2805. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 15, 321–322.
Three Mile Cross,
[August 1849] [1]
How earnestly I rejoice, my beloved friend, in your continued health! and how very, very glad I shall be to see you and your baby. Remember me to Wilson, and tell her that I am quite prepared to admire him as much as will even satisfy her appetite for praise. How beautifully you describe your beautiful country! Oh! that I were with you, to lose myself in the chestnut forests, and gather grapes at the vintage! If I had but Prince Houssein’s carpet, [2] I would set forth and leave Mr. May to scold and wonder, when he comes to see me to-morrow. He seems well disposed to shut me up for a month or two. Besides the chestnut woods and you, your ownselves, I should be delighted to see Mr. Lever. You know I have always had a mannish sort of fancy for those “Charles O’Malley” and “Jack Hinton” books, [3] which always put me in good spirits and good humour (I wish he wrote so now); and I remember hearing from his illustrator, Mr. Browne, [4] that he was exactly the “Harry Lorrequer” he describes—that is to say, full of life and glee, and all that is animating and agreeable. I remember, too, most gratefully the pleasure his books gave to my father.
“The Princess” has fine things, but would certainly not have made a reputation. It is a poem of a hundred and fifty pages, all in blank verse—enclosed within a setting of blank verse also—and the very songs introduced are of the same metre. The story is very unskilfully told, with an entire want of dramatic power, and full of the strangest words brought in after the strangest fashion. It begins in mockery, and becomes earnest as it goes on; but there are, as I said before, fine things in it.
God bless you, my beloved friend! Say everything for me to Mr. Browning. Kiss baby for me, and pat Flush. I have written out the pain.
Ever yours,
M.R.M.
I have made many inquiries about Miss Martineau; but my only answer has been from Mrs. Ouvry (Jane Nicholls), [5] who lives in her circle, and says, “All I know about her is that she has brought a pipe from the East, and smokes it every day. Perhaps that may be to subdue pain or deaden irritation.”
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 213–214 (as September 1848).
1. Approximate dating suggested by Miss Mitford’s references to Charles Lever, “beautiful country,” and Wilson’s estimation of Pen, all subjects that are mentioned by EBB in letter 2803.
2. An allusion to Housain’s magic carpet in the story of Prince Ahmed in The Arabian Nights.
3. Lever’s novels, Charles O’Malley (1841) and Jack Hinton the Guardsman (1843).
4. Hablot Knight Browne (pseud. Phiz, 1815–82), best known for his illustrations of Dickens’s works.
5. Jane Ouvry (1819–56), daughter of Sir George Nicholls (1781–1865), poor-law reformer, and his wife Harriet (née Maltby, 1786–1869), was married to the Rev. Peter Thomas Ouvry (1812–91), vicar of Wing, near Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.
___________________
