1266. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 157–159.
[London]
May 29. 1843.
Dearest friend, I asked directly about the floor-cloth, & even at the probable certainty of being too late would have written on saturday, if the law of floorcloth had appeared to be different here, from the exaction of your tradespeople. But it appears that carpets, Kidderminster carpets at least, may be had cheaper than any possible cheapness of floor-cloth, & that therefore you may pay more for your hall than your sittingroom & yet over-pay in no wise. Papa talks of 4s a yd for floor-cloth—Mr Kenyon confirming it. Tell me how you have managed it by eloquence. Have you papered your drawing rooms? & bedrooms? What colours have you chosen to sit in & sleep in? Do tell me– I am glad that you are making the house comfortable & bright & think it wise & right of you. Mr Kenyon & you shd be full of upholstering sympathies towards each other—for he talks to me of his glory just as you do, & declares that he never looks at a coat without its bringing up a train of associated carpets & window-curtains!– He came in to me yesterday & talked delightfully, & gave me hopes of my ivy upon whose fading leaves I was beginning a course of melancholy & moralization—& told me that after entertaining Messrs Eagles & Bezzi for seven days from this monday, he was about to bid a long farewell to every sort of friend & acquaintance until he had removed from Harley Place & settled in his new paradise. [1] This wrench from society becomes the more necessary because he had calculated upon a longer time than his brother’s plans can give him, for the furnishing & removing—& therefore we cant, any of us, grumble or groan, while justice is in us. Mr Edward Kenyon may have left Vienna by this time; but he travels very slowly & lingeringly, towards England, & promises not to burst in upon the upholsterers unawares– Our Mr Kenyon wont go farther from us, altho’ he goes to the Regent’s Park: & his back windows looking down Wimpole Street over the new Road, I cd almost fancy him to be coming nearer instead. Oh yes, yes!—you will see Mr Kenyon when you are able to come .. that is, when you can come without trouble to yrself, or fatigue or any possible modification of vexatiousness. As to your plan of returning on the same day, .. that [2] is, saving your presence, a mere fantasy & folly, & not worth controverting in a grave letter like this of mine. If you please, we will set it down a folly unworthy of the attention of either of us—‘guarda e passa’. [3] My dearest friend, you shd as soon go to the moon & come back again the same day, as to this house with me in it … to speak plainly–
Mr Kenyon was at Mr Chorley’s the other evening, & from thence went to Mr Babbage’s where he met among divers notabilities, Mr Borrow the Gypsey. You know, or you ought as soon as possible to know, Borrow’s ‘Bible in Spain’ & ‘Gypsies in Spain’. [4] He is full of genius .. you may almost call it genius, .. & earnestness of purpose, .. a strange wild energy living in his eye, ear, & voice, & giving out life all around,—as picturesque on paper as a gypsey on a moor; & a sincere man & upright!– Mr Kenyon says that he looked “every inch a” .. man, [5] as he stood in Mr Babbage[’]s drawingroom, .. with six feet three of height, bone & muscle, .. grey large earnest eyes, aquiline nose, determined mouth,—fit to be the lion he was! The story goes that he dined with Mr Milman & others at Murray’s some days ago, & that the conversation turning on Spain he said quietly .. “My good fellows, none of you know anything of Spain except what you learn from romances”, .. upon which (incredible to be told,—too ludicrous to be credible!) the good company, being far too good in an aristocratical sense, to be addressed as “good fellows,” showed their sense of the insult by rising from table in a body & walking out of the room!– The story runs so! and I only tell it!
Here is Mr Kenyon who cant read “The Neighbours.” But then .. and there surely must be a “but then” in every case of this kind .. he cant read romances or novels at all, & is only going to try to read Miss Austen’s. And—I eschew saying anything personally offensive to you .. I think he wont succeed with Miss Austen à fortiori [6] .. because if he can complain of a want of Beauty in Frederica Bremer (which I do not discern) he must à fortiori complain of a defect very obvious & undeniable in the English writer.
Mr Horne advertises “Orion an epic poem in three books, price a farthing”: and as I have sent to the publisher’s for sundry copies you shall have one by the first possible post. What have we come to?—selling epics for a farthing & sending them by a penny post!
Also, Mr Reade’s ‘Sacred Poems’ I am looking into by dear Mr Kenyon’s kindness. He is in Wordsworth now, having made the circuit of the poets. [7] What a phenomenon!
As to Mr Landor’s domestic wars I know nothing about them, & could believe without any sort of effort that he is a warlike person & not often on the right side. I am glad he has a ministering angel to smile peace into him, & stand as specific peace maker before the “jealous husbands”. [8] You did not send me Mr Eagles’s letter—& I shd like to see it very much. I have, as you observed once of me, a sort of superstitious leaning towards judging by handwritings .. or rather, to do myself more justice … towards guessing by them; & I always seem nearer to & more cognizant of a stranger by having had one glance granted to me, of his handwriting. There is something in it .. I do really think– For instance .. I cd be personal about your handwriting, .. but Crow comes to take away my letter. May God bless you my dearest friend!
You are not indifferently loved by
Your EBB–
Do you know that Mrs Dupuy’s cause comes on tomorrow—& that she is going to bring out a book of costumes? [9]
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 235–238.
Manuscript: Eton College Library and Wellesley College.
1. Kenyon was giving up his house to his brother and moving to another, fronting Regent’s Park (see letter 1234).
2. Underscored three times.
3. “Look and pass on” (Dante, Inferno, III, 51).
4. The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gipsies of Spain (1841), by George Henry Borrow (1803–81). EBB had urged Miss Mitford to read The Bible in Spain in letter 1132.
5. Cf. King Lear, IV, 6, 107.
6. “With stronger reason.”
7. In his Sacred Poems (1843), Reade, whose plagiarism was notorious, had taken Wordsworth as his inspiration.
8. Landor, whom Miss Mitford had met in Bath, lived apart from his wife. His “ministering angel” was the daughter of his friend Mrs. Paynter, also a Bath resident; she was the inspiration for several of his smaller pieces of verse, and “both by her accomplishments and by the name of Rose, had brought back to him a dream of his youth.” In 1796, while walking on the beach, Landor had met Mrs. Paynter’s half-sister, Rose Whitworth Aylmer, whom Rose Paynter believed to have been his first love. Miss Aylmer sailed for India in 1798 and died there of cholera in 1800. (See Walter Savage Landor: A Biography, by John Forster, 1869, p. 585 and Landor: A Replevin by Malcolm Elwin, 1958, p. 62.) For an earlier comment about his Lothario-like behaviour and “jealous husbands,” see letter 1229.
9. Mrs. Dupuy was suing Dr. Matthew Truman, the nephew of her late sister’s husband, for misappropriation of funds (see letters 1287 and 1290 for the outcome of the case). Costumes of British Ladies, “by a Lady of distinction well known in fashionable life … in Twelve Numbers, Drawn and Lithographed by Mr. T. Sampson” was advertised in The Athenæum of 3 June (no. 814, p. 536).
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