1794. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 9, 295–298.
[London]
Dec. 28. 1844–
My ever dearest friend why do I not hear from you? Because I dont deserve it perhaps! just as if all happiness in this world were to go by deserts!—— I wrote last, besides, remember—a memorable letter by its stupidity! and I particularly want some of your dear thoughts & words to put up in my room just now, instead of those holly boughs which people have left off bringing me, because they make me so sad. Write, my dearest friend, & be kind in your own old way!——
You shall not say that I never send you any news. I shall give you some news today, which is’nt of the commonest. Miss Martineau’s Clairvoyante has, before several competent witnesses, answered unhesitatingly enquiries addressed to her in three foreign languages, viz, French, German & Italian. What do you say to that? Is that to be a subject of wonder & consideration only for the mystical, & writers of ‘Seraphims’? Answer me. The fact duly authenticated is to be appended to the new edition of the ‘Letters’ about to be published by Moxon, which publication, by the way, was delayed by a protest made by Mr Dilke against it, in behalf of the interests of his paper. [1] At present they have arranged the matter, & the clairvoyante linguist is to be farther manifested in the phenomenon of her new accomplishment. The letter was not addressed to me—but Mr Kenyon read it twice through, & let me have the very words of it—& therefore although I do not answer for the fact, I do, for Miss Martineau’s statement of it.
In the meantime Mr Dilke, as you see in today’s Athenæum, denies magnetic power & testimony, [2] —cuts away root & branch [3] .. or tries—for his volition appears to me stronger than his logic. Not that he does not point out certain chinks, or broken links in the evidence,—I think he does!—& in fact the Martineau cases have seemed to me by no means the most unexceptionable I have heard on the subject. But his determination to ‘put down’ Mesmerism, without investigating its claims, .. is surely nothing more nor less than positiveness & self will. He wont admit of investigation. Investigation is half way to belief, he says!– And this, in our blind world, where we grope on all sides & talk of the sun & moon,—is to pass as philosophy!——
I understand that Mr Chorley used some entreaty to her, not to publish her papers in the Athenæum,—for that Mr Dilke wdnt believe a word, though Moses & the prophets [4] asked him,—& that she must therefore look to having her views opposed in the very journal which out of respect to herself personally, had accepted the office of conveying them to the public.
Well. I have finished the ‘Chouans.’ Of a certain power, without any doubt, but very heavy in many parts, & exceedingly painful in all. Mademoiselle de Verneuil [5] is a type which you see under different colourings & from different points of sight, throughout Balzac—& revolting as the ideas suggested are, I doubt whether the book wd have been readable as a romance, in her absence. Is it possible that the chouans were so like the beasts as he makes them? How different from the heroic ideal which we catch up from Rio in his Chouannerie!– [6] And how Balzac has the liberty of writing on coolly & with all his powers, though with his hands all bloody from those horrors, like the poor little boy’s shoe! Can you ever forget that shoe? & what belongs to it? the blind brutal grief of the mother & widow, pushing on, like a blind bull, in its one steady purpose of killing ‘le gars’. The things are told so downrightly—! The simplicity of parts of the narrative struck me as so terrific. And then that beautiful, profligate, fantastic, noble woman, helping to splash the blood on all sides! [7] The power of the book is undeniable—but nobody in the world could read it a second time, and many, who have no previous sustaining faith in the writer, would not read it to an end, once.
Also I am reading David Sechard—& do not mind the ‘accounts.’ Balzac has bewitched me—he will teach me at last, my arithmetic table, which I never cd learn before. His wonderful greatness in making the ideality, real,—& the reality, ideal, I take to be unequalled among writers. The first volume I have not finished yet. Did you mean to praise the letter from D’Arthez to Eve, which occurs in it, or another to come? The one I have read is very fine,—& the distinction, asserted in it, between ‘l’homme de poésie’ & ‘le poete,’ most abundantly true. [8] Yes—and will you not grant to Balzac, on reconsideration, that Lucien never could, by his organization & quality of gifts, come to greatness? It was not Paris that destroyed him: it is not provincial life that will save him. He bears his ruin within. He is incomplete as an intellectual being—& his curse is, to have aspiration without power. How fine David is in his noble patience—the true genius, after all!– What a lovely victorious creature, his Eve!—the very embodiment of the pure consoling sympathy of a woman’s love!– I delight in the book, as far as I have read!– It is worth twenty ‘Chouans’ to my particular taste at least. And Lucien the “femmelette,” .. shedding his impotent tears, & making up his mind to die at once, because he does’nt feel well! How true—how true,—to the remotest touch & the nearest!
