1845. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 83–85.
[London]
Wednesday. [19] Feb. 1845. [1]
What I was going to say of men, or rather of a man, .. was just this of Mr Hunter. It might be amusing if it were not so vexatious, to hear him talk as he does––talk at you, (viz at me) as he does. Ever since my last book has brought me a little more before the public, I can do or say or wish to do & say, nothing right with him—and on, on, he talks epigrams about the sin & shame of those divine angels, called women, daring to tread in the dust of a multitude, when they ought to be minding their clouds. All this, not a bit in joke—but gravely & bitterly. Every new review he sees, there is a burst of indignation—and the League-motion, obliquely entertained as it was, wrapt me in a whirlwind. You know .. & I tell him, .. the feeling is all to be analyzed into contempt of the sex. It is just that, & no less. For a woman to hang down her head like a lily through life, and ‘die of a rose in aromatic pain’ [2] at her death, .. to sit or lounge as in a Book of beauty, [3] and be “defended” by the strong & mighty thinkers on all sides of her, .. this, he thinks, is her destiny & glory. It is not the pudding-making and stocking-darning theory—it is more graceful & picturesque. But the significance is precisely the same,—and the absurdity a hundred times over, greater. Who makes my pudding, is useful to me,—but who looks languishing in a Book of Beauty, is good for nothing so far.
Angry as all this makes me, I am not, as you are perhaps aware, a very strong partizan on the Rights-of-woman-side of the argument—at least I have not been, since I was twelve years old. I believe that, considering men & women in the mass, there is an inequality of intellect, and that it is proved by the very state of things of which gifted women complain,—& more than proved by the manner in which their complaint is received by their own sisterhood. At the same time, the argument used by men in this relation, should go no further than the fact,—and it is cruel & odious to see the yearning they have, not to meet the weakness of women with their manly protection, but to exaggerate that weakness, in order to parade their protection. I know that women (many of them) encourage this tendency by parading their weakness—and it is detestable to my eyes, in an equal degree, on both sides of sex.
I have been expecting to hear from you—& I am wondering whether I shall have to wait to monday before I see you. Happy day, whenever it comes!–
Oh yes! I delight in conferring books, as the critics say—and I will, when I can, get the ‘Music & Manners’ to refresh my recollection from, and the ‘Ecole des Journalistes,’ & look at them together. You must understand my dearest friend, that I am far from approving of the fondness of writers like the journalists (of which the whole body of writers in France, men & women, consist) for turning against their own brotherhood & sisterhood with bitter speech & vain depreciation. [4] Such invective appears to me both ungenerous and unavailing. Let the individual who shrinks from the fault, raise the standard by example & exhortation. All this throwing of mud will make nobody any cleaner.
As for the vicissitudes in the social habits, why we all know from the long, sad history of genius, that money which comes as the produce of art & literature comes, is apt to go as easily—that the temperament of the man of genius is not steady nor tending to carefulness,—and that the love of beauty in him is very confusable (in the dark) with the love of luxury. The vices, vicious as they are, which are reproached in men of this calibre, lean to virtue’s side and to glory’s, and demand some pity though not any extenuation. Vices as they are, .. noxious vices & disgraceful in proportion to the height of their influence,—they may be better things before the arch-angels, than some starck & narrow virtues which are called so in the calendar. But, however this may be, I do hate!...
And, however I hate, I cannot express one thought more, or one indignation. For Mr Hunter is here, between me & post time,—& he comes so far (from Brixton) that I cannot refuse to see him. May God bless you! Try to read me—& bridge the differences .. the gaps.
Your ever attached
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 80–82.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by letter 1842 in which EBB’s comments on men are left unfinished.
2. Pope, An Essay on Man (1732–34), I, line 200.
3. Heath’s Book of Beauty (1833) by L.E. Landon, continued as The Book of Beauty; or Royal Gallery.
4. Chorley recalled attending a reading of Mme. Girardin’s play, L’École des journalistes (1839), in Music and Manners, II, pp. 260–266. In a footnote, Chorley explained that Jules Janin had “addressed one of his most graceful and sprightly pieces of writing to the lady, remonstrating against the unfairness and severity of her portraiture.” See also letters 1865 and 1880.
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