2642. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 81–84.
Pisa.
Dec 19—— [1846] [1]
Ever dearest Miss Mitford, your kindest letter is three times welcome as usual. On the day you wrote it in the frost, I was sitting out of doors, just in my summer mantilla & complaining “of the heat this December”! But woe comes to the discontented. Within these three or four days, we too have had frost, yes, & a little snow .. for the first time, say the Pisans, during five years. Robert says that the mountains are powdered toward Lucca, & I who cannot see the mountains, can see the cathedral .. the Duomo .. how it glitters whitely at the summit between the blue sky & its own walls of yellow marble. Of course I do not stir an inch from the fire, .. yet have to struggle a little against my old languor .. only, you see, this cant last! it is exceptional weather, & up to the last few days, has been divine. And then, after all we talk of frost, my bedroom which has no fire-place shows not one English sign on the window, .. & the air is not metallic as in England. The sun, too, is so hot, that the women are seen walking with fur capes & parasols .. a curious combination.
I hope you had your visit from Mr Chorley, & that you both had the usual pleasure from it. Indeed I am touched by what you tell me—& was touched by his note to my husband, written in the first surprise—& because Robert has the greatest regard for him, besides my own personal reasons, I do count him in the forward rank of our friends. You will hear that he has obliged us by accepting a trusteeship to a settlement, .. forced upon me in spite of certain professions & indispositions of mine—but as my husband’s gift, I had no right it appeared, by refusing it to place him in a false position for the sake of what dear Mr Kenyon calls my ‘crotchets.’ Oh, .. dear Mr Kenyon!– His kindness & goodness to us have been past speaking of, past thanking for .. we can only fall into silence. He has thrust his hand into the fire for us by writing to Papa himself, by taking up the management of my small money-matters when nearer hands let them drop, … by justifying us with the whole weight of his personal influence—all this in the very face of his own habits & susceptibilities. He has vowed resolved that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, .. nor the tenderness & sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man of the world!—and would be called so rightly if the world were a place of angels!– I shall love him dearly & gratefully to my last breath—we both shall!–
Ah—so you have K with you again, & her child .. now that I am too far away to scold you!– And yet I should not have courage for it perhaps—or I should be content to say as usual “You are too good, too kind, too forgivingly imprudent”– So tell me—is it true that bonâ fide she is your servant again? [2] But in any case, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, you will not lean your trust too heavily where the ice has once failed you. Now, do not!– I fear for your generous confidence, & the results in new pain to yourself. As to the poor, poor little child, why there can be no feeling for it but pity & sympathy—the poor little child. Tell me more of it—and of you especially .. I miss the report of your health. And tell me if K is really settled with you, & if you are happier & in greater comfort since her return——which will reconcile me, after all, to very questionable processes– Besides .. if you believe in love, for my sake, what should not I believe in for yours. And pray (talking of that) receive further into evidence that though Robert & I are deep in the fourth month of wedlock, there has not been a shadow between us, nor a word, (and I have observed that all married people confess to “words”) and that the only change I can lay my finger on in him, is simply & clearly an increase of affection. Now I need not say it, if I did not please—and I should not please, you know, to tell a story. The truth is, that I who always did certainly believe in Love, yet was as great a sceptic as you about the Evidences thereof .. & having held twenty times that Jacob’s serving fourteen years for Rachel [3] was not too long by fourteen days, I was not a likely person (with my loathing dread of marriage as a loveless state, & absolute contentment with single life as the alternative to the great majority of marriages) I was not likely to accept a feeling not genuine .. though from the hands of Apollo himself, crowned with his various godships– [4] Especially too, in my position,——I could not, would not, should not have done it. Then, genuine feelings are genuine feelings, & do not pass like a cloud– We are as happy as people can be, I do believe, yet are living in a way to try this new relationship of ours .. in the utmost seclusion & perpetual tête á tête .. no amusement nor distraction from without, except some of the very dullest Italian romances which throw us back on the memory of Balzac with reiterated groans. The Italians seem to hang on translations from the French .. as we find from the library .. not merely of Balzac, but Dumas, your Dumas, .. & reaching lower .. long past De Kock .. to the third & fourth rate novelists. What is purely Italian is as far as we have read, purely dull & conventional–There is no breath nor pulse in the Italian genius. Mrs Jameson writes to us from Florence that in politics & philosophy the people are getting alive—which may be for aught we know to the contrary—the poetry & imagination leave them room enough by immense vacancies.
Yet we delight in Italy, & dream of “pleasures new” for the summer .. pastures new, [5] .. I shd have said—but it comes to the same thing. The “padrone” in this house, sent us in as a gift (in gracious recognition perhaps of our lawful paying of bills) an immense dish of oranges .. two hanging on a stalk with the green leaves still moist with the morning’s dew .. every great orange of twelve or thirteen with its own stalk & leaves. Such a pretty sight! And better oranges, I beg to say, never were eaten, when we are barbarous enough to eat them day by day after our two oclock dinner, softening with the vision of them the winter which has just shown itself. Almost I have been as pleased with these oranges, as I was at Avignon by the pomegranates given to me much in the same way. Think of my being singled out of all our caravan of travellers .. Mrs Jameson, & Gerardine Jameson [6] both there .. for that significant gift of the pomegranates! I had never seen one before—& of course proceeded instantly to cut one “deep down the middle” [7] —accepting the omen! Yet in shame & confusion of face I confess to not being able to appreciate it properly. Olives & pomegranates I set on the same shelf .. to be just looked at & called by their names, but by no means eaten bodily.
