2749. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 140–144.

Florence–

October 10. [1848] [1]

My ever dearest Miss Mitford, Have you not thought some hard thoughts of me for not instantly replying to a letter which necessarily must have been, to one who loved you, of such painful interest. Do I not love you truly? Yes, indeed– But while preparing to write to you my deep regret at hearing that you had been so ill, illness came in another form to prevent me from writing, my husband being laid up for nearly a month with fever & ulcerated sorethroat. I had not the heart to write a line to anyone .. much less to prepare a packet to escort your letter free from foreign postage: and to make you pay for a chapter of Lamentations without the spirit of prophecy, [2] would have been too hard on you .. would’nt it? Quite unhappy I have been over those burning hands & languid eyes .. the only unhappiness I ever had by them .. and then he would’nt see a physician; and if it had’nt been that, just at the right moment, Mr Mahoney the celebrated Jesuit & Father Prout of Fraser, [3] knowing everything as those Jesuits are apt to do, came in to us on his way to Rome, pointed out that the fever got ahead through weakness & mixed up with his own kind hand a potion of eggs & port wine .. to the horror of our Italian servant who lifted up his eyes at such a prescription for a fever, crying “O Inglesi, Inglesi!”, [4] .. the case would have been far worse, I have no kind of doubt. For the eccentric prescription gave the power of sleeping, & the pulse grew quieter directly. I shall always be grateful to Father Prout .. always. The very sight of someone with a friend’s name & cheerful face .. his very jests at me for being a ‘bambina’ [5] & frightened without cause, .. were as comforting as the salutation of angels. Also, he has been in Florence ever since, & we have seen him every day—he came to doctor & remained to talk. [6] A very singular person, of whom the world tells a thousand & one tales, you know, but of whom I shall speak as I find him, because the utmost kindness & warmheartedness have characterized his whole bearing towards us. Robert met him years ago at dinner at Emerson Tennant’s, & since has crossed paths with him on various points of Europe. The first time I saw him, was as he stood on a rock at Leghorn, at our disembarkation in Italy. Not refined in a social sense, by any manner of means, yet a most accomplished scholar & vibrating all over with learned associations & vivid combinations of fancy & experience—having seen all the ends of the earth & the men thereof, & possessing the art of talk & quotation to an amusing degree. In another week or two he will be at Rome:—as our friend Mr Ware is, .. that very different & charming person—not charming either, in the ordinary sense, but through his simplicity & earnestness of character, eminently so. He bade me tell you that if he went to England which he thought probable, his “second visit should be to you”, Miss Martineau being an old personal friend. We had a letter from him the other day, dated Rome, & he was enjoying as much as his health wd permit, & suffering the rest with that unassuming dignity which is to be admired in him– And now, for yourself, my beloved friend!– I am anxious about you indeed. I beseech you to write me a faithful account of your state, &, above all things, & for the sake of all whom you love & who love you, not to be drawn again into improper exertions—rather to leave Three Mile Cross than do it. You know what has always been my impression of the unresultive weariness which so populous a neighbourhood must bring to a popular neighbour like yourself. Often I have wondered how you bore it all, & still oftener how you made up your mind to try to bear it. But now that you are less strong (a temporary diminution of strength, I must earnestly hope) it does appear your clear duty to disentangle yourself from these things, & share your life equally between repose & your real friends. Talk of London life! Why London is the rest & silence of the desert, in comparison with country neighbourhoods like Three Mile Cross. As to the affection you speak of, it is too common—a dreadful case, the obstinacy of which made an operation necessary, occurred to my own knowledge not long ago, in the person of a young woman, a friend of my sisters .. but though suffering to excess, there was no danger, & though the cure, left certain unpleasant tendencies, she became well & strong & as able to take exercise as ever. Her brother, too, submitted to the same operation from a like cause, & recovered equally. Only in these cases, observe, the evil was stationary—otherwise an operation wd have been obviously unnecessary. It is terrible to be forced into the use of strong medicines. Were you never tempted to see into the meaning of that advertisement about “constipation”?—and a little book has appeared, I think, on the same subject. [7] Do persevere in the use of the poney carriage, & do, do, if possible, let me hear that you are satisfactorily better in all ways. My own patient here, is well again, I thank God .. only the thinner & weaker for past illness. As for me, I am well too, but had the wisdom two days ago to upset myself out of, yet in company with, one of our lolling-chairs .. falling forwards (as I knelt in the chair which fell backward) on my forehead with a violence, which protected the rest of my body happily, at the expence of breaking the giddy head, the cause of the mischief. Here’s the end of keeping in the house for months together, to avoid shakings & strainings! One falls out of an easy chair into the arms of destiny. I hope however that there is no worse harm than a week’s disfigurement & an hour’s headache—but the shock stunned me & could’nt have happened at a more unfortunate time. Nobody was ever born to be happier & unhappier than I—the “mingled yarn” [8] is black & white. Poor Robert is very vexed—only really I feel well this morning & may have escaped, through God’s great mercy, the particular evil. How graphically you give us your Oxford student! [9] Well! the picture is more distinct than Turner’s .. & if you had called it, in the manner of the master, [‘]‘A Rock limpet,” [10] we should have recognized in it the corresponding type of the gifted & eccentric writer in question. Very eloquent he is, I agree at once—& true views he takes of Art in the abstract .. true & elevating. It is in the application & connective logic that he breaks away from one so violently. Does your friend Mrs Acton Tyndal publish her poems after all—& where? I am glad you had so much pleasure in her society. And Mrs Partridge’s baby & maternity .. how do these things get on? You dont mention kind excellent Mr Lovejoy’s interesting child. [11] We are expecting our books by an early vessel, & are about to be very busy, building up a rococo bookcase of carved angels & dæmons. Also we shall get up curtains, & get down bedroom carpets, & finish the remainder of our furnishing business, now that the hot weather is at an end. I say ‘at an end’, though the glass stands at seventy. As to the “war,” that is rather different—it is painful to feel oneself growing gradually cooler & cooler on the subject of Italian patriotism, valour, & goodsense; but the process is inevitable. The child’s play between the Livornese & our Grand Duke, provokes a thousand pleasantries. Every now & then a day is fixed for a revolution in Tuscany, but up to the present time, a shower has come & put it off. Two sundays ago, Florence was to have been ‘sacked’ by Leghorn, when a drizzle came & saved us. You think this a bad joke of mine, or an impotent sarcasm, perhaps; whereas I merely speak historically. Brave men, good men, even sensible men, there are of course in the land, but they are not strong enough for the times or for masterdom. For France, it is [a] great nation; but even in France they want a man, & Cavagniac is only a soldier. [12] If Louis Napoleon had the muscle of his uncle’s little finger in his soul, he wd be president .. & king; but he is flaccid altogether, you see; & Joinville stands nearer to the royal probability after all. “Henri Cinq” is said to be too closely espoused to the church—& his connections at Naples & Parma dont help his cause. [13] Robert has more hope of the republic than I have:—but call ye this a republic? Do you know that Miss Martineau takes up the “History of England” under Charles Knight, in the continuation of a popular work? [14] I regret her fine imagination being so wasted. So you saw Mr Chorley? What a pleasant flashing in the eyes! We hear of him in Holland & Norway. Dear Mr Kenyon wont stir from England, we see plainly. Ah—Frederic Soulié!—he is too dead, I fear. Perhaps he goes on, though, writing romances, after the fashion of poor Miss Pickering!– [15] That proves nothing. I long for my French fountains of living literature, which, pure or impure, plashed in one’s face so pleasantly. Some old French ‘memories’ we have got at lately!– Brissot’s [16] for instance. It is curious how the leaders of the last revolution (under Louis seize) seem to have despised one another. Brissot is very dull & flat. For Puseyism, it runs counter to the spirit of our times, after all, & will never achieve a church.

