1778. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 261–262.
Three Mile Cross,
Dec. 4, 1844. [1]
Thank you, dearest, for your recommendations of books. The only work of Eugene Sue which I have read among those you ask about, is “Le Salamandre.” You need not regret it. As strange a work it is as ever was written—with few indications of the power to come. The only remarkable thing is the preface, in which, by way of reason for making all his people unhappy in this world, or rather for taking them out of it by being shot and shooting themselves, he says that to represent good people as successful in this world and rogues as unsuccessful would take away the chief argument for a future life. Now I do really hold that virtue, although not always prosperous, is yet upon the whole far happier than vice. Is not it Pope who calls virtue that “beloved contented thing”? [2] I am quite sure that to represent systematically vice as fortunate, and goodness as wretched, tends to make selfish people vicious; and it is really wicked in Balzac to give one the pain he does in this way. In “Une Ténébreuse Affaire,” for instance, I was so provoked with him for making Napoleon kill Michu [3] and forgive those dolts of gentlemen, that I could have flung the book at his (Balzac’s) head, if luckily that wonderful head had been within reach.
Oh! I see that you will not like Casimir Delavigne. It confirms an opinion which I have long entertained, that the drama, as drama, is a sealed book to those who have never been in the habit of seeing acted plays. He is just half way between Victor Hugo and Racine; and you may rely upon it, that upon the stage he is much more effective than Victor Hugo, because he deals in none of those violent exaggerations which must frequently come out like caricature when brought into action. Ah! dearest love, Fredrika Bremer! I did read half “The Neighbours,” and really you are the only person of a high class of mind whom I have found liking her works. [4] Mrs. Jameson said “they could not live;” and William Harness called them “that trash.”
Now I think I have written quite enough of sauciness for one evening. Ah! if I were as well behaved as Mrs. Jameson!!! I am glad you have seen her. Heaven bless you, my well beloved!
Ever your own,
M. R. Mitford.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 187–188 (as 21 December 1844).
1. Dated 21 December by L’Estrange, evidently misreading Miss Mitford’s handwriting; this letter seems to be a reply to EBB’s letter of 30 November.
2. Cf. Pope, Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue I, line 140.
3. The gamekeeper in Balzac’s novel who pretends to be a Republican but secretly assists the de Simeuse family in their Royalist conspiracies.
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