3251. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 235–238.
Casa Tolomei, Alla Villa, Bagni di Lucca.
August. 20–&–21 [1853] [1]
It is a comfort, my much loved friend, that you are making advances, however slow they may be. The horrible summer in England must have been much against you, and when you begin to improve decidedly, the progress will quicken itself probably. Tell me—are you able to move—unassisted, say, .. from one side of a bed to another? Can you stand for a moment? Is it weakness in the limbs or stiffness? And does not Mr May think that warm sea baths would be useful to you? Ask him, for my sake. You were longer than usual in writing to me, & I was on the point of sending you a dunning letter because it is natural for me to get anxious while you are not well. How is it with your appetite & sleep? and does it weary you now to read as much as you used to do? oh, I could ask a thousand questions & have more to ask–
Write to me, do, as soon as you can. I observe with satisfaction that your handwriting has not a trace of weakness in it—the old characteristic lines, with all the energetic twitches in them, just as they always were!– God bless & keep you dear, dear friend!–
We are enjoying the mountains here, riding the donkeys in the footsteps of the sheep, & eating strawberries & milk by basinsfull. The strawberries succeed one another, generation after generation, throughout the summer, through growing on different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled in the forests, strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might, .. & the peasants sell them for just nothing. Our little Penini is wild with happiness .. he asks in his prayers that God would “mate him dood and tate him on a dontey” .. (make him good & take him on a donkey) so resuming all aspiration for spiritual & worldly prosperity.
Then our friends Mr & Mrs Story help the mountains to please us a good deal– He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of his father, [2] & for himself sculptor & poet—& she a sympathetic, graceful woman, fresh & innocent in face & thought. We go backwards & forwards to tea & talk at one another’s houses. Last night they were our visitors, & your name came in among the Household Gods to make us as agreeable as might be– [3] We were considering your expectations about Mr Hawthorne—“All right,” says Mr Story, .. “except the rare half hours.” (of eloquence.) He represents Mr Hawthorne as not silent only by shyness but by nature & inaptitude. He is a man, it seems, who talks wholly & exclusively with the pen, & who does not open out vocally with his most intimate friends any more than with strangers. It is’nt his way to converse– That has been a characteristic of some men of genius before him, you know—but you will be nevertheless disappointed, very surely. Also, Mr Story does not imagine that you will get anything from him on the subject of the “manifestations”– You have read the ‘Blithesdale Romance’ & are aware of his opinion expressed there? [4] He evidently recognized them as a sort of scurvy spirits, good to be slighted because of their disreputableness– By the way, I heard read the other day a very interesting letter from Paris, from Mr Appleton, Longfellow’s brother in law, who is said to be a man of considerable ability, & who is giving himself wholly just now to the investigation of this spirit-subject, termed by him the “sublimest conundrum ever given to the world for guessing”. He appears still in doubt whether the intelligence is external, or whether the phenomena are not produced by an unconscious projection in the medium of a second personality, accompanied with clairvoyance & attended by physical manifestations. This seems to me to double the difficulty—yet the idea is entertained as a doubtful sort of hypothesis by such men as Sir Edward Lytton & others. Imposture is absolutely out of the question, be certain, as an ultimate solution; & a greater proof of credulity can scarcely be given than a belief in imposture as things are at present. But I was going to tell you—Mr Appleton has a young American friend in Paris who “besides being a very sweet girl,” says he[,] “is a strong medium”. [5] By Lamartine’s desire he took her to the poet’s house—“all the phenomena were reproduced, & everybody present convinced”,—Larmartine himself “in ecstasies.” Among other spirits came Henry Clay who said “J’aime Lamartine.” [6] We shall hear it in the next volume of biography. [7] Louis Napoleon gets oracles from the “raps,”—and it is said that the Czar does the same,—Your Emperor, certainly,—& the King of Holland is allowing the subject to absorb him. “Dying out”! dying out! Our accounts from New York are very different—but unbelieving persons are apt to stop their ears & exclaim “We hear nothing now”. On one occasion the Hebrew Professor at New York was addressed in Hebrew to his astonishment. [8]
Well—I dont believe, with all my credulity, in poets being perfected at universities. What can be more absurd than this proposition of “finishing” Alexander Smith at Oxford or Cambridge? [9] We dont know how to deal with literary genius in England certainly. We are apt to treat poets (when we condescend to treat them at all) as over-masculine papas do babies—and Mon[c]kton Milnes was accused of only touching his in order to poke out its eyes, for instance. [10] Why not put this new poet in a public library?—there are such situations even among us—& something of the kind was done for Patmore. [11] The very judgement Tennyson gave of him, in the very words, we had given here—“fancy, not imagination”– Also .. imagery in excess .. thought in deficiency. Still the new poet is a true poet, and the defects obvious in him may be summed up in youth simply. Let us wait & see. I have read him only in extracts, such as the reviews give, & such as a friend helped me to by goodnatured m∙s. It is extraordinary to me that with his amount of development, as far as I understand it, he has met so much rapid recognition. Tell me if you have read ‘Queechy’ the American book .. novel .. by Elizabeth Wetherell? [12] I think it very clever & characteristic. Mrs Beecher Stowe scarcely exceeds it after all the trumpets. We are about to have a visit from Mr Lytton, Sir Edward’s only son—only child now. [13] Did I tell you that he was a poet, yes, and of an unquestionable faculty. I expect much from him one day when he shakes himself clear of the poetical influences of the age which he will have strength to do presently. He thinks as well as sees .. and that is good.
