3061. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 166–168.
58 Welbeck Street–
Saturday [10 July 1852] [1]
I come & hear that you are ill—worse than usual?—dearest friend, is it true? There is a letter of yours unanswered, because our latter days at Paris were most uncertain, &, at the very last, we came away with a rush & a suddenness, in order to meet my sister Henrietta in London, who had only one week to make tryst in with us here on her way back to Taunton. So first I waited to be able to tell you of our plans being fixed, & then I waited again through their being executed as soon as made. Believe that I love you & am very anxious about you, & do write one line!– As to our meeting, never care for that– If you cant come to me I shall go to you .. I shall not miss you, be sure. God bless you & make you well meanwhile. I am very, very anxious.
We saw your book in Paris—the Galignani edition—& I read it all except the one thing I had not courage to read. [2] Thank you, thank you. We are both of us grateful to you, for your most generous & heartwarm intentions to us– [3] As to the book, it’s a book made to go east & west,—it’s a popular book, with flowers from the “Village” [4] laid freshly & brightly between the critical leaves. I dont always agree with you .. I think, for instance, that Mary Anne Browne should never be compared to George Sand in “passion”!——& I cant grant to you that your extracts from her poems bear you out to even one fiftieth degree in such an opinion. [5] I agree with you just as little with regard to Dr Holmes & certain others. [6] But to have your opinion is always a delightful thing—& “it is characteristic of your generosity, to say the least,” we say to ourselves when we are dissidents most.
I am writing in the extremest haste—just a word to announce our arrival in England. We are in very comfortable rooms in 58 Welbeck street, & my sister Henrietta is some twenty doors away. [7] Tomorrow Robert & I are going to Wimbledon for a day to dear Mr Kenyon, who looks radiantly well & has Mr Landor for a companion just now. Imagine the uproar & turmoil of our first days in London, & believe that I think of you faithfully & tenderly through all. I am overjoyed to see my sisters, who look well on the whole—— Henrietta is rather invalided with her approaching confinement, but we are all able to talk—& they & everybody assure me that I show a very satisfactory face to my country, as far as improved looks go.
What nonsense one writes when one has but a moment to write in– I find people talking about the “facts in the Times” touching Louis Napoleon. Facts in the Times!
The heat here is stifling. Do send me one word to say how you are, & love me always as I love you.
Your most affectionate
Ba–
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 361–363.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by EBB’s references to the Brownings’ arrival at 58 Welbeck Street, which occurred on 6 July 1852. The first Saturday afterwards was 10 July 1852.
2. The passage concerning Bro’s death, in Recollections of a Literary Life (1852).
3. In the chapter entitled “Married Poets: Elizabeth Barrett Browning—Robert Browning” (Recollections, I, 266–291), Miss Mitford writes of EBB: “Such is the influence of her manners, her conversation, her temper, her thousand sweet and attaching qualities, that they who know her best are apt to lose sight altogether of her learning and of her genius” (p. 267). In her praise of “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” Miss Mitford declares: “It is too long for insertion here; and I no more dare venture an abridgment, than I should venture to break one of the crown jewels” (p. 275). Writing of RB’s Poems (1849), she remarks: “I never see those two volumes of his collected works … without wishing again and again, and again, that we had actors and a stage. Besides ‘The Blot on [sic] the Scutcheon’ which has been successfully produced at two metropolitan theaters, ‘Colombe’s Birthday’ and ‘Lucia’ [sic] show not only what he has done, but what with the hope of a great triumph before him he might yet do as a dramatist” (p. 285). Miss Mitford quotes “My Last Duchess” and “How They Brought the Good News” in their entirety.
4. Our Village: Sketches of Rural Character and Scenery (1824), perhaps Miss Mitford’s best known work.
5. EBB is referring to the minor Berkshire poet, whom Miss Mitford treats under her married name of Mrs. James Gray: “Of all poetesses, George Sand herself not excepted, she seems to me to touch with the sweetest, the firmest, the most delicate hand, the difficult chords of female passion” (Recollections, II, 34).
6. In letter 2887 EBB had criticized some of the “certain others”; that is, poets Miss Mitford had singled out for praise in her “Readings of Poetry, Old and New,” a series of articles published in The Ladies’ Companion (see letter 2863, note 4). These poets included John Clare, Thomas Davis, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Fitz-Greene Halleck, all of whom were subjects in Recollections. William Cox Bennett, another poet featured in Recollections, was made light of by EBB in letter 2503. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–94), American physician and poet, had at the time of this letter published Poems (1836), along with a new and enlarged edition in 1848, and Astrae (1850). Miss Mitford compares Holmes to Pope and Dryden: “Lofty, poignant, graceful, grand, high of thought, and clear of word” (Recollections, III, 22).
7. At 31 Welbeck Street.
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