1241. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 119–121.
[London]
May 13th 1843.
My dearest friend, you have a letter from me, I hope, which was addressed to you at Bath before you left it .. & which if there be any righteousness in post offices, will have followed the print of your footsteps into Clifton. In the meantime I hear from you that Mr Eagles is sullen as a cross eagle .. & denies his name by refusing to fly towards the … sun!– Strange of Mr Eagles!– I am surprised & vexed—and can scarcely believe even now, but that Miss James made a mistake & translated shyness into disinclination! Perhaps when you write next to me you will tell me it proved so & that the Sketcher entered at last into your point of sight–
Dearest Miss Mitford, how are you? Mind you tell me in all detail in the great letter which I am looking for every morning. The want of sleep evidently proceeds from over-excitement if not over-fatigue: and I exhort you to make to yourself quieter afternoons,—to cease to walk at three o’clock, & to cease to talk at nine, .. & watch the effect of that preparation of tranquillity upon the night’s rest. If I did not prepare myself in some like manner .. shut myself up from all degrees of talking by eight o clock in the evening .. all the opium I put my trust in, wd fail in procuring me any night-sleep– I smooth my soul & senses as people do their pillows,—& then, after a while, I may sleep perhaps.
I am mournful at heart today—& this is the cause. Today we received a sad account of our poor young cousin, little Cissy Butler, to whom with her sister, my aunt Miss Graham Clarke has been as a mother since they lost their own,—& who has been pronounced consumptive by the medical men at Cheltenham. She is about fifteen years old, .. a gentle, delicate-looking & moving & speaking little thing,—with a sweet smile & a self-forgetting nature, and an affectionateness of spirit which has its part both in earth & Heaven. She was with her sister & my aunt in Devonshire, part of the time I was there—& then, three years ago, I saw her for the last time—and a dear gentle child she was then! This last winter they have spent in Cheltenham, & ever since Christmas, she has had a cough, the account of which I did not like, & which prepared me in part for the melancholy news of this morning. Still, we can hope .. and if we can hope, perhaps we ought to hope. I think of myself—& how the stethoscope reported equally ill of my lungs, & how I am alive still & better! and then I think again, that it may please God to spare her, & my poor aunt who is breaking her heart about her!– Mr Shaw, the medical man, [1] —famous, they say, in such cases,—has commanded mutton chops & porter for her, & will not give an opinion upon probable results, until his system has been tried. Dear little Cissy!– May God bless her—dear child!–
Moreover .. by way of a little evil .. Lady Margaret Cocks has come to London & asked to see me; & I who said ‘No’ to the same question from the same questioner last year, was ashamed to say so this year, & yet was vexed in saying ‘yes,’ past your comprehension & sympathy. Every day after two I am in an agitation—watching for double-knocks .. palpitating at footsteps … leaping from my sofa at hypothetical voices .. growing cold & pale in each cheek at the excess of my own fantasy, when a mouse’s stirring gives it opportunity!– Ah! you have no sympathy for such childishness: and yet the suffering is none the less actual for the lightness of the occasion!– I wish she were come—& gone—that so I might be serene again! I dread her like a thunderstorm! [2] She is kind enough—too kind, you will suggest, for my ingratitude,—& sensible enough, .. & something of an old friend! But to see her is an inexpressible effort to me—! Oh! there, again is that eternal knocker!– But no—it is’nt Lady Margaret!
Flush went to Hampstead yesterday & spent a delightful day, said his companions, running, racing, leaping through the green fields– For Arabel & Octavius had tickets, in common with their friends the Miss Mackintoshes, [3] to see Cardinal Wolsey’s bed, .. a splendid fabric of tortoise shell & ivory, presented to the little prince of Wales by its proprietor Mr Thompson, & waiting in his cottage at Hampstead the queen’s pleasure for its removal to Windsor. An ivory chair too, in which a Pope had sate, formed a part of the present—and “it shd have been larger” said the donor “only Her Majesty was too proud to come herself to inspect it.” Prince Albert went—& stood there, according to tradition, two hours, three months ago—since which, Mr Thompson has given up the ghost at ninety six, [4] leaving everything over & above his presents to Victoria, to Gregory editor of the Satirist, a relation of his own. [5]
Mr Haydon has past from his state of depression about his daughter, into one of undeniable exultation about the Academicians– They have hung his picture, his Saragossa, iniquitously [6] —and he is in a sublime fury with the hangers thereof—which perhaps is an advantageous distraction for his spirits generally. What is of more consequence than the hanging of the picture, is his success in regard to the cartoons. I do hope,—most earnestly I hope,—that he may be successful there!
Well! I shall expect my great letter very soon—tomorrow perhaps: but I dont ask you for it, nor even for a little letter. Think of yourself—take care of yourself—and that will be your best careful thought for me!
May God bless you, my dearest friend! Ben is excellent.
I am your own affectionate
EBB–
Address: Miss Mitford / 11 Sion Row / Clifton.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 222–225.
Manuscript: Eton College Library and Wellesley College.
1. Courtland S.M. Viney Shaw, of Cheltenham, had been admitted a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1834.
2. Accounts of EBB’s behaviour in storms can be found in Diary (e.g., pp. 35, 52 and 54).
3. Octavius later (1859) married Charlotte Mackintosh.
4. “Windsor Castle will very shortly be enriched by the addition of several rare and unique articles of ancient furniture (amongst which are the magnificent ebony bedstead and hangings of Cardinal Wolsey, the cardinal’s celebrated pontifical chair of state, elaborately and richly carved cabinets, &c.), which have been presented to the Sovereign by Mr. Thompson, of Frognall Priory, Hampstead, and which Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to accept” (The Times, 29 September 1842). John Thompson died on 6 March 1843, aged 86.
5. Barnard Gregory (1796–1852) founded, in 1831, The Satirist, or the Censor of the Times; it “obtained the support of readers delighting in scandal and calumny” (DNB). He married Thompson’s niece.
6. Haydon had told EBB that the picture was “nearer Heaven than it ever was before” in letter 1239.
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