1990. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 12–14.
[London]
Friday– [?1 August] [1845] [1]
I did not need the sight of your letter ever dearest Miss Mitford to wish to write to you—but you spoke of coming again .. too great kindness! .. & I wanted to be able to tell you when the ground would be clear, there being an uncertainty about the Hedleys who flit backwards & forwards. Even now, I can only say that I think to be at your devotion after next wednesday any day—but I will write again if the thought proves itself untrue. And so, shall I see you for those hours you speak of? How good of you! how kind!– You will see me better still, & in the enjoyment of the summer let it rain as it pleases. It is bad for the harvest—but I and the grass, & the mosses on the trees, have a fine time of it, & grow greener & greener. I am in the carriage three times a week,—& take ‘pedestrian exercise’ from one room to another—& in the intervals am gloriously idle, & do enough “reverie” to confound Mrs Jameson if she knew of it. [2] In fact, I begin “for the nonce” to live again. How long it will last, depends on the warm weather & is a very different question. But I shall be delighted to see you in the meantime—& so, do not recall your half-promise. It was a half promise—now was’nt it? or a three quarters—a catgut! [3] —— Come.
As to poor Mr Horne, you know I thought you were hard on him, & I think so still. Certainly his misfortune of making himself ‘de trop’ on every trial, must involve some species of demerit—but I cannot believe that it is an important sort of demerit, or one appertaining to the heart & intellect. He wants tact perhaps, & consideration—as some men do in respect to women, who yet are by no means deficient in feeling for others generally. However this may be, .. & you of course know better than I do .. (& the fact of his wearing his heart on his sleeve so very very loosely, must, I suppose, be undeniable) however all this may be, I decidedly am called upon to defend him in the matter of Geraldine– [4] He has written me the most fervid & applausive letter on that head, & said more than any one but a poet wd think of saying—& far more than even you could think it reasonable to say of that poem. He tells me too that it is his habit (& I think he told me that before) to read poetry as he writes it, only when the impulse is on him,—& that it was for this reason he was so late an appreciator of mine. When he praised Geraldine so, of course I knew that half the effect produced, came from your fine reading!—— I knew that—but still, you see, I could not be justified in allowing you to blame poor Mr Horne for only caring for his own verses, when I had such a document to prove the very contrary fact– Should I now?– But I am tiring you, just as if I were a grandee & lived six miles off. [5] I pity you for all that fuss & distraction—I do really; & hope that, being alone at last, you may gather up the repose in both hands, & not be hasty as to issuing other invitations. Surely Mr Horne wd not think of visiting you if his impression was not that you liked his society—& in this, I dare to blame you a little,—because I fancy that without any manner of rudeness or unkindness I could mark my disinclination for a repetition of these visits. I could, I know, though with so little courage for social purposes—& you! He speaks of you always even affectionately, & is absolutely unaware of your distaste for him—& do you know I sometimes feel half tempted .. for both your sakes .. to “hint a doubt” [6] to him ....… But this is mere impulse, & a proof to you of my feeling in the matter—as you have the right of speaking while I cannot have it of course, … & it wd be just an impropriety in me, which, in you, would be the exercise of an unquestionable priveledge.
Do you hear of any new work of Balzac from Miss James? Lamartine’s conduct to his wife I doubt much respecting, inasmuch as I have heard a great deal of him from an English adopted son of his .. or rather of hers, .. a Mr Birch, [7] who became an Independent minister in his teeth, & talks freely of him, if in all gratitude. He has rather a sentiment than a faith, says Mr Birch as concerns religion, (a likely remark for a young man in Mr Birch’s position) but a most amiable man he admits him to be, & full of sensibility. The death of his daughter nearly killed him. [8] Madame de Lamartine, you are aware, is an Englishwoman—& I once heard that his poetry was the cause of her attachment to him, .. but for this, I do not absolutely answer.
So no more controversy at present
from your ever affectionate
EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 133–134.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. There were four Fridays between letters 1980 and 2001, EBB’s preceding and succeeding letters to Miss Mitford. The conjectural dating of this letter is based on EBB’s comment in the first line which implies that some time had elapsed since her last letter, as well as the reference to Horne who had visited Miss Mitford twice in July.
2. See letter 1965 in which EBB told RB that Mrs. Jameson had “denounced carpet work” as leading to “‘fatal habits of reverie’.”
3. We have been unable to determine the meaning of “catgut” in this context.
4. A reference to EBB’s “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship” in Poems (1844); evidently, Miss Mitford had suggested that Horne did not like the poem.
5. See letter 1981 in which EBB told Kenyon that “all the grandees of the county” had been invited to meet Horne while he was visiting Miss Mitford.
6. Cf. Pope, An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1734), line 204.
7. George Roydes Birch (1807–64) was a cousin of Marianne Eliza de Lamartine (née Birch, 1790–1863). We are unable to explain EBB’s assertion here and in a letter of [18 August 1846] to RB that Birch was Lamartine’s adopted son. EBB knew him through her sister Arabella who was acquainted with his wife, Sophia (née russell, 1818–95), second daughter of Sir William Russell (1773–1839) by his second wife, Jane Eliza (née Sherwood). Ordained on 13 December 1838 for work as an evangelist, Birch was minister of a chapel in East Finchley from 1843 to 1854.
8. The Lamartines had two children: Alphonse (1821–23) and Marie Louise Julie (1822–32). The latter, known as Julia, died while the Lamartines were travelling in the Levant. Upon her death, Lamartine wrote to Aymon de Virieu: “All the hope, the happiness, the charm of our lives, is gone for ever. … I cannot pray. I only try to submit my will to the divine will” (Laura M. Ragg, The Lamartine Ladies, 1954, p. 201).
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