Have you read the ‘Chimes’? It is in the seventh edition—but if I told you, as Mr Kenyon told me, & as Mr Pratt [9] told him, that fifty thousand copies were sold, I told you wrong. Fifteen thousand, we shd all have said. The sale is immense enough, without exaggerating it. One bookseller is said to have taken four thousand copies for himself. It is reviewed in the Edinburgh Review, [10] I observe.
More literary news is, that Mr Carlyle is writing a Life of Cromwell, & has thrown one nearly completed manuscript into the fire already, & almost finished another. [11]
Do let me hear. Miss Martineau, her Mesmerist Mrs Wynyard or Wyndham, & the Clairvoyante are all about to leave Tynemouth for Mr Gregg’s house near Manchester [12] —& there, Miss M— will remain a month, previous to her returning into general society. She asserts that she is in perfect health—& never in fact was so well before!!– I have not seen Mr Greenhough’s, [13] her medical man’s statement of her case: but from the extract given by Mr Dilke, the connection between the cure & the Mesmerism, appears more than ever uncertain, if not improbable.
My voice is coming back fast, & the faster for the hope of talking to you. When shall I see you—when—when—I say to myself, & not to you, mind. I shd be ashamed of dunning you.
I had the least little slip of letter or note .. as half this page .. from Mr Horne the other day, who says nothing, except that I am of little faith because I complain of never hearing from him, & that he had skated that day, three hours on the Elbe, & was frozen in a hard resolve not to think of coming home till February. You are mentioned however—with all the brevity.
And do you observe the advertisement today of a poem called ‘Montezuma’—‘a ballad,’ I think, ‘& other poems,’—by somebody, nobody ever heard of? [14]
In this season & every season I love you, dearest Miss Mitford, & wish you that happiness, which, as yours, must be always a part of mine.
Most affectionately your
EBB.
At this moment I hear with dismay that the oysters were never sent. Wilson, .. in the bustle of Christmas, forgot it, she confesses, completely,—& but for my careless question an instant ago, wd never have remembered it. Forgive us all––careless people!
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 43–46.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Charles Wentworth Dilke, editor of The Athenæum, tried to stop Moxon’s republication of Miss Martineau’s account of her experiences with mesmerism. Dilke was unsuccessful, however, and Moxon published Letters on Mesmerism in early 1845.
2. “A Few Words by Way of Comment on Miss Martineau’s Statement” appeared in The Athenæum for 28 December (no. 896, pp. 1198–1199).
3. Cf. Daniel 11:7.
4. Cf. Luke 16:29.
5. Marie de Verneuil, the heroine of Balzac’s Les Chouans.
6. Alexis François Rio (1797–1874) was the author of La Petite Chouannerie, ou Histoire d’un collège breton sous l’Empire (1842).
7. EBB is referring to Barbette, a character in Les Chouans. When she discovered that her husband, Galope-Chopine, had been beheaded by the Royalists, she dipped her son’s foot in his father’s bloody shoes, swore vengeance, and sent him to the Blues to learn to be a soldier.
8. EBB refers to the principal characters in David Séchard: the title character, his wife Eve, her brother Lucien, and Daniel d’Arthez.
9. We have not identified this person.
10. In the issue for January 1845 (pp. 181–189).
11. Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches was published in 1845. See also letter 1612, note 1.
12. This is confirmed by Miss Martineau’s letter of 30 December 1844. William Rathbone Greg (1809–81) was an essayist and a Manchester merchant who was active in the Anti-Corn Law agitation. “In 1842 he won a prize offered by the Anti-Corn Law League for the best essay on ‘Agriculture and the Corn Laws’” (DNB).
13. Sic, for Greenhow. Medical Report of the Case of Miss H______ M______ was published in 1845 by Thomas Michael Greenhow (1791–1881).
14. Montezuma, A Ballad of Mexico; The Red Hand, and other Poems by William Henry Leatham was advertised as “Just published” in The Athenæum for 28 December 1844 (no. 896, p. 1202).
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