577. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 259–263.
London–
July 22d [1837] [1]
It is not possible for me not to thank you almost immediately my very dear friend, my dearest Miss Mitford,—for a letter overflowing with kindness. You have overflowed your banks very far in generous praises; & have made a place very green for gratitude to walk in! and there my gratitude shall walk up & down with the stedfast paces of Madme de Genlis’ Agelia! [2] Indeed indeed, dearest Miss Mitford,—I am touched—affected by your kindness,—& thank you for it with the heart of one who well knows the uncommoness of such!– I wish I deserved it better! And yet if I did, I should owe less to it! and it is a happier thing to owe gratitude to those one loves, than to be proud for one’s own sake! I am well content then, to be grateful rather than to be proud!–
My hand trembled a little when it had to undo the seal of that letter. I was so afraid of not pleasing you—of not appearing to have taken pains to please you,—while the consciousness of taking pains had been, all the way thro’, more a chain than a wing to me. My hand shook again afterwards—but not with the fear!——
Will this motto do? You may remember it in Tennyson–
“When thy light perisheth
That from thee issueth,
Our life evanisheth!” [3]
And if you think it will do, will you take the trouble of writing it for me, on the M.S. Otherwise, I will look for another. [4] I have not written as you desired, to Mr Kenyon about his; [5] because “I was ’ware” [6] of his having gone out of town last tuesday for two or three days .. & only yesterday, Papa saw his house shut up still. I think that I shall certainly see him or hear from him on his return, & then your bidding shall be done. I did not doubt that he would illustrate beautifully the beautiful subject which he shewed me,—and am glad to know your impression of the writing. It is sure to be mine,—& I agree with you besides in the other general impression. I have often thought that he spends upon society a mind too fine & sensitive for it– Such lights ought not to run to waste at festivals!–
It is kind in you—what is there that is not kind in you?—to say that you owe anything to Mr Kenyon, in owing me to him. [7] Certainly in this loveless world—I must say so broadly, tho’ it holds the village!—we do gain something with every heart that loves us! and certainly such a gain, have you made in me! Otherwise I am not indeed, what your kindness esteems me!–
But how should I thank him—I who owe to him all this kindness & friendship & intercourse? And if I thank him wholly, for this as well as for his other goodnesses to me—what thanks should I have left,—to thank you with?——
My acquaintance with Mr Edward Kenyon, scarcely outmeasures yours. I have seen him only twice, when he called here in the morning: but I think that you must be right in your observation. Perhaps you know that he has gone back to Vienna—an exile which everybody wonders at—but his nationality is absorbed in his philanthropy, and private friendships seem to draw him from England.
I am sure I ought to be proud of my verses finding their way into a Belford Regis newspaper!– [8] The young Queen is very interesting to me—& those tears, wept not only amidst the multitudes at the proclamation, [9] but in the silence of the dead midnight—(we heard that she cried all night before holding her first privy council, notwithstanding the stateliness & composure with which she received her councillors) are beautiful & touching to think upon. Do you remember Lord Byron’s bitter lines, said bitterly while Marie Louise leant upon the arm of Napoleon’s conqueror?——
“Enough of human ties in royal breasts!–
Why spare men’s feelings when their own are jests?” [10]
They have never past from my memory since I read them. There is something hardening, I fear, in power—even if there is not in pomp! and the coldnesses of state etiquette gather too nearly round the heart, not to chill it, often! But our young Queen wears still a very tender heart! and long may its natural emotions lie warm within it!– I liked to hear of her the other day, in the robing room of the House of Lords. When the Duke of Sussex bent his knee there before her,—regardless of spectators, she threw her arms around his neck & kissed him fervently!– Dont you see what a straight I am in? How can loyalty & republicanism be brought together “into a consistency”,—particularly when Miss Martineau is writing, that kings have ceased to be necessary evils,—& above all when the beneficent King of Hanover is taking it into his “royal consideration”, whether his “subjects servants & vassals” shall wear chains or not??– [11] I shall expect every day to hear that the pension is increased. May God bless you in all things my dear friend!–
You are very kind to be pleased with the delight in which I have read your book. My chiefest favorites are the Lost Dahlia—The Ground Ash—& the Widow’s dog. [12] The Ground ash did me as much good, as if I had taken a summer walk in the woods myself—& that is a great deal for a London prisoner to have a sense of!– I felt the pleasure of it, even in my body. I am waiting for a review in the Athenæum! [13] but you do not care about reviews, & need not! You have given by your book, happy hours & happy recollections of those hours, to thousands: & no review will make a smile more,—or less!——
The little doves have their egg still,—& they ought to have broken the shell yesterday. But I am not at all desponding—being perfectly sure, from its appearance, that there is life within. The dear little cock persists in having it all to himself—& the gentle meek hen is satisfied with nestling by his side, with he<r> head touching his breast, to be as near as possible to the beloved egg. I have tak<en> him away by force two or three times,—& then,—a little seed or biscuit quite satisfied & appeased him. Will you tell your father—with every grateful reply I dare make to his kind remembrance of me—that I should like to see the jays very much—altho’ I contend for the supremacy of my doves!—and that we once, years ago, had a magpie, a very eloquent orator, who used to sit at the schoolroom window until the lessons were done without stirring a feather, & then accompany my brothers in their long country walks—flying from tree to tree, & never out of sight—for miles at a time!– Now this was a wonderful Magpie—was he not? And Dr Mitford’s jays have my free wish & permission to rival his genius—if they can! Only there must be no rivalship between them & my doves!—— Did I tell you that when I say in a particular tone “go to sleep” “go to sleep”, to the favorite, he shuts his eyes? But perhaps your answer will be like my little brother Octavius’s—commonly called Ockyta—“If I were to see it fifty times, I would not believe it.”—which sounds very philosophical & promising—does it not? I am sure Hume cd not have said more.
