2738. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 97–102.
Florence–
July 4– [1848] [1]
It does grieve me my ever dearest Miss Mitford, to hear of the suffering which has fallen upon you! Oh, rheumatism or not, whatever the name may be, do take care, .. do consider, & turn your dear face toward the seaside .. somewhere where you can have warm sea bathing and sea-air, and be able to associate the word “a drive” not with mad ponies but the mildest of donkies, on a flat sand. The good it wd do you, is incalculable, I am certain—it is precisely a case for change of air with quiet. In order to which, do you know, I shd doubt a little of Brighton. Brighton is London in small, and you must dress there & remember the public, .. whereas there are places quite as healthy & open to the sea, with better sands & more quiet. Is’nt there a place near Dover? Ramsgate & Worthing even, I should prefer. Hastings is hot, but most lovely; and you need’nt set your back exactly to the white rocks & be suffocated. Now, dearest friend, I do beseech you not to let the summer slip through your fingers by putting off & putting off. Let K. be energetic for you and resolve & execute at once. I am afraid of your puttings off. Even when you talk of coming to Florence next year, I cant be properly glad .. because I have misgivings that these journies of yours are only taken in a far vision .. are meant like “Rosamond’s purple vase,” [2] only to be looked at from a distance. For the rest, welcome such visions of course, even as visions, if no better! But, in any case, this journey to the sea, not being quite so far as the Florentine one, we wont make a mere vision of that if you please, but both dream it & realize it in a breath. Do, do. I earnestly beg you to go at once. A rheumatic habit of body would be a melancholy evil, consider, when a rheumatic accident of body is a serious evil. And the habit is so soon formed—so depressing .. so embittering to life. Let K. take courage & the reins, and pack you up & carry you off, without a word more. Now, let me hear that you are gone! Am I to be sad at your affectionate expressions, because they stand side by side with the complaints of your suffering? Spare me for the future such a pain—and for the sake of all your friends if not for yourself, consent to try an experiment which is so little likely to fail. You do not know the magical effect of change of air. Invalids are carried fainting into carriages, and draw in life & spirits with the new air of every mile. So dont wait to be stronger before you go, but go just because you are not stronger. Now, I have teazed you down a whole page & you wont forgive me for turning it without turning the subject.
As for when you come to Florence, we wont have “a poney carriage between us,” if you please, because we may have a carriage & a pair of horses & a coachman, & pay as little as for the poney-chair in England. For three hundred a year, one may live much like the Grand Duchess, and go to the opera in the evening at fivepence halfpenny inclusive. Indeed poor people should have their patriotism tenderly dealt with, when, after certain experiments, they decide on living upon the whole on the continent– The differences are past belief, beyond expectation—and when the sunshine is thrown in, .. the head turns at once, & you fall straight into absenteism. Ah, for the “long chats,” & the “having England at one another’s fireside”!—you talk of delightful things indeed! We are very quiet politically speaking, and though we hear now & then of melancholy mothers who have to part with their sons for Lombardy, & though there are processions for the blessing of flags, & an occasional firing of guns for a victory, or a cry in the streets “notizie della guerra—legete signori,” [3] … this is all we know of Radetski [4] in Florence: while for civil politics, the meeting of the senate took place a few days since to the satisfaction of everybody; & the Grand Duke’s speech was generally admired. [5] The elections have returned moderate men, & many land-proprietors, and Robert who went out to see the procession of members, was struck by the grave thoughtful faces & the dignity of expression. We are going some day to hear the debates, but it has pleased their signoria to fix upon twelve, (noon), for meeting, and really I do not dare to go out in the sun. The hour is sufficiently conclusive against dangerous enthusiasm.–
Poor France, poor France!– News of the dreadful massacre at Paris just reaches us—and the letters & newspapers not arriving today, everybody fears a continuation of crisis. [6] How is it to end? Who “despairs of the republic?” Why, I do! I fear, I fear, that it cannot stand in France .. and you seem to have not much more hope. My husband has a little, with melancholy intermediate prospects; but my own belief is that the bourgeoisie have had enough of democratic institutions & will be impatient for a kingship anew. Whom will they have? How did you feel when the cry was raised, “Vive l’empereur”? only prince Napoleon is a Napoleon cut out in paper after all. The prince de Joinville is said to be very popular. [7] It makes one giddy to think of the awful precipices which surround France—to think too that the great danger is on the question of property which is perhaps divided there more justly than in any other country of Europe. Lamartine has comprehended nothing .. that is clear .. even if his amount of energy had been effectual. How interested you must have been in your late visitors. We