1220. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 89–90.
[London]
April 26. 1843.
My beloved Friend I have received your letter & the seeds & thank you for both—& the books can well be waited for. In the meanwhile you are in sad spirits .. or were .... & seem to go to Bath in a spiritual Box tunnel scarcely less gloomy than the actual one. [1] As to the will & my literary executorship I smile at it instead of sighing, & think to myself how very little likely, according to all human probabilities, it is, that I should survive you & be called on to do more with your mss, than thank you, as I do now, most truly & tenderly, for such a proof of trust in me & affection for me. No, No, my dearest friend. By all that you say, you only persuade me further of the necessity of this journey & of the good it is likely to do you. You have life in you for thirty years & more, if God’s will shd be so,––& supposing that you are wise & serene & walk in the sunshine & open your heart to the south wind. Agitations & anxieties such as have shaken you lately, will leave, for a time, a trembling in the frame & sensibilities,—but after a while, these will pass .. and a new tide of calm & gentle feelings will flow back upon the sand. I look at your letter & think––“Ah! by this time, perhaps, she begins to be better”—& so I comfort myself. But let me have more comfort soon .. if you can with truth. I dont like, in the midst of all my wisdom, to think of you in low spirits .. so very depressed as this last little note makes out—so write to me & tell me, if you can, that you are reviving. Write to me at any rate. Oh but I am sure to have plenty of letters during this journey, for the sake of my Public!– [2]
Now mind, if you write to Flush instead of to me, I never will forgive you–
I have intercepted some of the seeds, because I have the plan of a garden in a window-box .. and the majority I send to Nelly Bordman today, to her grateful pleasure, I am sure. Thank you, thank you, both for her & for me.
I hear that Mr Browning has two new tragedies, one of them near the press, viâ Belles & Pomegranates, & one near the stage, viâ Mr Charles Kean—& for this last I am sorry. [3]
Not a moment more to write in! But I was under a vow to myself to write something to you today, & this is the something! May God bless you. Tell me that you like Bath as a vision ... because I do. There is an attraction to me in the look of its mountainous streets & of the hills visible through the vistas of marble.
Ever your own
EBB.
If you shd be in Bath on Sunday, wd you object to going to hear Mr Jay?—the non-conformist– [4]
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 211–213.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. See letter 1216, note 2, for Miss Mitford’s avoidance of the Box Tunnel, almost two miles long, on the way to Bath.
2. A reference to the possible publication of the letters written by Miss Mitford during her visit to Bath and Bristol (see letter 1213).
3. RB told Domett, in letter 1244, that he had to finish a play written for Kean. This was Colombe’s Birthday, no. VI in the Bells and Pomegranates series, published in March 1844. The other work was the “wise metaphysical play,” A Soul’s Tragedy, mentioned in letter 964. Despite RB’s telling Domett of his intention to print it by the end of 1842, it was not published until April 1846, as Bells and Pomegranates, No. VIII. EBB explains her regret at RB’s writing for the stage in letter 1231.
4. William Jay (1769–1853) became known as “the boy preacher” when he delivered a series of discourses at Surrey Chapel in London in 1788. In 1791 he was appointed pastor of the Argyle Independent Chapel, Bath, an office he filled with great popularity for the rest of his life. He was the author of The Mutual Duties of Husbands and Wives (1801), Morning Exercises in the Closet (1829) and Evening Exercises (1831), among other works.
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