But you mistake me, dearest friend, about the Blackwood verses. I never thought of <wr>iting applicative poems—the Heavens forefend!– Only that just then, <in> the midst of all the talk, any verses of mine shd come into print .. & some of them to that particular effect .. looked unlucky. I dare say poor Papa (for instance) thought me turned suddenly to brass itself. Well—it is perhaps more my fancy than anything else, & was only an impression, even there. Mr Chorley will tell you of a play of his, [8] which I hope will make its way .. though I do wonder how people can bear to write for the theatres in the present state of things. Robert is busy preparing a new edition of his collected poems [9] which are to be so clear that everyone who has understood them hitherto will lose all distinction. We both mean to be as little idle as possible. Your plan (by Bentley) I do not perfectly measure the length of. Translations are they to be? And if merely issues, are they likely to answer, competing as they must with the Belgic books? [10] The ‘Mystères’ & the ‘Juifs’, I have seen translated & illustrated, each in one volume. ‘Notre Dame’ too, has had a course in England already. Probably you mean purified French editions .. is that it? And if so, you will have hard work, I think, & satisfactorily resultive work only in a few cases, with the very best books—with the ‘Mystères’ certainly not. You might select easily though from George Sand—there is the “Maîtres Mosaistes,” to begin with– With Eugene Sue .. yes, Jean Cavalier– [11] But you wd have to read with such a different mind & aim, to read everything over again– I, for one, do not pretend to remember what ‘la prude Angleterre’ [12] would think “moral”, and in spite of what you say of Leghorn, [13] I have not seen a French book since I came here, though translations enough are down in our catalogue. We do not even see a newspaper .. a Galignani .. which everybody else sees. I wish I cd do something for you, &, for myself, see Balzac’s ‘last’– And after all, to see you, would be best of all. Write to me often, & tell me of you in every detail. We have heard that report of Moore contradicted. [14] If true, how strange that another poet should go drivelling to the eternal silence. Then, poor Mr Darley! [15] May God bless you, beloved friend! We shall meet one day in joy, I do hope—& then you will love my husband for his own sake, as for mine, you do not hate him now–
Your ever affectionate
EBB—as ever.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford, / Three Mile Cross, / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 197–201.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year determined from the Brownings’ residence in Pisa in December 1846.
2. Miss Mitford had difficulty trying to replace her former maid Kerenhappuch (generally referred to as “K”), who had been dismissed in 1844 when she had an illegitimate child. When “K” married in 1851, it was not Ben Kirby, the father of her children, but Sam Sweetman, the gardener/handyman who replaced Kirby, with whom she had another child. “K” and her husband remained in Miss Mitford’s service until her death in 1855.
3. Cf. Genesis 29: 18–30.
4. Apollo, the representation of perfect young manhood, was the god of the sun, of poetry, of music, of art, and of the healing arts.
5. Milton, “Lycidas” (1638), line 193.
6. Mrs. Jameson’s niece Gerardine Bate (afterwards Macpherson) was often introduced by Mrs. Jameson as Gerardine Jameson.
7. “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” line 165.
8. Presumably his tragedy Duchess Eleanour, which he had been working on during his autumn holiday abroad. The play was somewhat inspired by Chorley’s impressions of Charlotte Cushman’s performances in London in 1846, and “the part of his heroine was designed with express accommodation to her rôle” (Henry Fothergill Chorley: Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters, comp. H.G. Hewlett, 1873, II, 129). Nevertheless, Duchess Eleanour was not produced until 1854, when Charlotte Cushman was again performing in England.
9. See letter 2637, note 1.
10. It is unclear what Miss Mitford was proposing. From the context it seems likely that she hoped to produce a selection of French writers similar to her volume of Dumas; however, there is no evidence that her plans were ever realized.
11. A translation of Eugene Sue’s Jean Cavalier (1840) would not be published until 1849, in three volumes. Translations of his Les Mystères de Paris (1844) had appeared in 1844 and 1846, both single-volume editions and with illustrations, and a translation of Le Juif errant (1845) was also published in 1846. At least four different translations of Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (1831) had been published by this time, and George Sand’s Les Maîtres mosaïstes (1838) had been translated by Elizabeth A. Ashurst in 1844.
12. An allusion to the morality of “prudish England,” of which EBB approved, as opposed to her disdain for the “intellectual narrowness” of a single English prude (see letter 1764, note 6).
13. Miss Mitford had evidently suggested the possibility of Leghorn as a source of French books for the Brownings, but EBB explains the difficulty of such a plan in letter 2654.
14. See letter 2513, note 5.
15. George Darley, Irish poet, died on 23 November 1846. He had corresponded with Miss Mitford, and she described his death as “even more lonely than his life,” referring to his brother’s death in Ireland at the same time as his own (Mitford, p. 509).
___________________
