my speaking to you of Nelly Bordman—& of the note she wrote to you in acknowledgement of your kind gift of flowers & flower-seeds– She reveres & loves you—& whenever I see her, & whenever she writes to me there is always an enquiry about you, & her sympathy & anxiety in your late affliction were warm & earnest. I told you that she belonged to a respectable family in Kent,—the daughter of a clergyman & the niece & the cousin, I think, of clergymen, .. I always smile at her for her various ecclesiastical ties .. but an orphan & very poor, & received in most generous affection by that excellent man Mr Jago of Hammersmith who loves her as a daughter. Well! lately one of her eyes has become affected by the same desorder which darkened Milton’s. [2] There is no speck nor stain. The eyes look equally bright, & without a cloud. Yet the optic nerve is undergoing paralysis—and the result anticipated, is a “total ecclipse .. nor sun, nor moon” [3] in the midst of her youth. Is it not very, very sad? the sadder, that she is not rich—& that the natural ministrations of mother or sister are denied to her. The prussic acid in her case, which is very peculiar, was unavailing—but it was applied by a medical man according to Dr Turnbull’s book, & not by himself which I was sorry for—& she is now trying but very hopelessly, a course of blisters on the temple. Poor, poor Nelly! Her strength & cheerfulness of mind under these trying circumstances are most admirable & exemplary—her piety was always as remarkable as her intelligence– She has thrown down her books, which she loved so, & taken up her knitting—she is knitting a quilt, she says, poor thing, & learning to be happy with her own thoughts instead of other people’s– I am sure that you will be sorry for my poor Nelly.
Only one eye is as present affected—but the other, it is anticipated, will scarcely be spared—& the complaint is what is called “a family complaint.” Cheerful as she is, she has evidently little hope for the future,—& on her last visit to me, as she went down stairs with my sister she said so .. adding with a consideration for others uncommon in such circumstances, “Miss Barrett is so kindly interested in me that I did not like to tell her all the evil, lest I shd give her pain”. My poor Nelly!–
Well! I hope that Mrs Niven wont insist upon your going to her at night any more at least,—the past insisting being quite bad enough in its consequences [4] —& that you wont do the will of the Gentiles, [5] though Mrs Niven be one of them, while the winter lasts,—in driving out through darkness & bludgeons & coming home to be ill. As to society, she is quite right in living at Reading while you are there: your intimacy being worth the crowd, & overworth it. But as to society, in a general sense, I do wonder (being a citizen) why intellectual people do not prefer the social opportunities of this London to all the “good neighbourhoods” ever made or fancied in the provinces– The whole system of “country families” & their priviledges, appears to me utterly absurd & detestable—& the morning visiting & dining out & exclusiveness of intercourse are perfectly outrageous to every view I have, of what is agreeable & rational. [6] Whereas here, in London, you may select your acquaintances, & select also your manner & time of receiving them– You realize here the dream of solitude & silence, vainly dreamed in the country; or have a better reason for associating with your kind, than living within visiting distance & possessing a certain number of acres can present. And thus, anybody in the world, who is a thinking body & wishes for society, shd come, I fancy in mine innocence cockneycal, to London & choose their associates. Artists, literary people, thinkers, men & women of letters— .. what a broad choice there is!– And how much tranquillity abstractedly from the carts & carriages! What quiet—what silence, here where I write! I can hear my own heart beat through it—it is a metropolitan hush!
I meant to write today of my book [7] —but it must be for another. The miscellanies are much longer for the most part than “miscellaneous poems” are obliged to be—between the one & two hundred lines, many, I think.
