1923. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 10, 228–230.
[London]
Thursday. [22 May 1845] [1]
My ever dearest friend, how can I tell you of my sympathy in your new distresses? [2] Surely, of all trusting persons, your position is the most cruel—& treasons seem the natural growth of your faithfulness & generosity to a degree unexampled. It is painful—it is more than painful. Yet, after all, I say to myself that I would rather be deceived as you have been, than remaining safe by means of such worldly minded suspiciousness of nature as brings salvation to many. Certainly in the matter of this Jane, I have never felt sure of her—I could not get rid of the impression of the circumstances here in London,—knowing them to be very true, & feeling besides that a girl who could romance about a watch in the manner she did, must be deficient in some elemental principle or other which was likely to develop into a fatal deficiency of conduct hereafter. And then she talked far too much,—I do not mean from sheer gaiety of heart as you fancied,—but too much for the reverence & affection she owed to you. There was nothing evil said—do not think it!—but everything too lightly for my liking. Both Wilson & the housekeeper-nurse were displeased with her, [3] —& a degree or two more than I told you, .. & than I thought it necessary to tell you, inasmuch as it struck me that they might be too grave peradventure, for her gaiety to find grace in their eyes. Still, I asked some questions, & did not like the answers. I feared she was not generally true, or inclined to repay your kindness by the devotion you deserved—and yet I was fearful of disturbing you by doubts which might simply disturb you without attaining any practical good. My dearest friend!—how you have been wronged!—and how gracious & beautiful it is in you to keep alive such a ‘soul of good’ [4] amidst all these influences of ‘things evil’!,—that you shd <be> so considerate to the poor vile woman who kept the deposit of Jane’s thieveries with her, on the verge of the grave; & shd have a feeling for her vileness which she had not for herself, poor wretch; & shd forbear to ruin the six little children whom she did not shrink from corrupting!– It is so kind, & womanly & pitiful of you—and I try to think of you instead of Jane, &, so, let the whole story go to the account of the good in human nature, rather than to the evil in it. But Papa agrees with your friends that you shd prosecute—that it is a duty to prosecute,—& he says moreover that if the sick woman cd be persuaded to turn Queen’s evidence, she wd be safe from harm, & the punishment wd attain the chief criminal over her head. I tell you what he says. I do not say it. I have my own thoughts about that turning queen’s evidence, & could not propose to another to persuade anybody to do it. Men skilled in legal morals think differently, & perhaps more rationally—but that is another thing from this.
Minny (the nurse-housekeeper) & Wilson are not surprised they say—but give vent to a profusion of ‘ohs’ and ‘alases’. As for me I do grieve for you heart to heart. You had not the regard for her happily which you had for K_____ but the treason, the treason!—how it must cut us always, & in any shape!
No—I do not perceive the likeness you point out between the Irish novelists & the French ones of the second class—Souliotes & the rest,—I do not, I confess. Carleton [5] has pathos,—but in power & imagination he seems to me not at all on the level of Soulié. Banim has power & passion quite equal perhaps—but he has not the variety, & gymnastic imaginativeness—if I may call it so. [6] Banim is the king of the Irish romances,—high, high above the heads of the others—yet he can be very heavy & lengthy, & is great only in scenes, I think—very unequal, in any case, to himself .. now is’nt he? As to Lever, I have a mental paralysis, you are aware, which prevents my judging of him, although I do conscientiously mean to try the St Patrick’s Eve– [7]
Oh—but I turn back to Jane—& to all the evil. What makes me think of it still more than I shd do of course, is the effect it is likely to have on your plans—most unrighteous selfishness of mine!—— Tell me how to help being selfish in such a case—& then you begin to say already .. “whether or not I come to make any stay.” Why how can I help it!—. Yet I will not teaze you—I do not teaze you—you shall not let me teaze you!– I wd rather go back to the French <…> [8] novelists—& now by all the gods, I wrote it ‘moralists’! ‘Les trois mousquetaires’ has lost its bloom with me a little by the circumstance of my having seen extracts from it done into English of Blackwood. And also the ‘Memoires de Fleure,’ was made into an agreeable English book, with certain abbreviations, by Theodore Hook,—& I read it a few years ago under the title of ‘The French stage,’ & something more, or something else. [9]
I will ask Mr Kenyon when I see him,—but now he is .. where? at Bath? at Clifton? in Devonshire? .. with his attendant Muses, Miss Bayley & Miss Thomson. [10] They are to be a fortnight away—& then he comes back to his June engagements. I in the meantime, miss him sorely.
May God bless you, my dearest friend! I think of you & feel with you. Love me a little—who love you so much! All the Hedleys are at Brighton—& I am dreading to see my dear aunt Jane, with the sight of whose face so many tender & bitter recollections will come back to me. [11] God be with me in the midst of them,–
Your attached
EBB.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 109–111.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. This letter is postmarked 23 May 1845, a Friday.
2. In a letter to Miss [Henrietta] Harrison, dated 22 May 1845, Miss Mitford explained that she had discovered “that a servant … has not only appropriated money given her for weekly expenses, and for payment of the few bills I allowed to go on, but has opened all my letters for above six months, to prevent the discovery of her misdeeds, and has half stripped the house of clothes, linen, laces, and furniture … Everybody is furious with me for not proceeding against her; but she had an accomplice who has five young children, and a dying husband” (Chorley, II, 13–14).
4. Ecclesiastes 4:8.
5. As previously noted (letter 1531, note 6), William Carleton (1794–1869) was the author of Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (1830), Tales of Ireland (1834) and The Fawn of Springvale and Other Tales (1841). Horne mentioned him briefly in A New Spirit (II, 150).
6. EBB’s praise of Banim led Horne to include a paper entitled “Banim and the Irish Novelists” in vol. 2 of A New Spirit (see letter 1489).
7. Lever’s novel was reviewed in The Athenæum for 10 May 1845 (no. 915, p. 460).
8. EBB wrote “moralists” and deleted it, as she explains.
9. The French Stage and the French People, as illustrated in the Memoirs of M. Fleury, edited Theodore Hook (2 vols., 1841). “The Three Guardsmen” appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for January 1845 (pp. 59–74).
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