2694. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 279–284.
Florence–
August 20– [1847] [1]
I have received your letter at last my ever dearest Miss Mitford; not the missing letter, but the one which comes to make up for it and to catch up my thoughts which were grumbling at high tide I do assure you. No, I never had the letter you speak of .. the answer to mine—and if I had not heard now, I should have written, so uncomfortable did the long dismal unusual silence make me. Unlucky woman that I am, to have missed that letter .. yet lucky to have this!—and scarcely ever does it happen that I lose a letter, scarcely ever. I hear from & write to my sisters once in every ten days .. sometimes oftener; and neither they nor I have had to complain of a lost letter between us. But yours certainly is lost, and I am glad almost now to think that it is. Better lose a letter than a remembrance of yours! so much better. Dearest friend, let me begin by talking of your rheumatism– What! you have rheumatism after all the heat in England this summer, of which we hear!– I hoped that it wd have been the merest history by this summer-time!—and it is terrible to listen to accounts of your being lame to such an extent, & so restrained in your healthy exercise. I do not like to advise you; but if I were you, as advisers say, I would turn to the water cure straightway. It is a legitimate case for the water cure, and if I were you I would try it. Where is Mr May? Can he do nothing? I shd grieve if the habit of rheumatism were established in your constitution. That you shd have rheumatism and friendship go to you together, is scarcely the least consolation to me … especially as I am not one of the friends. [2] For the rest, they were very happy I am certain, & you seem to have been glad too, and to have received full compensation for not visiting London: and in the matter of K., why, dearest Miss Mitford, your being pleased & satisfied, makes me both in a measure, believe me. If ever I spoke bluntly on that question, it was chiefly to spare you what, from my own idiosyncrasy, I concluded to be a painful position .. it being to me so very painful not to trust those who are about me, that no advantage could counterbalance the pain. [3] But of course you know best, & can judge best of what is happiest for yourself; and having the assurance of her repentance & reformation, perhaps it is reasonable in you as well as generous & kind, to act as if the past were a blank and no treason had ever approached you from that side. Also I believe & hold that kindness is a compelling & purifying Thing, and that the hot coals [4] of a forgiveness like yours, would, to a nature not wholly corrupt, cleanse & whiten better than Justice. Is the child in the house with you? and is it a pretty child, and winning?——
Do tell me every little thing about yourself. I long so to hear. Do you ever hear of Ben? Perhaps they may marry, after all, and so end all. As you observed last year (not without reason) these are the days of marrying & giving in marriage [5] .. Mr Horne, you see!– No, I have nothing to tell you in the way of “memoires à servir” [6] .. Mr Horne wrote to me in the winter & called himself “happy with the best motives for happiness,” which of course meant marriage or sudden death. He bade me “guess” and I concluded instead. The other day I wrote to him; & Robert who took my letter to the post, read in a newspaper before he came home, his marriage to Miss Foggo. [7] We have written our congratulations. From another quarter we heard that the lady was a “very nice person”, young .. half his age .. and undowered altogether .. so he is generous, observe, after all– I am glad he has not married an heiress: [8] and fairly he may set his poetry against a prosaic youthfulness. With all my heart I hope he may be very happy. Men risk a good deal in marriage, though not as much as women do: and, on the other hand, the single-life of a man, when his youth is over, is a sadder thing than the saddest which an unmarried woman can suffer. Nearly all my friends of both sexes have been draining off into marriage these two years—scarcely one will be left in the sieve—and I may end by saying that I have happiness enough for my own share to be divided among them all & leave everyone contented. For me I take it for pure magic, this life of mine. Surely nobody was ever so happy before. I shall wake some morning, with my hair all dripping out of the enchanted bucket. Or if not, we shall both claim the “Flitch” [9] next september, if you can find one for us in the land of Cockaigne, drying in expectancy of the revolution in Tennyson’s Commonwealth. [10] Well! I dont agree with Mr Harness in admiring the lady of Locksley Hall. [11] I must