538. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 192–195.
74 Gloucester Place.
Thursday. [Postmark: 29 September 1836]
I can scarcely believe, dearest Miss Mitford, in the apparent negligence with which I have treated your too kind letter,—and as I [1] can scarcely believe in the appearance, there may be some hope for me that you wont believe at all in the reality. Indeed this silence has not come of hardness of heart towards you; of want of gratefulness & affectionateness towards you, dear friend—but from a mixing up of little causes, together with a vain waiting for the return of still absent frankers. I cant wait for them any more! I cant afford to appear worse than I am—& to you. You will be sure—if I do—to think of me all sorts of harm—which your indulgence will let you think; and I believe I could not bear every criticism from you with an equal patience. To be obscure in one’s thoughts is one thing,—in one’s feelings, another. You shall understand them: even if you are made to pay for it doubly—as now! [2]
For all the kindness, the far far too much kindness of your words to me, how can I thank you enough? Let me be silent, & love you! [3] And as to what you say that others say, I am much obliged—of course I am—to everybody! but not too obtuse to understand that your kind words have been the seeds of those kind words from those other people. And so I persist in thanking your’s for their’s, & Mr Kenyon’s for your’s: yes! & your own generous affectionate spirit for your’s, as well as Mr Kenyon. He does deserve me to speak of him gratefully—& so I do! but he is at the Land’s End by this time & cannot hear me. Before he went for the new six weeks tour, he told me about you & the dahlias, for the thought of which, receive my thanks. It is fresher than they could have been, had you done your kind will & sent them to me; for as nothing but withered stalks could I have seen them, after such a long pilgrimage without their roots. The letter (unlike the flowers—tho’ the vanity chose to settle on them!) remained in that perpetual freshness which is the privelege of all Miss Mitford’s written words (not of her flowers!) & which will stand confessed in the yet unopen eyes of “Prince Posterity”, [4] “when the landscape round he measures” [5] about the Village, & debates the meaning of certain phrases relating to the obsolete game of cricket, at some new Roxburgh club. [6] Now forgive the daring of predicting such obsoletism to you! Certainly no chief batter ever did so much to make it immortal as you! I have eight brothers—all of them cricketers,—even Occyta—who can run! and yet I do confess my infirmity of never standing to see a whole game in its beginning middle & end .. except at the Village. And as my brothers forgive me, you must (they put it down I dare say to the [‘]‘natural inferiority” of womankind!)—you must forgive me: & indeed dear Miss Mitford it is quite as well for me that you should have a little practice in forgiving before you come to the full sight of all the many many faults which your short knowledge of me & much kindness to me now hide from your discernment. You frighten me by praising me! May those [‘]‘evils which you know not of” [7] find you expert in forgiving—& not repentant of loving. How shd I bear to lose every shred of your love, when I dont like to lose anybody’s? It is very seldom perhaps never, that I wish those to love me who do not,—but if ever the love comes & goes—I must have a regret for it,—if not for the person’s sake yet for the abstraction’s. But not to walk in my obscure ways,—or into melancholy ways which are worse! let me enquire after your garden! and that is dark & melancholy too just now—is it not? or growing so? It must be well nigh shorn of its rays, & its vision—departed! a vision departing, I do trust, to make room for one brighter to dwellers in London. Do you know I cant help hoping—notwithstanding Mr Kenyon’s ominous looks, & your ominous silence—I cant help hoping with my own indigenous sanguineness, that when there are no flowers to keep you in the country, you may help to carry the MSS into the city, & not leave the conveyance of them to Dr Mitford alone, as sadly “I heard sain” [8] you thought of doing! I heard from the same tongue (Mr Kenyon’s) something about this work I long so to read—how he heard from you the analysis of it, & how he liked it for its simplicity of story & consequent susceptiveness of the unfolding of individual character, & how the last touches of that hand which is “so fine a finisher,” wd secure for it the liking of everybody whose liking was worth securing. Will it be of the usual three volume length?——
Mrs Lenox Conyngham’s [9] name had come to my ears but it was not familiar to them,—& your brief account of her wd have interested me even if you had not said that she thought kindly of me. I am going to read her poems, & to go on reading Mr Chorley’s Memorials. [10] Shame upon me you may think, for not having finished reading them long ago! Indeed my not doing so was far from being caused by a want of respect for the biographer, or of love & admiration for that pure hearted & nobly gifted woman whose body & whose genius have gone each to its ‘own place’ [11] —the earth & the memory of her country. Mr Chorley seems to have done his task in a spirit she wd herself have chosen for such a task. You knew her—did you not? dear Miss Mitford<.> We think the same of her,—if we do not of another. And perhaps we do of that other—beside<—>of Miss Landon. You said that we did. I am sure that you do think admiring thoughts, as I do, of her very brilliant imagination & her nature turned towards music,—altho they might have been brighter & stronger & more harmonious with that music which is in the Chief Intellect, than now they are. I admire & have often been touched by much in her poetry. But like the “toujours perdrix”, the toujours tourterelle [12] (not to say anything disrespectful in the presence of my doves) is a little wearisome—& sets us a[-]wishing for
“Whatever tones of melancholy pleasures
The things of nature utter!” [13]
The striking of one note does not make a melody. And besides, is it not true that the strength of our feelings, often rises up out of our thoughts—out of our bare intellectuality,—hard & cold thing as it is, of itself?– It seems so to me; & that if she had been more intellectual she wd have been more pathetic. Of her personal history I know nothing at all. There is a lovely tender closing passage in her Improvisatrice [14] which went to your heart I know when you read it, as it did to mine. Are you acquainted with her? My idea in connection with her poetry is, that she is capable of something above it. But even as it is,—tho’ I wish for the vanishing of a page here & a page there, & for the presence of a strength which is not visible on many pages—it is poetry,—& long may her crown be green!
