1278. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 7, 178–179.
[London]
June 10. 1843.
In Laconic idiom my dearest friend, I must write, [1] .. just to say how sorry I am about the sprain, begging you to lay up the ankle & not to walk upon it—and to announce the departure (at last) of my two packets of china, tea tray & table cover. Tell me if they are at all what will answer the purpose, & if Ben is satisfied with the ‘ornaments for the chimney-piece’. I am not, myself—but nothing seems to me good enough for you, or equal to “the desires of my mind” [2] in relation to you.
Oh yes! I like Mr Eagles’s note,—& the other besides– You shall have them back another day.
I have forwarded your letter to Mr Horne, smiling to myself both from satisfaction at your cordial praise of his poem .. which, I quite agree with you, is a noble work, .. & from naughty enjoyment of his wonder at being asked for “fifty or a hundred copies”. My dearest friend, I wrote to ask him for six, promising him a whole silver sixpence or its equivalent for them—and he sent me last night … only one .. his own private copy, & the single solitary copy to which he cd have access– The book is passing away rapidly; & I expect to hear of a second edition next week—& the publisher is in an inapproachable humour (from what I can understand) by either author or reader. Send me your bishop’s address, & a few other addresses .. such as you care most for … (I wont promise to satisfy all the hundred) & let me try and forge away, & soften with Queen’s heads [3] the hard heart of her liege bookseller. Poor Mr Horne can do nothing, I really believe. The publisher is so driven to extremity that he has taken to hide copies under his bed!—and what is the meaning & mystery of it all, let the soothsayers & riddle-guessers of the world declare!–
Now I must go. Lady Margaret [Cocks] has sent me a volume of m∙s. poems to read—& here is first, I see, an Ode to Disappointment— 2dly, an ode to Victory .. ditto to Industry .. ditto to War .. ditto to Youth & Wisdom– I hope I shall be inspired with one to Patience before I have done. How cross of me! But then here’s an ode to Liberty, to keep me in countenance ..
“The good, the noble, generous mind
Was formed in freedom’s purest gale.
Add, bondage was alone designed
For those who in the ties of virtue fail.”
How can I write a sigh? [4]
Farewell!– your own
EBB–
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 245–246.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. i.e., briefly. The inhabitants of Laconia were known for brevity of speech.
2. Cf. Psalms, 37:4.
3. i.e., the nine penny stamps required by the recent notice in the magazines (see letter 1277, note 2).
4. As far as we have been able to establish, these poems remained in manuscript. EBB’s sigh suggests they deserved this fate.
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