have seen an American who has pleased us .. Mr Ware, [8] the author of the [‘]Last days of Aurelian’ .. and ‘Letters from Palmyra’ .. you remember. Becoming a victim to epileptic attacks he could not bear the affectionate vigilance of his family—& by a singular revolt, left them all in the new world & came off to Italy without friend or servant. It was not certainly a way of being over-careful of their feelings, but these nervous complaints are apt to reason by hallucination. He is an earnest, simple man, with an intellectual, seeking face, all the more impressive from the settled melancholy of the countenance & manner—and there, he lives, shut up in a room in Via Maggio, with an evening walk to the bridge and the sunset, for his chief relaxation—but we have had him here once at tea time and although Flush was so inhospitable as to make violent assault on his coat-tail till I was shocked at the agitation of nerves produced, it ended quietly enough, & he did not seem inclined to be frightened away for ever. Yes, do send me the list of Balzac—after ‘Les miseres de la vie conjugale’, I mean. I left him in the midst of ‘La femme de soixante ans’ who seemed on the point of turning the heads of all “la jeunesse” [9] around her:—& after all, she did not strike me as so charming. [10] But Balzac charms me, let him write what he will: he’s an inspired man. Tell me too exactly what Sue has done after ‘Martin.’ [11] I read only one volume of Martin. And did poor Soulié finish his ‘Dramas’? [12] And after Lucretia, what did George Sand write? [13] When Robert & I are ambitious, we talk of buying Balzac in full some day, to put him up in our bookcase from the convent—if the carved-wood angels, infants & serpents shd not finish mouldering away in horror at the touch of him. But I fear it will rather be an expensive purchase even here. Would that he gave up the drama, for which as you observe, he has no faculty whatever. In fact, the faculty he has, is the very reverse of the dramatic—ordinarily understood.–
Dearest Miss Mitford, dont call that Mrs Deane [14] a “friend of mine,” pray, whatever she may call herself. I knew her in the very slightest way, and did’nt like much what I knew—& there were murmurs in the air about her unkindness to her little step-daughter, which was said to go to her husband’s heart. A detestable temper in a wife, was an irritation spared to poor Cowper: [15] —for the rest, I do not know enough of these things to speak of them accurately, & was only provoked into speech at all by her introducing herself to you as my friend!——
Dearest Mr Kenyon is called quite well & delightful by the whole world, though he suffered from cough in the winter: and he is bringing out a new book of poems, “a Day at Tivoli” [16] & others; and he talks energetically of coming to Florence this autumn. Also, we have hopes of Mr Chorley. I congratulate you on the going away of Madame. Coming & going bring very various associations, in this life of ours. Why, if you were to come we should appreciate our fortune, & you shd have my particular chair which Robert calls mine because I like sitting in a cloud .. it’s so sybaritically soft a chair. How I love you for the kind words you say of him, who deserves the best words of the best women & men, wherever spoken! Yes, indeed—I am happy. Otherwise, I should have a stone where the heart is, & sink by the weight of it. You must have faith in me—for I never can make you thoroughly to understand what he is, of himself, and to me .. the noblest & perfectest of human beings. After a year & ten months’ absolute soul-to-soul intercourse & union, I have to look higher still for my first ideal– You wont blame me for bad taste that I say these things .. for can I help it, when I am writing my heart to you? It is a heart which runs over very often with a grateful joy for a most peculiar destiny, even in the midst of some bitter drawbacks which I need not allude to further– You surprise me by the hint about Mrs Partridge! Well, I give her up if the child fails to draw her into the natural cheerfulness. “Worth the trouble”– How strange some women are! Perhaps she looked once to the warm side of life too intently,—and the dash of cold water in her face, which that marriage brought, shattered for a long time the nervous system of the capacity of happiness .. I can seem to understand that .. yet the first child should revive something through it all.– We have’nt seen Miss Martineau’s book yet, [17] but hear that the exploits performed by her on her travels, gave proof of more strength than is possessed by many strong men. I shd like much to see the book, certainly. We are still without our orange-trees & flowers .. and bell-ropes, for the rest,—but are getting slowly into order, & scheming meanwhile how to get to the great fair of Sinigaglia where the orientals & Greeks keep tryst with Italians, Swiss & French. We thought of making a round of it by Ravenna, but the expense waves us off. Only a sight of the fair & a few days at Fano on the Adriatic, we may compass perhaps, & shd much enjoy it. Did I tell you that Wilson is acclimated in all senses, and that except with the assurance of bringing her back again, we might find it difficult to carry her to England in the spring. Flush knows Florence at the end of his paws—& runs in & out in full liberty. Now write, my dearest friend, & let me hear everything relating to yourself, & that you go to the seaside directly. May God bless you continually,—even as I am
your affectionate
Ba ..