either pity or despise a woman who could have married Tennyson, & chose a common man. If happy in her choice, I despise her. That’s matter of opinion, of course. You may call it matter of foolishness, when I add, that I, personally, would rather be teazed a little & smoked over a good deal by a man whom I cd look up to & be proud of, than have my feet kissed all day by a Mr Smith in boots & a waistcoat, & thereby chiefly distinguished. Neither I nor another, perhaps, had quite a right to expect a combination of qualities .. such as meet, though, in my husband, who is as faultless & pure in his private life as any Mr Smith of them all .. who would not owe five shillings .. who lives like a woman in abstemiousness, on a pennyworth of wine a day, never touching a cigar even. But now for poor Tennyson, of whom you are not the first .. alas! .. to tell me these sad stories——is it sure of Tennyson that if he had been happy, if for instance that very woman of Locksley Hall had not embittered his life & cast him out into solitude, the bad habits in question wd have taken root & grown? There, is a doubt sufficient to condemn her out & out before the world, God & her soul. I [12] think so, at least. Do you hear, as we do from Mr Forster, that his new poem is his best work? As soon as you read it, let me have your opinion. <The subject seems almost identical with one of Chaucer’s– Is it not so?>
We have spent here the most delightful of summers, notwithstanding the heat .. and I begin to comprehend the possibility of St Laurence’s ecstasies on the gridiron. [13] Very hot, it certainly has been & is .. yet there have been cool intermissions,—and as we have spacious & airy rooms, & as Robert lets me sit all day in my white dressing gown without a single masculine criticism, & as we can step out of the window on a sort of balcony-terrace which is quite private & swims over with moonlight in the evenings, and as we live upon water melons and iced water & figs & all manner of fruit, we bear the heat with an angelic patience & felicity which really are edifying. We tried to make the monks of Vallombrosa let us stay with them for two months—but their new abbot said or implied that Wilson & I stank in his nostrils, [14] being women .. and San Gualberto the establisher of their order had enjoined on them only the mortification of cleaning out pigsties without fork or shovel. To have a couple of women besides, was (as Dickens’s American said) “a piling it up rayther too mountainious”. [15] So we were sent away at the end of five days– So provoking! Such scenery, such hills, such a sea of hills looking alive among the clouds. Which rolled, it was difficult to discern. Such pine woods, supernaturally silent, with the ground black as ink .. such chesnut & beech forests hanging fr<om> the mountains!—such rocks & torrents, such chasms & ravines! There were eagles there too <and> there was no road. Robert went on horseback, and Flush[,] Wilson & I were drawn in a sledge .. (i.e. an old hamper .. a basket wine-hamper, without a wheel) by two white bullocks, up the precipitous mountains. Think of my travelling in that fashion in those wild places at four oclock in the morning! .. a little frightened, dreadfully tired, but in an ecstasy of admiration above all! It was a sight to see before one died & went away to another world– Well, but being expelled ignominiously at the end of five days, we had to come back to Florence, & find a new apartment, [16] cooler than the old, & wait for dear Mr Kenyon– And dear Mr Kenyon does not come, [17] (not this autumn, but he may perhaps at the first dawn of spring) and on the twentieth of September we take up our knapsacks & turn our faces toward Rome I think .. creeping slowly along, with a pause at Arezzo, and a longer pause at Perugia, & another, perhaps, at Terni. Then, we plan to take an apartment we have heard of, over the Tarpeian rock, [18] & enjoy Rome as we have enjoyed Florence. More can scarcely be. This Florence is unspeakably beautiful, by grace both of nature & art,—and the wheels of life slide on upon the grass (according to Continental ways) with little trouble & less expense. Dinner, “unordered”, comes through the streets & spreads itself on our table, as hot as if we had smelt cutlets hours before. The science of material life is understood here & in France. Now tell me, .. what right has England to be the dearest country in the world?