3047. EBB to Dinah Mulock
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 139–140.
138 Avenue des Champs Elysées.
June 2. [1852] [1]
My husband went directly to Rue Vivienne [2] & came back without the book– [3] We waited & waited—but at last it reached us, & we have read it, & since then I have let some days go by through having been very unwell .. you seemed to let me sit still in my chair & do nothing .. you did not call too loud. So was it with most other things in the universe– Now, having awakened from my somnolency, .. recovered from “la grippe,” (or what mortal Londoners call the influenza) the first person & first book I think of, must naturally be you & yours.
So I thank you much, much, for the book. It has interested me, dear Miss Mulock, as a book should,—and I am delighted to recognize everywhere undeniable talent & faculty, combined with high & pure aspiration. A clever book, a graceful book, & with the moral grace besides—thank you. Many must have thanked you as well as myself.
At the same time, .. precisely because I feel particularly obliged to you, I mean to tell you the truth. Your hero is heroic from his own point of view .. accepting his own view of his situation. Which I, for one, cannot accept, do you know, for I am of opinion that both you and he are rather conventional on the subject of his marriage. I dont in the least understand, at this moment, why he should not have married in the first volume—no, not in the least. It was a matter of income, he would tell me, and of keeping two establishments,—and I would answer that it ought rather to have been a matter of faith in God and in the value of God’s gifts, the greatest of which is Love. I am romantic about love .. oh, much more than you are, though older than you. A man’s life does not develop rightly without it,—and what is called an “improvident marriage,” often appears to me a noble, righteous, & prudent act. Your Ninian was a man before he was a brother– [4] I hold that he had no right to sacrifice a great spiritual good of his own to the worldly good of his family, however he made it out. He should have said, “God gives me this gift, He will find me energy to work for it & suffer for it– We will all live together, struggle together if it is necessary .. a little more poorly, a little more laboriously, but keeping true to the best aims of life, all of us.”–
That’s what my Ninian would have said– I dont like to see noble Ninians crushed flat under family Juggernauts, from whatever heroic motives—not I. Do you forgive me for being so candid?
I must tell you that Mrs Jameson, who is staying in this house, read your book in England & mentioned it to me as a good book “very gracefully written,” before I read it—quite irrespectively, too, of my dedication, which was absent from the copy she saw at Brighton. It was mentioned as one of the novels which had pleased her most lately.
I shall like to show you my child, as you like children, and as I am vain .. oh, past-endurance vain about him. You wont understand a word he says, though, for he speaks three languages at once & most of the syllables of each, wrong side foremost.
No—dont call me a Bonapartist– I am not a Bonapartist indeed. But I am a democrat, & singularly (in these days) consequent about universal suffrage. Also, facts in England have been much mis[s]tated .. but there’s no room for politics today.
When I thank you, remember that my husband thanks you. We both hope to see you before this month shall be quite at an end, and then you will know me better I hope; & though I shall lose a great deal by your knowing me, of course, yet you wont, after that, make such mistakes as you “confess” in this note which I have just read over again. Did I think you “sentimental?” Wont you rather think me sentimental today? Through it all,
your affectionate
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Publication: LEBB, II, 72–74.
Source: Transcript in editors’ file.
1. Year provided by reference to the return address; 1852 was the only year the Brownings resided at 138 Avenue des Champs Élysées on 2 June.
2. i.e., to Galignani’s reading room and circulating library at 18 Rue Vivienne.
3. The Head of the Family; see letter 2998, note 2.
4. Upon his father’s death, Ninian Græme, the eldest son of eight children, becomes “the head of the family” and assumes the responsibility for three brothers and four sisters.
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