1650. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 48–50.
[London]
Friday. [12 July 1844] [1]
Thank you my beloved friend– You are better to me than I am to you. I have been thinking day after day of the fragmentary letter I sent you,—but fell upon a melancholy anniversary, [2] which drew all my spirits out of me, .. & so still kept to silence. Yesterday too I saw Mr Hunter & Mary, & was down in the drawing room, the two exertions together cutting my day into bits. And now I am to talk of Gerfaut. [3]
Yes—I think it is powerful—but still my dearest friend, I cant help barking as hard as Flush, against your evident tendency towards throwing down Balzac & setting up M. De Bernard … or anybody else. Now really & positively I must have you confess that Bernard is naught, compared to Balzac,—their several geniuses not being confrontable. It amuses me how I raise riddles for myself & never can make them out. Gerfaut was among the books which I had fancied you wd not ‘abide’—just on account of the love. And as you can abide the love, why then I return to my position about the “Lily in the valley,” Balzac’s “Nouvelle Heloise” which in my private opinion (deep down) is worth ten of Rousseau’s. [4] Compare the “Lis dans la vallèe,” to “Gerfaut”——you wont find breath to do it!
Yes, Bernard has written other works,—the “Cinquantine” for instance—‘Le Nœud Gordien’—“Le Gendre”. [5] But Balzac—Balzac.
As to the ‘taint’ .. you know, .. such a thing as a pure attachment, .. or at least a love for a woman before she is somebody’s wife, .. is something quite beyond wishing for among these romance-writers. The whole pepper of their idea of love, lies in the wickedness of it. And neither you nor I, my dearest Miss Mitford, must judge of anything (of that sort) in these books according to our forgone moral perspective-rules—otherwise we shall distinguish nothing & bear nothing. The evil influence of them lies in the familiarization of these peculiar forms of evil to the imagination of the reader——does it not? & must it not? By the way (or out of the way) I think Soulié a writer of more power & variety than Bernard. With prodigious extravagances though!– Raymond [6] also has power, with sufficient abuses of the same. If you like art-novels, as they are called,—musical art being understood,—get George Sand’s Consuelo with its sequel of the Comtesse de Rudolstat. [7] Perfectly unoffensive both of them, & full of beauty to my mind—if you pardon the occasional heavinesses—& like (as I do) the multiplicity of volumes. Well—but what have you done with Paul de Kock? Not gone through him by regular reading, surely? Not disgusted prematurely … after all?
Thank you much & truly for your kindness about Mrs Orme. A reference to me is nothing,—of course—but she will give references which will be abundantly satisfactory to anybody. I do not know a person more amply qualified for such a position than she is—far better qualified for that than for teaching. [8] She says sometimes in joke (but with a joke as near as possible to a sense of earnest) that she was born to be a Duchess, .. only there was a cross somehow. The Lowther family & the Macdonalds [9] would respond in a moment to any call for a reference—but then, as you said of Mrs Dupuy, .. it is really “too good to come true” .. & for a friend of mine certainly! I should be too delighted if I cd see her in such a position.! But you have done everything with all your own kindness,—and if the stars wd but be half as kind as you, there cd be no doubt of our prosperity.
Mrs Dupuy cannot (it is satisfactory to know) be in any extreme or even any pressing embarrassment, [10] or she wd have closed instantly with the proposal. Do you mean to imply that she was aggrieved … vexed in the least degree, by your suggesting the thing? If so, she is a riddle.
Well, but I lean to a gentler verdict than yours, on the Patmore poems—I do indeed. There is a power—though uncouth, immature, & undevelopped in music. What he wants most is ear– The rest will mellow by age: and by the time he comes to be “an elderly gentleman,” he will probably be a “young poet” worth listening to.
I heard the other day that ‘Agathonia’ was Mrs Gore’s!—as complete a failure, to my apprehension, as the comedy appears to the rest of the world. [11] Stiff & cold! I am vain enough, not to be vainer by the attribution of the book to me—for besides Mr Harness’s fancy, .. Mr Crabbe Robinson told George at Mr Kenyon’s the other day, that he had been vexed at the difficulty he found in reading it through, as it was my book!– Then the fame of it went over to Mrs Coleridge, .. & lighted at last on the right head .. Mrs Gore’s. While I write of her, I shd tell you that Punch apprized his readers last week with all his own inimitable gravity, that the judging committee had been conscientiously moved to subscribe among themselves to the amount of the five hundred pounds, which they had presented to Mr Webster. [12]
Wont you write? I am dreadfully afraid that you are leaving off writing by degrees.
When my book is done .. & it crawls to its last bound, .. I shall be ashamed to write at length to you, .. & too angry besides .. if you wont write to me. May God bless you, my beloved friend!
Your ever affectionate EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, II, 420–422.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by the reference to “a melancholy anniversary” and the article in Punch.
2. Of Bro’s death on 11 July 1840.
3. Gerfaut (1838), by Charles de Bernard (pseudonym of Pierre Marie Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette, 1804–50). He was a friend of Balzac, who encouraged and influenced him in his career as an author.
4. Rousseau’s Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse was published in 1761; it became the model for “back to nature” stories. EBB had called Balzac’s Le Lys dans la Vallée (1835) “one of the most perfect of the ‘Nouvelle Heloises’ of the day” (letter 1611).
5. La Cinquantine was published in 1839, Le Nœud Gordien in 1838 and Le Gendre in 1841.
6. The pseudonym Michel Raymond was used by Raymond Brucker (1800–75) and Michel Masson (1800–83) for their collaboration on Le Maçon (1828), and subsequently by Brucker for some of his unassisted works.
7. La Comtesse de Rudolstadt was published in 1844.
8. In letter 1648, EBB had sought Miss Mitford’s recommendation for a society post for Mrs. Orme in the case of Mrs. Dupuy’s declining it. Mrs. Orme was currently operating a girls’ school in Kensington with her widowed daughter.
9. Not identified, but assumed to be former employers of Mrs. Orme.
10. See letter 1297 for an earlier comment on Mrs. Dupuy’s financial situation.
11. EBB had previously thought that the author was Caroline Clive (see letter 1590).
12. This satirical letter appeared in the 6 July 1844 issue of Punch. See letters 1643 and 1648 for EBB’s earlier comments on Mrs. Gore’s play.
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