2863. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 151–152.
Three Mile Cross,
July 1, 1850.
I cannot enough thank you, my beloved friend, for your most welcome letter. The pleasure it gave me would have been unmingled but for its delaying the hope of seeing you. But, if you come so near as France, then we shall meet here, I hope, and there—I mean both in France and in England; for I do still hope to get as far as Paris before I die. At present I cannot tell you where I am going. The cottage at Swallowfield that I want to rent, belonged to a crotchetty old bachelor; he, dying, left it for her life to a sister, a rich widow, aged seventy-seven, and after her death to another relative. It is about six miles from Reading, on this same road, leading up from which is a short ascending lane, terminated by this small dwelling, with a court in front, and a garden and paddock behind. Trees overarch it like the frame of a picture, and the cottage itself, although not pretty, yet too unpretending to be vulgar, and abundantly snug and comfortable, leading by different paths to all my favourite walks, and still within distance of my most valuable neighbours. It will be provoking if this woman, who has known me for forty years, and to whom my father rendered a thousand services, should, from spite to Captain Beauchamp and his excellent father, [1] resolve rather to let the cottage tumble to pieces than admit a tenant whom they wish to see there, or indeed any tenant at all.
You are most kind in your inquiries about my health. I cannot but think myself better on the whole than when I wrote last, and you will wonder to hear that I have again taken pen in hand. It reminds me of Benedick’s speech—“When I said I should die a bachelor, I never thought to live to be married;” [2] but it is our friend Henry Chorley’s fault. He has taken to ‘The Lady’s Companion,’ a weekly journal, belonging to Bradbury and Evans, that was going to decay (like my dwellings, present and future) under the mismanagement of Mrs. Loudon, [3] and came to me to help him. He wanted a novel; then, finding that out of the question, he wanted something else; and, though I have refused every applicant to right and left for these eight years, this very Mrs. Loudon included, and began of course, by refusing him, he is such a very old friend, that I really could not persist in saying No to him. So at last it ended in my undertaking to give him a series of papers to be called ‘Readings of Poetry, Old and New,’ [4] consisting of as much prose as he can get, and extracts from favourite poets. <***>
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 219–220.
1. Unidentified.
2. Cf. Much Ado About Nothing, II, 3, 242–244.
3. Jane Webb Loudon (1807–58), a miscellaneous writer who edited several journals. “On the retirement of Mrs. Loudon from the editorship of the ‘Lady’s [sic, for Ladies’] Companion,’ the proprietor offered the post to Chorley. … He conducted this serial from Midsummer 1850, to Midsummer 1851” (Henry Fothergill Chorley: Autobiography, Memoir, and Letters, compiled by Henry G. Hewlett, 1873, II, 6).
4. This series of essays by Miss Mitford was published in ten parts in The Ladies’ Companion under various sub-headings, beginning with “Percy’s Reliques” in the issue of 6 July 1850. The nine other instalments ran as follows: “Beaumont and Fletcher” (20 July 1850); “Unpublished Poetry.—Ufton Court. By W.C. Bennett” (10 August 1850); “Comic Poets.—J. Anstey” (24 August 1850); “Peasant Poets—John Clare” (7 September 1850); “Thames Scenery.—Thomas Noel” (21 September 1850); “Fashionable Poets.—William Robert Spencer” (12 October 1850); “Cavalier Poets:—Richard Lovelace:—Roger L’Estrange:—The Marquis of Montrose” (9 and 16 November 1850); “Fishing Songs—Mr. Doubleday—Miss Corbett” (31 May 1851).
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