We heard the other day that Mr Chorley was in vexation, & pain I fear, in consequence of his servant’s leaving him .. the old servant whom he cared for so much & long. [14] Mr Kenyon told us that the circumstances were particularly wounding ones & that our friend had taken them to heart, & was out of spirits altogether. I am very, very sorry. Oh—how it would please me, how really happy I should be, to hear that he had made a good marriage! Marriage is either the best or the worst—but there is no reason that it should’nt be the best for him. I hold an unusual opinion .. that marriage is more necessary for a man than a woman .. (I could be obstinate & argue out the point) .. and I should like to see a refined woman, who would not be noisy herself (nor have noisy children), settled into one of the luxurious chairs of that pretty house of Mr Chorley’s. His sister remains in a sad state of illness—rather worse than better. [15]
Oh yes—I like Mr Kingsley. I am glad he spoke kindly of us, because really I like him & admire him. Few people have struck me as much as he did last year in England. [16] “Manly”, do you say? But I am not very fond of praising men by calling them manly. I hate & detest a masculine man. Humanly bold, brave, true, direct, Mr Kingsley is,—a moral cordiality and an original intellect uniting in him. I did not see her & the children, [17] but I hope we shall be in better fortune next time.
Since I began this letter the Storys & ourselves have had a grand donkey-excursion to a village called Benabbio [18] & the cross above it on the mountain peak. We returned in the dark & were in some danger of tumbling down various precipices .. but the scenery was exquisite, past speaking of for beauty– Oh those jagged mountains, rolled together like pre-Adamite beasts & setting their teeth against the sky! It was wonderful– You may as well guess at a lion by a lady’s lapdog, as at nature by what you see in England .. all honour to England, lanes & meadowland, notwithstanding! to the great trees, above all. Will you write to me sooner? Will you give me the details of yourself? Will you love me?
Your most affectte
Ba.
Robert’s love with mine.
Address: Angleterre viâ France / Miss Mitford / Swallowfield / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, III, 391–396.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by postmark.
2. Life and Letters of Joseph Story (Boston, 1851) was edited by William Wetmore Story.
3. Story recorded this visit in a diary entry for 19 August 1853; see SD1673.
4. In chapter XXIII of The Blithedale Romance (Boston, 1852), the narrator, Miles Coverdale, observes: “The epoch of rapping spirits, and all the wonders that have followed in their train,—such as tables upset by invisible agencies, bells self-tolled at funerals, and ghostly music performed on jewsharps,—had not yet arrived. Alas, my countrymen, methinks we have fallen on an evil age! If these phenomena have not humbug at the bottom, so much the worse for us. What can they indicate, in a spiritual way, except that the soul of man is descending to a lower point than it has ever before reached while incarnate? We are pursuing a downward course in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into the same range with beings whom death, in requital of their gross and evil lives, has degraded below humanity! To hold intercourse with spirits of this order, we must stoop and grovel in some element more vile than earthly dust. These goblins, if they exist at all, are but the shadows of past mortality, outcasts, mere refuse-stuff, adjudged unworthy of the eternal world, and, on the most favorable supposition, dwindling gradually into nothingness. The less we have to say to them the better, lest we share their fate!” (pp. 232–233).
5. Alice Lee Goodrich; see letter 3248, note 6.
6. “I love Lamartine.”
7. By this time, Lamartine had produced two autobiographical works: Les Confidences (1849) and Nouvelles Confidences (1851). The next book he wrote in this line was Memoires Politiques (1860–66), which, as the title suggests, focuses on his political life.
9. We have been unable to confirm this remark. However, in 1854 “one or two influential figures helped to secure him the post of secretary to Edinburgh College (later University)” (ODNB).
10. The day after the birth of Amicia Henrietta Milnes (1852–1902), EBB wrote to Mrs. Ogilvy: “Mon[c]kton Milnes has a baby a day old, which he swears is like a little red Indian & incompetent to produce a throb of love in him” (letter 3081).
11. “Through the intercession of a literary friend, Adelaide Ann Procter, he [Patmore] was recommended by Monckton Milnes, via the Archbishop of Canterbury, to a position in the British Museum on 11 April 1846” (ODNB).
12. Elizabeth Wetherell, pseudonym of Susan Bogert Warner (1819–85), was an American novelist who had published The Wide, Wide World (New York, 1850) and Queechy (New York, 1852). The former, her first novel, had reached its fourteenth edition by 1852, “and for decades to come, only Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin surpassed … [it] in sales and popularity. … Although never as popular as The Wide, Wide World, Queechy sold well” (American National Biography, New York, 1999).
13. His only sibling, Emily Elizabeth Bulwer Lytton (1828–48), had died of typhoid five years earlier.
14. Possibly Joseph Kanne; see ltter 3246, note 2.
15. See letter 3246, note 12. “From 1852 to his death Chorley lived at 13 Eaton Place West, London” (ODNB), but he never married.
16. The Brownings had met Kingsley in August 1852 (see letter 3097).
17. Kingsley and his wife Frances “Fanny” (née Grenfell, 1814–91), who married on 10 January 1844, had three children at the time of this letter: Rose Georgiana (1844–1925), Maurice (1847–1910), and Mary St. Leger (1852–1931).
18. Just to the southeast of Bagni di Lucca. Story recorded the excursion to Benabbio in a diary entry for 20 August 1853; see SD1674.
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