3667. John Ruskin to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 327–330.
[London]
[Postmark: 28 October 1855]
Dear Mrs Browning
I think I ought rather to write in various plea for pardon of apparent neglect—both of your husband and you, than receive so kind a letter from you: for indeed when people come all the way from Florence to see their friends in England, said friends ought, it seems to me, at least to take the trouble of coming into town. But—between very little—and nothing, in the way of friend-seeing—I hold that there is no difference; and unless we had had—among us, time for complete talk and daily intercourse—the one—two—or three calls or visits were really of no use whatever– I knew that you could not give me much of you—and I did not strive for the little: As I told you before you shall not always scape so easily.
Now—lest one thing or another come between, let me tell you what I had to say about Miss Mitford. You know—I doubt not already, that the persuasion she had of having been injured in the spine was mistaken—that the illness resulted from the severe shock, caused by her fall, to a system which had been too much lowered by her habit of living– Her servant told me that for a year or two before the accident she had lived upon little else than tea or weak soup: and the whole nervous system was overthrown—and dropsy came on—causing the inability to move. I found her when I went to see her (on returning from the Continent, about this time last year—or a little before—) [1] lying in her armchair by the open window, with a nosegay by her, sent by Lady Russell: [2] —much altered; but only by reason of thinness in the features—not in any wise in expression—some evidence there was of physical suffering—but none of sadness—and the make and cast of the face being more brought out, gave it a look of power and thoughtfulness such as I never saw in any other woman. Imagine all the power and keenness of Mrs Sartoris’s look, concentrated into the small features under the gray hair—and think how fine it must have been. She talked, as if she had been a schoolgirl with a favourite companion—as cheerful and as rapid in transition—and as ready to take up any chance leaf of the autumn’s blowing by—& play with it. She talked for an hour and a half—then sent me down to have my dinner in the little parlour—and sent for me again for another hour afterwards.
Whether she—or I—had altered any wise in mind since last I had seen her—I know not: but whereas before I had only been struck––by her talk—as one is necessarily by her writing, for its sweetness and sympathy & brightness, now I was struck by its power[.] I have often heard able-thundery sort of talk—coming to nothing after all—but Miss Mitford was so unerring—it seemed to me—in judgment; so sternly Right in everything with all her love—(or perhaps because of her love—if one could see far enough)—that I never remember having left a house with such a sense of veneration as I did her cottage that afternoon– But the vigour of mind was so great that it deceived me as to her general health– She was at that time better than she had been for some months—and still continued to gain for a week or two more. I thought she was deceiving herself as to her danger—and though she wrote to me at Christmas that she was getting worse, I thought still that I should be able to take her the first hawthorn blossom—and did not go down then to see her. She soon had the Mayflower without the thorn–
—I have therefore nothing to tell you of any special interest about the close. Our talk—when I saw her—was all of usual matters—her favourite Beranger—and Louis Napoleon—& so on, and I never was able to tell her the issue of the only question between us which needed arbitrement. I had never read Miss Austen—having taken offence at something or other in the beginning of “pride & prejudice,” and remaining a very satisfactory example of the last. Miss Mitford insisted that Miss Austen was right and I wrong: and after much argumentation—it was finally settled that I should go home and read all Miss Austen[’]s novels, which I did faithfully—and in the end—delightedly out loud, to my mother—but I never was able to tell Miss Mitford how completely she had conquered—and how entirely I had been wrong.
I have written as if I only had seen her one afternoon, but I stayed two days at Reading and went each day to see her. —The second day, she was just as lively as the first—and shot away upon her pet subjects or books—so that I could not get one thing asked her properly, which I wanted to ask, about the country she lived in. I have often regretted so much that she had got cottaged in that stupid Berkshire, where—nearly of all England I suppose, the country is most finishedly Dull & adventureless: and I wanted to ask her what sort of person she would have been, if she had stayed in her old Northumberland, among the rocks & brooks– Can you answer this—for her—and for me–
I spoke—a page or two back of thundery conversation– I think I never heard Lightningy conversation like your husband[’]s that night at tea with Mrs Sartoris & Leighton. [3] You will not—I know—think I mean merely to say pleasing things to either of you—and if you think—as perhaps you may, that I may have got into a habit of saying the pleasantest things I can to my friends,—if you will ask any of them—they will tell you– I don’t often take that Turn. But the simple fact is that I never heard anything to approach your husband[’]s brilliancy of illustration and swiftness of fancy. But he wants more scolding about his poetry even than you do, he loses half the power he might have over the public by the least possible faults, which with the least possible trouble he might avoid– He is just like Rossetti—brilliant in colour—boundless in imagination—intense in sensation and sentiment, and yet puts in odd or idle little cramps & blots which keep him from being read by thousands.
Of this however another day:—for I have not yet read his longer poems, which seem to be those he has taken real pains with: not having until rather lately, been myself at all aware of his real power—and having been one of that very mob, whom I want to scold him for not winning– I had glanced at the flight of the duchess and though I liked certain lines & rhymes in it, I fancied it was erratic & careless, and I have so little time for reading poetry at all that I never read any but the most perfect—if I know which that is. My pet bookcase shelf, or what I call the Supply shelf, is however now composed of Dante, Spenser—Keats—Wordsworth—the Two Brownings, and Tennyson—Hood, George Herbert, & Young. [4] Of minor collateral singers I have Shenstone [5] (—by the bye—if Mr Browning would be a little more Shenstonian in flow—it would be all I want—but he is continually breaking the back of His verses—) LongFellow—& Emerson: I have this shelf not at all for pleasure—or amusement: But for supply. I never read poetry to amuse me. But it seems to me that you poets know a thing or two more than most people—that you really are the only Sensible & Practical people and I go to you always to be taught, (when I begin to be puzzled about them)—my two chief points of enquiry—Where I am?—and what’s to be done next? By the bye—I hope you give up those rascally radicals, now– I am very liberal—and in most senses very Republican—but in heart and head entirely Louis Napoleon’s and a great advocate for Slavery, of a wholesome kind & in the right place—
Well—by way of showing liberality I will spare you from the penance of another White sheet—which I feel not a little inclined to begin upon—but wont—& so with sincerest regards to Mr Browning
Always most truly Yours
J Ruskin
I don’t understand something you say in your letter about “Intense apprehension”—what do you mean?
Address: Mrs Browning / 102. Rue de Grenelle / Faubourg St Germain, / Paris.
Publication: DeLaura, pp. 320–322.
Manuscript: Berg Collection.
1. According to Mary Russell Mitford, Ruskin visited her on 11 and 12 October 1855. In a letter to Francis Bennoch of the 11th she wrote: “He [Ruskin] spends to-day with me alone; and I have bespoken Mr. Pearson to meet him to-morrow” (Chorley, II, 256).
2. Marie Clotilde Russell (1793–1872); see letter 3371, note 1.
3. The night of 6 September 1855; see letter 3616.
4. Edward Young (1683–1765), best remembered for The Complaint, or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742–46), which, according to the ODNB is “arguably the century’s greatest long poem.”
5. William Shenstone (1714–63), author of several volumes of poetry, including Poems upon Various Occasions (1737), The Judgment of Hercules (1741), and The School-Mistress (1742).
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