You talk delightful scenery in your last letter, & I dont wonder at the old trees haunting you. Is K. quite strong again? [17] I hope so. Oh that you may be stronger your own dear self. My brothers & sisters,—the whole house except Papa who stays at home, .. are enjoying the neighbourhood of Windsor, where they are settled for two months. May God bless you! Robert’s regards go with the love of

your ever affectionate

Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.

Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 254–258.

Manuscript: Wellesley College

1. Year provided by postmark.

2. Revelation 19:10; EBB is referring to the Old Testament book of Lamentations, which contains five chapters on the subject of the desolation of Judah after the destruction of Jerusalem; the authorship is ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah.

3. From 1834 to 1836 Mahony had contributed monthly articles to Fraser’s Magazine under the heading “Reliques of Father Prout.” These were “accounts of fictitious episodes in Prout’s career, with his views on life and literature” (DNB).

4. “Oh, the English, the English!”

5. “Little girl.”

6. Cf. Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village,” line 182.

7. Constipation Not a Disease of the Bowels: Its true nature and cause discovered, and a safe and effectual remedy recommended (1847) by Edward Johnson, 32 pp., 32mo.

8. All’s Well That Ends Well, IV, 3, 71.

9. In a letter to Charles Boner, dated 25 August 1848, Miss Mitford had described Ruskin as “a very elegant and distinguished looking young man, tall, fair, and slender—too slender, for there is a consumptive look, and I fear a consumptive tendency—the only cause of grief that he has ever given to his parents. He must be, I suppose, twenty-six or twenty-seven, but he looks much younger, and has a gentle playfulness—a sort of pretty waywardness, that is quite charming” (Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner, ed. R.M. Kettle, 1871, I, 137–138).

10. EBB refers to J.M.W. Turner’s painting, “War: The Exile and the Rock Limpet” (1842), which Ruskin mentions several times in Modern Painters.

11. Patty Lovejoy (1836–56), the consumptive daughter of Reading bookseller George Lovejoy.

12. Louis Eugène Cavaignac (1802–57), general and, briefly, minister of war for the Second Republic, commanded the military suppression of the 23–26 June workers’ revolt in Paris.

13. As a Bourbon prince, the Comte de Chambord (“Henri Cinq”) was related to Charles Louis de Bourbon (1799–1883), Duke of Parma (1847–49), as well as to Ferdinand II (1810–59), the Bourbon King of Naples (The Two Sicilies).

14. The History of England During the Thirty Year’s Peace: 1816–1846 (1849–50) was begun by the publisher Charles Knight in 1846 and issued in parts. After sixteen chapters were written, however, the project stalled, and Knight asked Harriet Martineau in 1848 to complete the work (DNB).

15. After Ellen Pickering’s death in 1843, two of her novels were published posthumously: The Grandfather (1844) and Kate Walsingham (1848).

16. Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754–93), political writer and leader of the Girondists, was guillotined on 31 October 1793. His Mémoires were published in 1830–32.

17. In her 25 August letter to Boner, Miss Mitford explained that her maid had “caught cold … and is at this moment very ill with sore throat, and I am in great anxiety about her” (Charles Boner, I, 137).

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