1211. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 72–73.
[London]
Wednesday. [12 April] 1843. [1]
I find that I made an omission yesterday, for which poor Nelly Bordman might rightfully reproach me. My dearest friend, if you wd have the goodness to perform your thought & send the seeds to me for her, you wd make her at once happy & grateful. Of that, I am very certain—& therefore my neglect of your question is less pardonable in my own judgement. She came to see me a few days ago, & confessed in the midst of her cheerfulness, poor thing, that the eye affected is in no degree less so, & not likely to become less so, according to the best hopes granted to her by medical men. [2] Nevertheless the other eye appearing strong up to this time, she hopes on, that she shall not be blind after all—and I try to hope too!—only the prospect is so questionable!– She looked delighted when she heard that you had enquired about her, & she will look still brighter when she hears of this new kindness in your promises for her!– Thank you, my dearest friend!– I do thank you earnestly, altho’ I appeared to be ungrateful once .... yesterday!
Are you not glad that Wordsworth has the Laureateship? I am. It is his right. I hear that Campbell not merely wished but applied for it [3] .. in vain—and I had fancied, in my private speculativeness, that the queen might have been perverse with her prerogative upon this one occasion & given it, in spite of the Examiner, to poor Leigh Hunt; [4] & Mr Kenyon’s thoughts turned to Mr Tennyson, who has ruined himself with a trade in carving wood [5] .. strange for a poet. Either of the three might have worn righteously this official laurel .. but neither of them before Wordsworth. So .. Long live the Laureate!——
I wrote at length to you yesterday, & will not overwhelm you with more than enough today. May God bless you my beloved friend–
Ever your
EBB–
I send you ‘Grace Darling’– The subject is so painful to me that I am scarcely a fair judge of its merit [6] —but “Worthy of Wordsworth” may be too high praise for it. Send it back to me when you write next. I value it as a gift from him– Have you seen Mr Quillinan’s vengeance on Mr Landor in the last Blackwood? [7] It is bloody vengeance—& who can say, undeserved?
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 207–208.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Day and month suggested by reference to the previous letter and Wordsworth’s acceptance of the laureateship on 4 April 1843.
2. For EBB’s earlier references to Miss Bordman’s ocular problems, see letters 1113 and 1124.
3. Doubtless gossip passed on to her by Kenyon, as we have found nothing to support the assertion.
4. Leigh Hunt, with his brother John, founded The Examiner in 1808 and their treatment of controversial issues provoked three prosecutions by the government, one of these resulting, in February 1813, in a fine and two years’ imprisonment for uncomplimentary references to the Prince Regent. (For details of the Brownings’ friendship with Leigh Hunt, see pp. 383–385.)
5. Tennyson’s son tells how a Dr. Allen, “who had either conceived, or had adopted, the idea of wood-carving by machinery … inspired the Tennysons with so great an enthusiasm for it” that Tennyson invested substantially in the project, which soon collapsed; “my father’s worldly goods were all gone, and a portion of the property of his brothers and sisters. Then followed a season of real hardship” (Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir, by Hallam Tennyson, 1897, I, 220–221).
6. Dealing with the rescue of men from a shipwreck, it reminded her painfully of Bro’s death at sea.
7. Landor had published “Imaginary Conversation: Southey and Porson” in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in December 1842 (pp. 687–715); it contained many uncomplimentary references to Wordsworth. Edward Quillinan, Wordsworth’s son-in-law, responded with his own imaginary conversation between Landor and Christopher North (John Wilson), the editor of Blackwood’s, in the issue of April 1843 (pp. 518–536), in which North defends Wordsworth.
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