1234. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 112–114.
[London]
[?6] [May 1843] [1]
<***> may take breath & be clean again. You who exhorted me to a conversazione, did you suspect that I was’nt fit to be seen? And yet that was the melancholy truth. As to dear Mr Kenyon, he sees everything en beau [2] —or at least he is used to me—or at least I am used to him––and he pardons me my spiders!– [3] Dear Mr Kenyon!–
He said something to me the other day from which I inferred that he thought of writing to Mr Eagles to command him to call on you– I believe that said Sketcher & Mr Bezzi are about to pay him a visit here in London very soon. Did I tell you that he is on the point of giving up his present house in Harley Place to his brother, and of removing to another house opposite, which fronts the Regent’s Park?– In furnishing & completing this house, he is absorbed (so he pretends) just now—and the drawing rooms with walls of tender green according to the tint of a duck’s egg, & gilded cornices, and crimson silk curtains, & tables of red granite, & carpetings with the chequered brightness of a cathedral-window, will be beautiful if I fancy them aright from his description; & I shall like them better (I should, I mean) than Mr Chorley’s more gorgeous vanities. But the best furniture after all, is books—books. If I had to furnish a room for myself to live in, particularly in London, it shd be all books, all round, .. except where I might aspire to a fine picture––or at least to a portrait or bust, .. a likeness of a friend .. or of a friend of my soul, such as the great dead poets are!– And as, after all, I couldn’t sit down on books, or make window curtains of them, .. the coverings to my chairs & my draperies & my carpetings shd all be green .. green .. not duck-egg green, but leaf-green––that I might so live in an everlasting sort of forest shadow[.] I love green—it is delightful to my eyes!– When I was alive to the vanities of costume, I used to like to dress in green—resisting every consideration of couleur de rose [4] & vindicated complexions. People have said to me again & again—“Why you are always in green! It’s your livery I suppose”– And it was Robin Hood’s livery!—and why not mine? I like it best of the colours.
But for me, I have done with colours now—except on the walls & floors. My green leaf has fallen away.
Really, if you forgive me for writing you such a letter, it is as much as I can expect of your tender mercies. [5] My head, you will begin to fear, has turned, in the passage from my own room to this—and you will wish me safe back again to some ordinary degree of good sense–
I am very glad that Mr Landor has given you a picture—& I shd be very sorry that you missed Mrs Trollope,—only if you meet her at Exeter, there is’nt much to regret beyond the present disappointment—& my dearest friend, I intended to say in my last letter, that if Miss James wishes for Beattie’s Minstrel [6] I cd easily procure it here & forward it to you under a penny stamp or two,—which I wd have done at once & without saying a word, if I had no wholesome fear of seeming officious–
My dear little Flushie! If you had seen his agitation in the course of my transmigration!! I walked from my room across the threshold of this—but there, I staggered,—& Crow took me up in her arms & carried me to this sofa. Flush rushed, leapt, threw himself upon me!– There was no pacifying Flush. He leapt to a conclusion that I was being murdered, & panted & trembled accordingly. Ever since, he has hardly left me. And yet, it is evident enough that he highly disapproves of this room, & considers it a very inferior sort of room, & unworthy of his presence & of mine; & probably he wdnt think it worth while to bark, if any stranger walked into it–
My dearest friend—your letters are always fit for the press as letters—and it wd be easy for you to print an expurgatorial text—by which means, you can at once continue to write freely to me & fully for the public. [7] That is my suggestion! Why I am half-frightened that you mean to give up writing to me!
May God bless you always!
Your EBB–
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 220–222.
Manuscript: Folger Shakespeare Library.
1. Dated by EBB’s temporary removal from her room mentioned in letter 1231.
2. “In a favourable light.”
3. The tame spiders in EBB’s undusted room (see letter 1231).
4. “Rose-coloured.”
5. Cf. Luke, 1:78.
6. The Minstrel (1771) by James Beattie (1735–1803).
7. A further reference to the proposal to publish the letters written by Miss Mitford during her journey.
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