1458. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 86–88.
[London]
Dec 12. 1843.
Thank you & Ben my beloved friend for your goodness about the violets,—& also for the sight of Mrs Niven’s excellent letter. Yes—these letters are excellently written: but I shd like more of individuality & personality in them: & they are, as you observed, more like a chapter in a book of travels, than such a page from the book of Life, as a letter certainly ought to be. I dont complain of any over excellence in the style—I like good writing even under the postmark. But the want of individuality, is a great want to me, & leaves a cold vacant place, to my apprehension. How long does Mrs Niven remain in Italy? When does she return to England? And did it never occur to either yourself or her, that you should go with her?– There! I should have been frightened to ask that question if she were not safely gone—but now I can ask it & not tremble. I wonder you did not go with her!—that she did [not] set about begging, & that you did not give yourself away to that end. Then, what travels, .. rather what pictures, you wd have brought us home, to pay & overpay your expences,—& what a pure gold of memory you wd have hoarded up for making current coin of, all the days of your life & fame!– Still, I am abundantly satisfied, believe me, with matters as they are—and am selfish enough to choose you yourself, before all the forms & abstracts of you yourself that the world could put into morocco.
Talking of which, I congratulate you on the honor (& myself on the pleasure of hearing of it) of your honorary membership to the new Institute. [1] It was very right & discerning of them: only I am surprised they should have selected for a sharer of the grace, such a writer as Agnes Strictland, [2] when surely Miss Martineau & Mrs Jameson stand by to claim it—both the latter having a European reputation!– For Miss Strictland, what is she but an agreeable compiler of the memoir part of history .. industry & honesty, her best praise? And the argument in her favor .... that “you should not be the only woman,” only stands good under the supposition that there is nobody else worthier than herself of bearing you company. Now surely either Hariett [sic] Martineau or Mrs Jameson fulfils this condition. Still we must not find fault, where the Institution has done so much good already, as to have honored itself by honoring you. I clap my hands for one, long & loud, .. & shouldn’t mind besides knocking with my umbrella. And it is an excellent Institution, .. just what the country wanted, in relation both to its own literary men & women, & to the literary persons of other countries. My single doubt attaches itself to the amount of the subscription, which seems to be a large sum for a man of letters (scarcely ever rich) to contribute yearly. I think it is twenty pounds a year (or fifteen) for a resident in London, & ten pounds from the country. Papa told me yesterday, when we were talking of you, that somebody once asked him to subscribe, but that he said ‘nay’ to it—not having any personal interest in such an institution. This was natural enough——but I think (I thought so even before it had pleased me by honoring you) that I should subscribe, for the sake of literature in an abstraction, were it not for the high prices. If it were a guinea a year, it wd be compassable. But ten guineas .. but twenty! They will have an institute for court lords & city lords, and not by any means for men of letters & poets of Grub Street, [3] .. if they “continue on the same terms.” They will defeat their intentions by the means adopted to fulfil them.
Dearest friend, I am delighted to hear of your being able to get out to walk—and as to Master Flush, if the charmer had charmed ever so wisely in the pot on the fire, he was assuredly wrong in allowing you to go out alone. Tell him so from me, with a kiss to the auburn of his right ear. For the rest, he is a very clever Flush, & deserves infinite commendation for his discernment in the matter of Ben’s ‘whereabouts’. They are all clever Flushies in fact—& might be, if taken in time as you say, very highly academical Flushies. But pardon me for saying, that the circumstance of your Flush’s making sheep’s eyes [4] at a sheep’s head, proves him to be inferior in all delicacy of the pantry, to my Flush,—who would laugh such a thing to scorn, [5] .. & will not touch the very best soup you would offer him, or a potatoe unless mashed with cream & butter. At my dinner he generally tries the potatoes; and if they happen not to be cooked with what he considers the sufficient quantity of cream & butter, nobody can persuade him to take another mouthful. The only thing he never refuses, is spunge-cake & roast partridge—yet he did refuse the latter twice in my recollection … when it was tough. Happily for him & the house expences, he has a very small appetite. If he had the “capacious mouth” [6] of your Garagantua [sic], [7] & also his own niceties of Apicius, partridges might perish by coveys, & bills (not partridges’ bills) grow supernaturally large. [8]
I do not remember the evidence of a defective state of science in Germany, in Stilling’s book, [9] —but I take it on your word. I do not deny generally that there is a great deal of what is called ‘quackery’ .. that is, a great deal of theory calling itself science on insufficient data, acted upon wildly. Still these guesses into the Unknown, if sometimes dangerous & often ridiculous to the common observer, have their side of grandeur, yes & of ultimate usefulness. Take for instance this magnetism. For years, its phenomena have been received as facts in Germany, while our sages were opening on them the floodgates of scorn. Now, when we begin to see the facts too, we talk finely of deciding the question for them, & of saving the rest of the world from the German ‘quacks’. In my humble opinion, the first word we take upon us to speak, shd on the contrary be .. “you were right—& we ware [sic] wrong—therefore we will remember for the future that you may be right & we wrong.” The immense amount of, I do not say scientific, but certainly mental philosophy, which has come to us from Germany, my dearest friend, you would not I am sure, wish to deny. It is a great people—“a most thinking people” [10] in the grave sense of the words—& if a most smoking people also, none the worse for that, intellectually.
Thank you thank you thank you, for your great kindness in dreaming me to Three Mile Cross. I have much to say, but must stop the press, for today.
I love you faithfully & bid God bless you.
Ever yours in such love.
EBB.
Not a word of Mr Kenyon–
Such a fog!– Never has been such a fog since I have been in London!– I have read & written by a candle all day. [11]
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 358–361.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855), author and traveller, founder and first editor of The Athenæum, was instrumental in the establishment in 1843 of the British and Foreign Institute, a literary and social club of which he became resident director. He later (1851) became president of the new London Temperance League.
2. Sic. Agnes Strickland (1796–1874), poet and historian, was the author of Historical Tales of Illustrious British Children (1833) and Tales and Stories from History (1836). She also wrote with her sister Elizabeth (1794–1875) Lives of the Queens of England (1840), although her name alone appeared on the title page.
3. A street “much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems” (Johnson); hence suggestive of literary hacks.
4. Sir Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke[’]s Arcadia (1590), ii, 107.
5. Cf. Psalms, 22:7.
6. John Gay, Acis and Galatea (1732), ii, 14.
7. Gargantua, famed for his insatiable appetite, was immortalized by Rabelais.
8. Marcus Gaius Apicius, an epicure in the reign of Tiberius, was the author of a book on the pleasures of the table. After spending the greater part of his substance on gratifying his gourmandizing, he hanged himself, fearing that his remaining capital would not support his indulgences.
9. The Theory of Pneumatology (1834). EBB had praised the book in letter 874.
10. We have not located the source of this quotation.
11. The Times of 14 December noted that “During the whole of Tuesday [12 December] the density of the fog stopped the entire navigation of the river as far as the Nore.”
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