Good, kind Mr Lovejoy! [18] —what an excellent friend!–
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 243–248.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by reference to Miss Mitford’s carriage accident, discussed in letters 2733 and 2735.
2. The Purple Jar, a story for children by Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849), “appeared in 1796 in The Parent’s Assistant and then reappeared as part of Rosamond in 1801” (Marilyn Butler, Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography, Oxford, 1972, p. 159).
3. “News of the war—read about it, gentlemen.”
4. Count Johann Joseph Radetzky (1766–1858) was the commander of the Austrian troops in the campaign against the nationalist revolutions in Italy. Known for his courage, as well as his attempts to modernise and improve the Austrian military, he led the Austrian forces in decisive victories over Italian troops at Custoza in 1848 and Novara in 1849.
5. According to a report in The Times of 5 July 1848, “the Grand Duke of Tuscany opened the Parliament in person on the 26th” (p. 8). The following day The Times printed an excerpt from the Grand Duke’s speech which concludes: “… a good understanding between the three powers of state is necessary, and I hope to see it constantly exist in Tuscany” (p. 5).
6. The decision to close the National Workshops in Paris led to an insurrection from 23 to 26 June 1848. The government moved quickly and violently to put down the demonstration, “in which an estimated total of between 40,000 and 50,000 insurgents may have been involved on the barricades. Some 1,500 combatants on both sides died in the fighting, and another 3,000 captured insurgents were summarily shot. A further 12,000 were arrested, of whom 4,500 were eventually deported, mostly to Algeria” (The Revolutions in Europe 1848–1849: From Reform to Reaction, ed. R.J.W. Evans et al., Oxford, 2000, p. 41).
7. François Ferdinand Philippe Louis Marie, Prince de Joinville and Duc d’Orléans, (1818–1900), the third son of Louis Philippe, had trained for the navy and risen to the rank of vice-admiral. At the age of 21 he was given command of the expedition that brought the remains of Napoleon I from St. Helena to France. He was in Algeria at this time, but rather than return to France, he joined his family in exile in England (see letter 2722, note 3).
8. William Ware (1797–1852), an American Unitarian minister who suffered from epilepsy, was the author of Letters of Lucius M. Piso from Palmyra, to his friend Marcus Curtius, at Rome (New York, 1837), which was entitled Zenobia; or, the Fall of Palmyra in subsequent editions. He also wrote The Last Days of Aurelian (1838), which was first published as Probus; or, Rome in the Third Century (New York, 1838).
9. “The youth.”
10. EBB had mentioned La femme de soixante ans in February 1847 (see letter 2654). Petites Misères de la vie conjugale was written between 1830 and 1846; “Although several editions, partial or complete, were produced in 1846, the work was not incorporated in the ‘Comédie Humaine’ until 1855” (Herbert J. Hunt, Balzac’s Comédie Humaine, 1959, p. 416).
11. Martin ou l’enfant trouvé (1847). At this time Eugène Sue was working on Les Sept Pechés capitaux (1851–54).
12. Of the plays left unpublished by Frédéric Soulié at the time of his death in September 1847, only Hortense de Blengie appeared posthumously.
13. Sand published Lucrezia Floriani in 1846, Le Piccinino in 1847, and François le Champi in 1848.
14. Presumably Mary Dean (née Pearson) who had married the Rev. Thomas Dean, curate of St. James Church, Colwall, on 10 May 1821. Neither the husband nor the wife was a favourite of EBB’s, as indicated by an entry in her diary: “Mr. Deane & a goose for dinner. No identity hinted at!” (Diary, pp. 158–159).
15. The poet William Cowper (1731–1800) never married.
16. A Day at Tivoli: With Other Verses was published the following year.
18. George Lovejoy (1808–83), the Reading bookseller mentioned occasionally in EBB’s correspondence with Miss Mitford.
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