2518. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 13, 212–215.
[London]
[early August 1846] [1]
Not an only child, [2] dearest Miss Mitford, but one of ever so many .. I will not stop to count them—but there is a son alive older, just gone to India, and a youngest child still called ‘the baby,’ & only three years of age, & a number of intermediate ones, step by step .. all children, except this daughter & the son. My uncle has, I suppose, five or six thousand a year .. but he & she have an enthusiasm ‘de metier’ in their paternity, & if they could cover the world with gold cloth for their offspring to tread upon, it would not be thought a thread too much by themselves. Altogether it is pretty & it is foolish—& none the less pretty for being very foolish perhaps. This marriage will cost, I shd think, some thousand pounds, in the mere livery & paraphernalia of it, & they had better have given the money, I say softly .. inasmuch as the bridegroom has no excess of wordly goods. He ought to have been a duke, & then the whole would have been consistent. The bride in the meanwhile is a princess regnant, with all the world at her feet—my sisters & I were quite afraid to offer her the humble envelope case we had to give her, in the multitude of twenty & fifty guinea rings which glided from every side upon her fingers .. but we were graciously accepted in our poor gifts, I must add. Of her spouse, to be, we have seen nothing more—probably because we disgusted him with our heresy & schism. He is a high conservative too, as all consistent Puseyites must be. Ah well! I do hope he may make her happy. So graceful & brilliant a creature she is, .. looking as if born to dance polkas, & carry no heavier dust than what may be stirred up by dancing feet– She is the sister of my ‘golden haired child’– [3] They are a lovely family, altogether.
A year for marriages, is it? Well—it seems so—and some marry unfortunately (or fortunately) without trousseaus, which keeps their motives intact so far, notwithstanding your history & philosophy which made me laugh. Seriously speaking, however, there does enter into the motives of most marriages a good deal of that hankering after the temporary distinction, emotion, pleasure of being for a while a chief person .. after the glories of brideocracy anticipated & enjoyed! If it is’nt the trousseau, it is often what is typified in the trousseau. It’s like seeing one’s name in print for the first time, perhaps—to use an author’s illustration. Love .. election .. where is the evidence of them in the material of most marriages?– The bride strains her eyes to examine & test the Brussels. Her family examine & test the fortune of the bridegroom & his reputation before men. There, an end!—no—marriage is the end, & marriage means misery .. while people wonder!—— But I never wonder, for my part, at any of the misery .. but only at the wonderers at it! Take two instruments which have not been tuned together, & play them in concert .. &, except by the merest accident, you stop your ears against the discord!—— Is it different with souls, that we should wonder at the great social evil on all sides of us? So great, so monstrous!– Why what does even ‘love’, so called, mean, in most marriages? Simply, that a man admires a woman for being pretty or for some personal quality, & that she admires him for admiring her! That is the case in your “love-marriages which end always ill,” you say. False Florimel! [4] —— Because the real love-marriages cannot end ill– The world will end sooner!——
Very much you amused me with the account of M. Mainzer & our French heroes [5] —though I am by no means sure that I am as enchanted with Balzac’s outside, as you appear to be. Oh, all those Parisian geniuses seem fat—fatter than our ideals! Victor Hugo in the portrait, I saw, is decidedly so—(& I do not besides like the expression, as I told you: there is a want of refinement!.) Frederic Soulié is enormous, by his own confession, somewhere. By the way, it surprises me that you should like his ‘Comtesse de Monrion,’ [6] which struck me as being infinitely inferior to the common level of his books– It is a continuation of … oh, I forget the name—I shall remember it presently & tell you then. Soulié[’]s imagination is like wildfire .. a thing to make a show of!– And he makes a show of it accordingly. The ‘Pauvre Diable’ [7] I have not seen,—but of [‘]‘Edouard Mongeron,” [8] have read three volumes, & think it very clever, & do not remember having made acquaintance before with the Louis Reybaud whose name is set to it, except as the author of ‘Paturot,’ which had a greater success in Paris (where it has attained the honours of an illustrated edition) than with me. I thought it rather a dull book, .. though of a sort of merit, of course. ‘Edouard Mangeron’ is much superior– Do you not like that?
If Mr Buckingham has really been ungrateful to you after your unexampled goodness & kindness to him, he must be less than a man!—how much less than a dog!!– I [9] never shall be ungrateful to you my very dear friend,—never!—& “never to be wrong” is so much a worse reason & so little a secure one, that I must beg you to accept my “never to be ungrateful,” instead!—— Ah—if you should be displeased with me & think me wrong in any act or word or thought, remember, to set against all, that I love you gratefully & affectionately, & that none of the changes of life can make me do it less. [10] Be indulgent to me, to the end—I need all your indulgence & affectionateness!– May God bless you always.
EBB
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 181–184.
Manuscript: Fitzwilliam Museum.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to the forthcoming marriage of Arabella Hedley to James Bevan on 4 August.
2. The Hedleys had three sons: Robert (“Robin”), who had recently left with his regiment for India (see letter 2285, note 8); John; and George; and five daughters: Arabella, whose wedding was only days away; Elizabeth Jane (“Ibbit”); Frances (“Little Fanny”); Anna; and Mary.
3. A reference to EBB’s “A Song Against Singing,” addressed to “My Dear Little Cousin Elizabeth Jane H______,” in The Seraphim (1838), line 2.
4. EBB is referring to the imitation of Spenser’s image of womanly chastity and virtue, as depicted by Florimel in Books III, IV and V of The Faerie Queen. The false Florimel is created out of snow and wax by a witch to simulate the real one, but when the deceptive creature is brought before the true Florimel, she melts away, leaving only the golden girdle behind.
5. Doubtless Joseph Mainzer (1801–51), composer and music teacher, who left his native Germany in 1833 because of political beliefs; after stays in Brussels and Paris, he settled in England in 1839, where he founded a periodical, Mainzer’s Musical Times. His most popular work was Singing for the Million: A Practical Course of Musical Instruction (1841). According to Chorley, Miss Mitford had called him the “bosom-friend of Marrast, of Béranger, and of Lamennais, as well as of Lamartine and Louis Blanc” (Chorley, II, 114).
6. La Comtesse de Monrion appeared as a feuilleton in La Presse from 9 December 1845 to 22 January 1846, forming a sequel to La Lionne, which had appeared just previous to that from 9 September to 10 October 1845. “In book form the whole work appeared under the title La Comtesse de Monrion, the first part being called La Lionne and the second Julie,” in 1846 and 1847, respectively (Harold March, Frédéric Soulié: Novelist and Dramatist of the Romantic Period, New Haven, Connecticut, 1931, p. 246).
7. Le Pauvre diable (1758) is a verse satire aimed at the literary profession.
8. Édouard Mongeron by Marie Roche Louis Reybaud (1799–1879) appeared in five volumes in 1846. Reybaud is best remembered for his satirical novel Jérome Paturot à la recherche d’une position social (1843), but wrote mostly economic and political works.
9. Underscored twice.
10. EBB is clearly hinting at her forthcoming marriage.
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