1153. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 6, 326–327.
[London]
Feb. 16th 1843.
If any one of my brothers, my beloved friend, shd have had it in his power to express in some slight way the respect & interest which they all feel towards you, it must be George, the only one who can stand yet by himself– I write to explain this, lest the other name which is sacredly dear & sorrowful to me, shd be applied wrongly. But Papa’s own name is the same—Edward—and as Mr Kenyon, dear Mr Kenyon, often calls him by it, the mistake probably arose so. [1]
You say nothing of your health & power of sleeping—and as you did write in spite of me, I wish you had told me how you were. Do not write again—not soon—and hereafter when you do, let me have some sign of your being better.
Yes! Mr Macready, from all that I can understand, behaved execrably to Mr Browning: would & would not act his play—and at last acted it for damnation. [2] This is friendship—but notwithstanding every possible disadvantage, the poetry triumphed—and that was victory! Mr Kenyon who was present, bears witness to the emotion of the full house, .. to the living tears & compelled attention.
“And those who came to mock, remained to weep”. [3]
I agree with you, however, in regretting that the poet shd,—having a choice,—expose himself to such malignities & vulgarities. Doing so, .. as Paul Courier said of Napoleon when he wanted to be an emperor …, “il aspire à descendre”. [4]
Yesterday I had a heap of newspapers & magazines from America,—so full of kindnesses to me personally, that I forget the boundary line catastrophe altogether. [5] Among the literary newsmongering from England, your laying the foundation-stone at Reading is mentioned of course.
Is your dramatic Montague the Eleonora Louisa Montagu who writes occasionally, or used to write, in the Athenæum? [6] But dont answer this question or any other. Dont write to me, now while you are oppressed with much writing, my dearest friend– Only keep in your mind how truly I love you & how my thoughts wish all good to you constantly.
Your EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 175–176.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Miss Mitford had apparently been told that one of the respondents to the subscription appeal was Edward Moulton-Barrett, and had thought him EBB’s brother rather than her father.
2. Macready’s handling of A Blot in the ’Scutcheon offended RB and caused a lasting breach between the two. As RB’s only extant version of the quarrel is dated 1884, the most accurate account of it is probably that written by Arnould to Domett in May 1843 (see SD1191).
3. Cf. Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), line 180.
4. “He aspires to descend.” Paul Louis Courier de Méré (1772–1825) was echoing Corneille’s phrase in Cinna, act I, scene 2.
5. An acrimonious dispute over the exact line of the U.S.-Canadian border was settled by a treaty signed in Washington on 9 August 1842 by Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton.
6. Apart from numerous contributions to The Athenæum (nine poems in the 1841 issues, for example), Eleanora Louisa Montagu (1811–1903) wrote a play, The Landgrave (1839), which a reviewer found “deficient in nearly all the requisites which should ensure its stage success” (The Athenæum, no. 616, 17 August 1839, pp. 607–608).
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