I have written to Mr Schloss which surely shd have been done before,—to thank him for the Bijou. Who is Mr Budd? Yes—to expect “rural” commentary on the King of Prussia, is too exacting. [8]
Oh my dearest friend, you little guess at the sort of shyness of shyness which my poor dearest Stormie (as we call him) suffers under, if you suppose that I cd dare to read to him all your kindness said. It is a sort of shyness which prevents anyone from saying before him “he is shy”. He shrinks from the shadow of his own personality—from being talked of or looked at or reasoned about. Not one of us wd dare to make an observation upon his stammering, for instance,—altho’ it is rather a nervous affection than a physical defect, & not at all bad in its degree. Knowing that he held you in high estimation I read to him what you said in your goodness, about “feeling sure that he & you wd be friends” & that you had been “interested” by his appearance of “sensibility”. My dearest friend, he flushed up to the temples, walked about the room in agitation, reproached me gently (he is much attached to me, dear fellow, & when he does’nt think of you, makes me a grand exception to the female race, to the great amusement of all the house who delight in stirring him up to the climax of his anti-womanism!) reproached me gently for saying a word to you about the giver of the picture [9] .. about naming him to Miss Mitford!! My dearest friend, I was confounded! I might have guessed it—but I overlooked the possibility—& stood aghast at the consequence of my imprudence. I missed all about the shyness—it was just the idea of being distinguished by you, of being selected for observation, which startled him! Ah—it is so unfortunate! And he so affectionate, so generous, so right-minded in all things! It is a worse shyness than yours was, my dearest Miss Mitford—because it is the sense of what he considers to be a natural defect, this stammering, on which it is founded—& because he does not struggle. Papa sent him with George to the Glasgow university, a few years ago—& he began by being brave, by attending all the lectures & reading his own Essays in the presence of the Collegiate body. He did it for some time perfectly well & without hesitation—but one morning, his nerves were weaker than usual & he became excited, & the impediment was distinguished in the reading. In the cruel brutal animal spirits of early youth, some of the students laughed out. He stopped in a moment—was silent, & fell back into his seat covering his face with both his hands!—and never from that moment could remonstrance or persuasion move him from his resolution of reading in public no more; and he left the university, much to Papa’s vexation, without even taking his degree there, as George did, because the few words which it was necessary to speak in public in order to it, he would not speak. And the shadow has fallen upon his life from that time to this. That brutal laugh rings in the ears of his fancy, I do not doubt, whenever he hears a stranger speak. It is the sign of social life to him, & most repulsive.
My brother Henry is Major Nugent’s great friend, [10] & used to walk out with him constantly: and it must be of him that Dr Allnut [11] spoke to you. Thank you for telling me of it, my dearest friend. Do you know Mrs Nugent? I do not—but my family have frequent intercourse with her, in the way of visiting.
Still not a word of yourself! Do, do say how you are—& whether the nervousness is yielding to precaution & soothing rest. As to Flush, he is a hero to be sure—but if the name Flush have heroic virtue, how do you manage the deductions with reference to my Flush who assuredly is no Turenne? [12] Indeed I am sorry to say as Mr Boyd said of his daughter, that he is “effeminate”,—& you and Ben would scarcely conjecture to what extent. And that reminds me that I have been frightened about Flushie all the morning. On a sudden, after looking & appearing quite well & happy, he began to scream, shriek, most frightfully. We fancied that a pin might have run into his foot—but no! There was nothing to be seen—and the shrieks have recurred at intervals, thrice or four times this morning. In the meanwhile he eats & drinks & is in good spirits. What can be the reason?—& the matter?–
May God bless you, my ever dearest friend!–
Your own
EBB–
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 143–147.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Alexander Turnbull, M.D. was the author of Treatment of the Diseases of the Eye, by Means of Prussic Acid Vapour, and Other Medicinal Agents (1843).
2. Now thought to have been glaucoma (DNB).
3. Cf. Samson Agonistes (1671), lines 81ff.
4. i.e., the nocturnal attack on Miss Mitford, described in letter 1069.
5. I Peter, 4:3.
6. EBB repeatedly voices this opinion, and her reluctance to subscribe to the practice, in her Diary.
7. Her projected book, published as Poems (1844).
8. The King of Prussia was one of the personalities in Schloss’s English Bijou Almanac (1843). Mr. Budd has not been positively identified; John Philip Budd, a Reading tailor, could fit EBB’s comment.
9. See letter 1105 for Charles John’s gift.
10. Major Nugent was their blind neighbour (see letter 958).
11. Richard Hopkins Allnatt, author of Tic Douloureux, or Neuralgia Facialis, and Other Nervous Affections; Their Seat, Nature and Cause (1841).
12. Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (1611–75), Marshal of France and grandson of William the Silent, Prince of Orange, was the military leader primarily responsible for bringing to a conclusion the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48).
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