2838. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 86–87.
Three Mile Cross,
March 25, 1850.
My “Country Stories” are just coming out, to my great contentment, in the “Parlour Library,” [1] for a shilling, or perhaps ninepence—that being the price of Miss Austen’s novels. I delight in this, and have no sympathy with your bemoanings over American editions. Think of the American editions of my prose. “Our Village” has been reprinted in twenty or thirty places, and “Belford Regis” in almost as many; and I like it. So do you, say what you may. Mr. Fields, the handsome Boston bookseller, Mr. Ticknor’s partner, [2] sent me a copy of their edition of Mr. Browning’s poems, and very nicely done it is, preceded by Mr. Landor’s sonnet. [3]
After all, my dear friend, Mrs. Acton Tindal was mistaken in her account of the authorship of “Jane Eyre.” It was really written by a Miss Bronté, a clergyman’s daughter, diminutive almost to dwarfishness—a woman of thirty, who had hardly ever left her father’s parish in Yorkshire. There is great success in mystery. I think, from a thing that I have heard lately, that Sir R. Vyvyan is the author of the “Vestiges.” [4]
Well; but was not that song most sweet and harmonious, and full of grace and beauty? and what would you ask for more? A song is not necessarily an ode. [5] For my part, I delight in such bits of melody, floating about you upon the air. I wish I dared give it to Henry Phillips, [6] to whom I have just sent a fine translation of a German song written, words and music, by one of Prince Eugene’s [7] old troopers, and picked up by a friend of mine among the soldiers at Ehrenbreitstein. [8]
God bless you, my very dear love! K_____ has been very ill, but is better. Say everything for me to Mr. Browning, and believe me ever,
Faithfully and most affectionately yours,
M. R. Mitford.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 217–218.
1. Country Stories (1850) formed volume 39 of The Parlour Library, which was started by the Belfast publishers Simms and McIntyre in 1847. It continued until the mid-1860’s, reprinting popular novels for a shilling and thereby stimulating a demand for affordable fiction. Jane Austen’s Emma appeared in the series in 1849; Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, in 1850.
2. James Thomas Fields (1817–81) was a partner with fellow Bostonian William Davis Ticknor (1810–64) in the publishing firm of Ticknor, Reed, and Fields. They published the American edition of RB’s Poems (1849); see letter 2831, note 8.
3. “To Robert Browning”; see letter 2101, note 3.
4. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844); see letter 1805.
5. Possibly a reference to Tennyson’s “The Bugle Song”; see letter 2831, note 2.
6. Henry Phillips (1801–76), singer, composer, and author of Musical and Personal Recollections During Half a Century (1864), which contains references to Miss Mitford but none to her anecdote regarding “a German song.”
7. Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), a French nobleman who, denied a commission in the army of his own country, became one of Austria’s most celebrated military commanders. The song Miss Mitford sent to Phillips may have been “Das Prinz-Eugen Lied.” This “famous German soldiers’ song,” written to commemorate Eugene’s victory over the Turks at the battle of Belgrade (1717), “was probably composed by one of the Bavarian troops who took part in the battle” (Derek McKay, Prince Eugene of Savoy, 1977, p. 166).
8. A fortress on the Rhine, situated high above the town of the same name, opposite Koblenz.
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