Forgive this long, hurried tho’ long scribble, & ever believe me
Your most affectionate & obliged
E B Barrett
Will you offer my kind remembrances to Mrs Dupuy when you see her.
I dont understand why there shd be no poems of yours, in the Annual. [14] That is scarcely fair!– Do say how you are, when you are kind enough to write again. The garden is delightful even to hear of.
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 39–43.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by the reference to Victoria’s accession.
2. Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de Saint Aubin, Comtesse de Genlis (1746–1830), was the writer of popular romances, including Tales of the Castle, which EBB referred to in her Diary in 1832 (p. 220). In “The Palace of Truth” (V, 131–261 of Thomas Holcroft’s 1798 edition of Tales of the Castle), Agelia is the rival of the fairy Prudina, who had taken a fancy to Agelia’s lover. Taken to “an immense plain” of “astonishing and perfect uniformity” with “neither tree, shrub, nor flower,” Agelia was condemned by Prudina to walk this plain “with a steady and majestic step” for thirty years.
3. “The Lintwhite and the Throstlecock,” 13–15 (Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 1830, p. 77).
4. These lines were added to the manuscript (see Reconstruction, D783), and appeared when “A Romance of the Ganges” was printed in Findens’ Tableaux (pp. 29–31).
5. Kenyon contributed “The Shrine of the Virgin” to illustrate a picture of the same title, set in Sicily, As a motto, he used six lines from Southey’s St. Gualberto, commencing “The Catholic, who hears that vesper bell, / Howe’er employed, must send a prayer to heaven.”
6. Romeo and Juliet, II, 2, 103.
7. A reference to Kenyon’s having been instrumental in introducing EBB to Miss Mitford.
8. EBB’s poem, “Victoria’s Tears,” had been printed in The Athenæum, 8 July 1837 (no. 506, p. 506). On 15 July, the poem was reprinted in The Reading Mercury. Reading was the setting for Miss Mitford’s Belford Regis (1835).
9. The Times, 22 June 1837, describing the Accession Proclamation the previous day at St. James’s Palace, said “The spectacle presented … was one of a singularly beautiful and affecting description. In the centre stood a female monarch of tender years suddenly summoned to assume the difficult and perilous office of earthly ruler and preserver of the interests of a great nation—in this position stood a youthful Queen bathed in tears, and nearly overwhelmed by … the warm and heartfelt outpourings of a willing and devoted people.”
10. The Age of Bronze (1823), 763–764, slightly misquoted. The lines refer to the Duke of Wellington’s meeting with Marie Louise (1791–1847), daughter of the Austrian Emperor Francis I and second wife of Napoleon, at the Congress of Vienna.
11. The Salic Law prevented Victoria from inheriting the throne of Hanover, and her uncle, William IV’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland, succeeded as King of Hanover. A new constitution, modelled on England’s, had been promulgated in 1832 by William IV. By Royal Letters Patent of 5 June 1837 the new king declared that this constitution “does not correspond with our wishes” and decreed that pending further consideration, all oaths taken by state officials will omit “the obligation to observe the constitution.” In November 1837 he revoked the constitution, restoring the prior one, and in 1840 mandated a new one, conforming to his illiberal views.
12. Three of the chapters (10, 5 and 9 respectively) in Miss Mitford’s just-published Country Stories.
13. The Athenæum, 5 August 1837 (no. 510, p. 570), reviewed Miss Mitford’s book, finding it “full of kind healthy feeling and fine observation of nature, with occasional touches of quaint and delicate humour.”
14. When Findens’ Tableaux did appear, it contained five stories by Miss Mitford; one of these, “The King’s Ward,” embodied a poem written much earlier.
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