2919. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 17, 39–41.
Venice.
June 4 [1851] [1]
My ever dearest Miss Mitford, I must write to you from Venice though it can only be a few lines. So much I have to say & feel in writing to you, & thinking that you were not well when you wrote last to me. I long to hear from you—and yet I cant tell you today where a letter will find me. We are wanderers on the face of the world just now, & with every desire of going straight from Venice to Milan tomorrow (friday) week, we shall more probably, at the Baths of Recoaro, be lingering & lingering. Therefore, will you write to the care of Miss Browning, New Cross Hatcham, near London? for, so, I shall not lose your letter. I have been between Heaven & earth since our arrival at Venice. The Heaven of it is ineffable– Never had I touched the skirts of so celestial a place. The beauty of the architecture, the silver trails of water up between all that gorgeous colour & carving, the enchanting silence, the moonlight, the music, the gondolas .. I mix it all up together & maintain that nothing is like it, nothing equal to it, not a second Venice in the world. Do you know when I came first, I felt as if I never could go away– But now comes the earth-side. Robert, after sharing the ecstasy, grows uncomfortable, & nervous, & unable to eat or sleep—and poor Wilson, still worse, in a miserable condition of continual sickness & headache. Alas—for these mortal Venices, so exquisite and so bilious! Therefore I am constrained away from my joys by sympathy, and am forced to be glad that we are going off on friday. For myself it does not affect me at all– I like these moist, soft, relaxing climates: even the scirocco does’nt touch me much. And the baby grows gloriously fatter in spite of everything.
No—indeed & indeed we are not going to England for the sake of the Exposition. How could you fancy such a thing, even once. In any case we shall not reach London till late, and if by any possible arrangement I could see my sister Arabel in France or on the coast of England, we would persuade Robert’s family to meet us there, & not see London at all. Ah, if you knew how abhorrent the thought of England is to me! Well—we must not talk of it– My eyes shut suddenly when my thoughts go that way.
Tell me exactly how you are. I heartily rejoice that you have decided at last about the other house, so as to avoid the danger of another autumn & winter in the damp. [2] Do you write still for Mr Chorley’s periodical, [3] & how does it go on. Here in Italy, the fame of it does not penetrate. As for Venice, you cant get even a Times, much less an Athenæum– We comfort ourselves by taking a box at the opera, (the whole box on the ground tier, mind) for two shillings and eight pence English. Also, every evening at half past eight, Robert & I are sitting under the moon in the great piazza of St Mark, taking excellent coffee & reading the French papers– Can you fancy me so?
You will receive a copy of my new poem, “Casa Guidi Windows” soon after this note. I have asked Sarianna Browning to see that you receive it safely. I dont give away copies, (having none to give away, according to bookseller’s terms) but I cant let you receive my little book from another hand than the writer’s. Tell me how you like the poem .. honestly, truly .. which numbers of people will be sure to dislike profoundly, & angrily, perhaps. We think of going to Recoaro because Mr Chorley praised it to us years ago. Tell him so if you write.
Here are a heap of words tossed down upon paper. I cant put the stops even. Do write about yourself, not waiting for the book.
Your ever attached
EBB–
At Paris, how near we shall be! How sure to meet! Have you been to the Exposition yourself? Tell me. And what is the general feeling now? [4]
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 322–324.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by EBB’s references to the Brownings’ stay in Venice. She may have written this letter on 5 June; in the fourth sentence she refers to leaving Venice “tomorrow (friday) week.” 4 June 1851 was a Wednesday.
3. The Ladies’ Companion; see letter 2863, note 4.
4. Miss Mitford attended the Great Exhibition the following month during a visit to London to see the Brownings. She described it as being “just like a great bazaar, and neither deserves the praise some people give it nor the blame of others” (Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner, ed. R.M. Kettle, 1871, I, 214).
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