– But I love dearly dear England, and we hope to spend many a green summer in her yet. The winters you will excuse us .. will you not? People who are like us, neither rich nor strong, claim such excuses—. I am wonderfully well, and far better & stronger than before what you call the Pisan “crisis”– Robert declares that nobody would know me, I look so much better. And you heard from dearest Henrietta? Ah, both of my dearest sisters have been perfect to me– No words can express my feelings towards their goodness. Otherwise, I have good accounts from home of my father[’]s excellent health & spirits .. which is better even than to hear of his loving & missing me. I had a few kind lines yesterday from Miss Martineau who invites us from Florence to Westmoreland– [19] She wants to talk to me, she says, of “her beloved Jordan”. She is looking forward to a winter of work by the Lakes, & to a summer of gardening– The kindest of letters, Robert has had from Carlyle—who makes me very happy by what he says of our marriage. Shakespeare’s favorite air of the “Light of Love”, with the full evidence of its being Shakespeare’s favorite air, is given in Charles Knight’s edition. [20] Seek for it there. Now do write to me & at length, & tell me everything of yourself. Flush hated Vallombrosa & was frightened out of his wits by the pine forests. Flush likes civilized Life, & the society of little dogs with turned up tails, such as Florence abounds with. Unhappily it abounds also with fleas, which afflict poor Flush to the verge sometimes of despair. Fancy Robert & me down on our knees combing him, with a basin of water on one side!—— He suffers to such a degree from fleas that I cannot bear to witness it. He tears off his pretty curls, through the irritation. Do you know of a remedy? Direct to me Poste Restante, Florence .. Put via France .. Let me hear .. do! & everything of yourself .. mind! Is Mrs Partridge in better spirits? [21] Do you read any new French books? Dearest friend, let me offer you my husband’s cordial regards, with the love of your ever affectionate
EBB—Ba
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 213–218.
Manuscript: British Library.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. In a letter to Charles Boner dated 2 July 1847, Miss Mitford wrote: “I need not tell you how glad I shall be to see you, but you will be sorry to find me exceedingly lame—lame ever since my rheumatism four months ago. I now take three hours for walking the distance that I used to accomplish in one” (Mary Russell Mitford: Correspondence with Charles Boner and John Ruskin, ed. Elizabeth Lee, 1914, p. 72). Then on the 9th of following month, she wrote to Boner that “Mr. Harness and Mr. Dyce have been spending a day here” (p. 76). Boner was a frequent visitor during the summer of 1847.
3. EBB mentioned Miss Mitford having taken K back in letter 2642 (see note 2); see also letter 2654.
4. Cf. Romans 12:20
5. Cf. Matthew 24:38.
6. “Useful information.”
8. EBB had often defended Horne against Miss Mitford’s suggestions that money was his prime motivation for courting several heiresses (see, for example, letter 1369, in which EBB called Horne “generous, & high-hearted”).
11. In a letter to Charles Boner, dated 9 August 1847, Miss Mitford wrote that “William Harness told me he met one day, at dinner, the Heroine of Locksley Hall and her husband, and he thought the lady had chosen wisely” (Mary Russell Mitford: Correspondence with Charles Boner and John Ruskin, ed. Elizabeth Lee, 1914, p. 75). Rosa Baring, who married Robert Duncombe Shafto in 1838, has been suggested as the inspiration for Amy in “Locksley Hall.” For a discussion of the characters in Tennyson’s poem, see The Poems of Tennyson, ed. Christopher Ricks, 1969, pp. 688–689.
12. Underscored twice.
14. Cf. Amos 4:10.
15. American Notes for General Circulation (1842), vol. I, chap. 2, p. 59.
17. In letter 2689, EBB explained to her sister Henrietta that Kenyon had written to say he was not coming to Italy.
18. Described by Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Central Italy (1843) as being “on the southern summit of the Capitoline, which faces the Tiber” (p. 321). This precipice takes its name from Tarpeia, daughter of Spurius Tarpeius. She accepted the Sabines’ bribe of the ornaments on their arms in exchange for opening the gates of the citadel. When they crushed her with their shields—decorated with ornaments—she died, and thereafter traitors were executed by being thrown head-first down the face of the cliff.
19. In June 1847 Harriet Martineau returned to England from her tour of Egypt and the Holy Land; see letter 2626, note 6. She visited friends and family until October when she returned to Ambleside, Westmorland.
20. Evidently Miss Mitford had queried EBB’s statement about this tune in letter 2671. See letter 2669, note 5.
21. Miss Mitford’s friend Lucy Anderdon had been depressed and unhappy since shortly after her marriage to Rev. Partridge in 1842; see letter 1404, note 4.
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