You found out my name! my ugly name! [15] You will find out all my faults I am afraid in time, & then you wont care for me! As to that name of mine, I might almost forget it myself & have to sit down, as you did, on some tripod & find it out by an afflatus, so very very seldom—so never—do I hear it from mortal lips. Everybody calls me—(now I defy you, with an afflatus like a whirlwind) to find out that name s Ba! [16] When I was a ba—by, I used to call myself ‘Ba’ ab[b]reviatingly, & straightway everybody followed my good example & called me Ba. And I do believe that to this day, the name with its etymology & all, is sufficiently applicable. Is not this an harmonious “household word” [17] to send you! Dr Mitford is sure to laugh! but do you defend it dearest Miss Mitford! for it is a name associated with the love of all my beloved—& besides it really does sound quite as well as Dash, if he puts up his ears disdainfully when he hears you say so, or not! Do tell me how the picture is going on. Is Mr Lucas [18] in London again, or still with you?
I tremble to confess that you are likely to see initials of mine in the next New Monthly Mag<azine.> [19] I conclude, as they sent me a proof two days ago, that it will be there on the first. It was half written when the criticisms came upon me, [20] —& my trembling is not, because I fear your want of indulgence, but because I fear my own want of deserving any better thing than such criticisms renewed. But tell me—do—your exact thoughts, even the severest. Yes! you must see Papa & I must see Dr Mitford! that is, if he will let me. Forgive this long hurried letter! It deserves both epithets & worse ones beside. May God ever bless you & all dear to you.
Your affectionate
E B Barrett.
Do write to me whenever you can. Am I not shameless?
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Mile End Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 16–20.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Underscored twice.
2. In the absence of a frank, the addressee had to pay postage.
3. Cf. King Lear, I, 1, 62–63.
4. Swift’s A Tale of a Tub (1704) was dedicated “to His Royal Highness Prince Posterity.”
5. Milton’s “L’Allegro,” line 70, slightly misquoted.
6. The village cricket club in Miss Mitford’s stories.
7. Cf. Hamlet, III, 1, 80–81.
8. Cf. Chaucer’s The Romaunt of the Rose, line 4785.
9. Elizabeth Emmet Lenox-Conyngham (née Holmes) had published Hella, and Other Poems in 1836.
10. Memorials of Mrs. Hemans (1836).
11. Cf. Samuel, 7:10.
12. “Always the partridge, always the turtle-dove.”
13. Coleridge’s “Lines Composed in a Concert-Room,” 36–37 (Sybilline Leaves, 1817).
14. The Improvisatrice; and Other Poems (1824). The “tender closing passage” relates to a picture of Lorenzo’s dead love.
15. All EBB’s published works so far had either been anonymous or bore only her initials, and in her letters to Miss Mitford she had also used only initials.
16. Underscored three times. For a discussion of the pronunciation and derivation of this name, see letter 1, note 5.
17. Henry V, IV, 3, 52.
18. John Lucas (1807–74), who was painting Dr. Mitford’s portrait (exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1838).
19. “The Poet’s Vow” was printed in The New Monthly Magazine of October 1836 (no. XLVIII, pp. 209–218). It was reprinted in The Seraphim, and Other Poems.
20. Miss Mitford had criticized EBB for lack of clarity in letter 533 (her comments unfortunately being omitted by L’Estrange). The Athenæum had accused her of “mannerism” (see letter 534), and she was also gently chided in verse by Leigh Hunt (see SD825.1).
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