1255. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 140–142.
[London]
Friday– May 20th [sic, for 19] 1843. [1]
The excess of my surprise in receiving your letter my dearest friend, is quite on the other side of my expression! [2] I only had it today, friday, and it was written I suppose on Wednesday .. therefore the crisis of my wondering was deferred by some four & twenty hours—but now, I wonder enough for yesterday & today both together. Three Mile Cross—Three Mile Cross!– And you to set off to travel round the world!! Well—you were not born under Columbus’s star—that is certain!—neither will you ever be immortal as a writer of travels, unless it be ‘autour de ma chambre’ like Monsier de Maistre! [3] I do not abate a jot of my wonderment the longer I think of it! Oh! how Mr Kenyon will help me in wondering! & what an example you will be for evermore to all rash persons who take up the metier of travelling & fancy it an easy one! To go to the very threshold of Devonshire, & come back again! Well—the Fates are in it—and I was not in it,—or I shd most assuredly have made you go on, on the physical force principle,—altho’—mind, .. I do not reproach you in the least for coming back, because the impulse must have been strong & the heart within you scarcely chivalrous, and I was not there to be your man at arms!– What did K. say? Nothing? Was she merely passive?!– I cannot get over my surprise! You will be put down as a pen & ink eccentricity at Bath, be sure, and serve them as a subject for ‘the season’–
You gave me leave to laugh, my beloved friend—& I laugh—nay, perhaps I might laugh even without leave, since there is no knowing how far one’s impertinences may go in a ‘given space’: but to speak seriously & sincerely I am uneasy about the paint &c at Three Mile Cross, [4] & wish very much to know whether you find the house habitable & are better & more inclined to sleep from having resumed your old quiet of locality & regular habits of living. Tell me of this in all possible detail, & then let me hear about Mr Eagles who must be wonderful too, being actually as you say, both a poet & gentleman at once. [5] I think I spoke of him in my letter which went to meet you at Linton [6] & with which you refused to keep tryst—and I shall be glad to hear you speak of him ‘according to knowledge’ [7] & of his pictures also. [8] If you are better for returning home, I will forgive you in a moment—so be quick & tell me that you are better! After all, it is with a certain foolish contentedness that I feel we are near again! I say “foolish,” because my fear is all the while that it may not be so good for you, .. this premature nearness!– The air among the hills,—the various & exalting scenery, the momentary change of place, … I looked for happy influences upon you, of all these things! But you looked for rest .. & finding it not, you flew back like Noah’s dove [9] —and Noah did’nt upbraid the dove, that I ever heard of, and I “by that same sign” [10] shdnt upbraid you!–
Lady Margaret Cocks came to see me last tuesday, & is coming again on saturday—for after the first quarter of an hour, I had pleasure in her society & kindliness. I think I have told you that she has known me since I was three years old, & used to be interested in me when I had the misfortune of being a “precocity” & wrote epic poems at ten. Without any imagination she has a love for letters & for imaginative letters too, which, united to her disposition towards me & the want of literary sympathy in our neighbourhood in the country, wd have much attached me to her, if it had not been for a reserve of manner & character altogether, which was & is repulsive to me. I cannot bear .. cannot stand well .. the repulsiveness of a “dear Miss Barrett” in the letter of a person who has known me since I was three years old. But she is kind in intention & feeling—and for the rest, very good, very upright, very cultivated .. a fair latin scholar .. a reader of French, Italian, Spanish & German—a writer of English verses (independent of the muses!) & excellently versed in all manner of theological historical & moral English reading. With all of which, she is not learned—& she is not charming—& nobody I think, in the world wd describe her even by accident as a superior woman. There is a coldness, a want of imagination, an inability to rise above “the flats”—an ignorance of expansiveness whether in the moral or the mental! An excellent woman—a sensible woman—a well-read woman! We respect her, & have done! almost done—for I have an affectionate respect for her!– She is one of my many reasons for distrusting the effects of many languages & books—not that she is what she is by them,—but because she is what she is with them. If I had a daughter, I wd never teach her the dead languages, or many living ones either, unless she had a devil, & wd insist on learning them—as I had & would, myself.
And now you will be glad to have done with me & with my daughters, dearest friend! Do let me hear of you directly! and tell me your degree of comfort at home—& whether you have begun to repent yet of the rash return.
My uncle & aunt Clarke came yesterday,—& I am not very glad of it. You know they are father & mother to Mr Eagles’s dearly purchased son-in-law; and they remain, I believe (.. though they have sheathed their swords ..) [11] by no means very tenderly inclined towards the Sketcher,—poet & gentleman!
Ever your attached
EBB.
Mr Haydon’s daughter is better.
Dear little Flush! How I can fancy that scene! [12] My Flush will scarcely go a step away from me—refuses day after day, to go down to dinner, .. & why, .. except from increase of love, or a fear that I may vanish suddenly according to the precedent of the white bed, .. I cant make out– For the rest he is in great spirits & perfect health.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 228–231.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. 20 May 1843 was a Saturday.
2. Cf. “expressing itself beyond expression” (Jonson, The Masque of Hymen, 1616). Miss Mitford, feeling unwell, had, on the spur of the moment, cut short her visit to Bristol. She explained to Miss Jephson that, having gone to the station with the intention of going to Barnstaple, “instead of embarking in the down train, [she] took a passage in the up” (L’Estrange (2), III, 176).
3. Xavier de Maistre (1763–1852) wrote Voyage Autour de ma Chambre (1794) while in prison in 1790.
4. Miss Mitford’s cottage was to have been painted in her absence, but the work was incomplete upon her premature return. To avoid the smell of paint, which Mr. May considered “just as fatal as prussic acid,” Miss Mitford took temporary refuge in Ben Kirby’s mother’s house (L’Estrange (2), III, 174, 177).
5. Although Eagles’ daughter was married to EBB’s cousin, EBB had not met him.
7. Romans, 10:2.
8. “There too was his one picture, worth many a grand collection—a picture which, when once seen, can never be forgotten—the St. Catherine of Dominichino, from which Sir Joshua [Reynolds] borrowed the attitude of his Tragic Muse” (Mitford, III, 8–9).
9. Genesis, 8:9.
10. EBB perhaps refers to the sign of the cross that legend says the Emperor Constantine saw in the sky, with the prophecy that he would conquer through that sign.
11. Cf. Henry V, III, 1, 21.
12. The welcome given Miss Mitford by her Flush (see L’Estrange (2), III, 178).
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