1225. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 96–97.
[London]
April 29. 1843.
You have disappointed & grieved me my dearest friend—seeing that I expected to receive from your first Bath letter delightful assurances of your being fairy-changed for the better, & as fresh & gay as any new cowslip of the fields. Oh this sickness, this sickness!—a “land-pirate” as Shakespeare wd say!—— [1] And yet my advice to you is, to be heroic & persevere, & not to think of coming back– I am not very wise to be sure, & my advice is scarcely worth … a guinea. But as it seems to me as far as I can discern at all, that your attack is the consequence not of the journey only, but of the journey re-acting upon a dis-arranged system, my hope is that these unpleasant effects will prove transitory,—& gradually, the farther you dare them, wear themselves away. If I were you, therefore, I wd rest as long as I could at Bath & then go on bravely .. to some place where if it became necessary, I might rest again. I am by no means convinced that, because the travelling has provoked sickness once (or even if it were to do so a second & third time ..) it is not likely to do you good ultimately. Now you will laugh at my gold-headed-caneism [2] .. & you have full leave to laugh. Only in the meanwhile my dearest friend, I dont laugh a bit .. for indeed it does vex & disappoint me to think of what an arrival you made at Bath, [3] & how depressed you must have felt, & how you must have frightened K.! There now! I have written Bristol!—may the gods avert the omen! I wish you had not set out to Bristol so soon—instead of completing your rest at Bath & waiting there the recovery of your inward balance. Could not Mrs Trollope have come to see you? [4] or could you not have seen her later? Well—there is no use in preaching against things done–
Before I lay my cane down .... did you ever try,—on the sickness beginning to threaten—brandy & water with a little opium? Do try it.
Certainly if you persist in vain,—if you travel & travel & are pursued by these terrible symptoms, I wd if I were you, settle somewhere for the time of your absence, instead of moving about– As to giving up the absence altogether—in your plan of going back to Reading,—I give my voice against it & as loud a voice as I can make it,—because I am intimately convinced that change of scene & air is necessary for you & that unless your resolution is to throw up the brief of Life & usefulness, you ought to <***>
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 213–214.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Cf. The Merchant of Venice, I, 3, 23–24. Miss Mitford told Miss Harrison that she arrived in Bath very ill (Chorley, II, 6).
2. “I would I were that portly Gentleman / With gold-laced hat and golden-headed cane, / Who hangs in Delia’s parlor!” (Southey, “The Amatory Poems of Abel Shufflebottom,” IV, 1–3).
3. EBB originally wrote “Bristol” and then deleted it, adding “Bath” above the line.
4. Mrs. Trollope, who lived in Cumberland, was visiting relatives in Bristol and Miss Mitford had hoped to meet her.
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