669. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 100–103.
[Torquay]
Oct 30th [1838] [1]
Oh my beloved friend, who less than yourself gives pain where she would give pleasure? What a wrong do you do to your “destiny”!
Was it not an inspired one who said “Miss Mitford diffuses happiness everywhere”—? [2] And is it not an experienced one (experienced believe me in gratitude as well as in kindness) who sets her seal to the verity of that inspiration?
It was very wrong of me to teaze you with my fancifulness & tremors. This is the only excuse I can find for the existence, much less the obtrusion of either upon you– Had there been no love, there could have been no such sins. I always feel so deeply & equally your affectionateness & my own unworthiness as contrasted with its brightness, that the very idea of offending or seeming to offend against the first in ever such a trifle—is as bad as an east wind to me– The “sweet south” [3] of your letter set me at ease.
I did not receive Finden immediately. [4] I had desired Papa to unpack & take possession of it—because I fancied (you will think ‘What an immense deal of vanity there is in all her fancies’!) it might be a pleasure to him. From this arrangement I have scarcely finished my own vision of the beautiful volume, while you may well be wondering at the apparent unthankfulness of my silence. And indeed if silence means any harm I confess to having suffered a coup de silence from one of the first pages [5] —only the kind of harm cant be unthankfulness, for I was indeed my dearest kindest Miss Mitford, at once surprised & pleased & touched by the manner in which you named my ballad—there! I do not presume to tell you that it was too much for you to say—but I must feel that it wd have been enough for me, if either my ambition or affections had been gratified––without this gratification of both at once!——
Well! Let me apply my theory about “spoiling children” to your practise of spoiling me—& go on to maintain that nobody is injured by too much love!——
The volume is a very splendid one! As to your stories they are delightful. [6] You cut away the ‘pound of flesh’ [7] in vain—they would not die. Nor is it likely that they would for all your cruelty––being works of yours!– I dare say I helped with my fellow-poets & sinners to whet the knife—and yet it does console me to observe in the very passion of my remorse that my poem is not the longest!
Those poems which are, bear within them the atonement for much sin. Mr Townsend’s he kindly sent me in the proofs [8] —& I was touched by its purity of beauty—& recognized in it a great increase of clearness & even of unity. I do however still think & ventured to say so to him, that his lovely thoughts are too fragmentary—that his parts do not suggest his whole. Thank you for the justice you did me in believing that I should admire Mr Hughes’s ballad [9] —which dares to be natural & to stand free from conventionalisms. My own feelings & faults lean towards the mystical whether in poetry or philosophy—but I am not so far gone as to be unable to appreciate the practical—particularly when lit up partially with the moonshine of the ideal so as to alternate the ‘ivory’ with the ‘ebony’–
They are coming to take away my pen. Mr John Chorley & Mr Henry Chorley––I liked both of them in prose & verse. [10]
Your tales should be spoken of when I write next. The Buccaneer & the Cartel mentioned in the Athenæum, [11] I pass over, not with an indifferent love, but because I care more for the Baron’s daughter. Is it right or wrong to do so?– It is right to be very sure of the loss which all who care for beauty, sustained, by the cutting away you spoke of—and yet you are as surely wrong in imagining any substitution of “baldness for beauty” in consequence of anything!—you are surely. When I read your account it sounded bad & sad. It sounded as if your stories must be spoilt in such a process—& I never felt so cross with poets before—“A poet! oh! base”. [12] And then too, the crossness was not improved by a consciousness of utter powerlessness as to critics—by a certainty of not being able to “explain” a word of the matter to any critic much greater than Sette. I dont know one of them—not one. Nor do I know a person who knows one—except your own self & Mr Kenyon the wanderer—& as to my “friend of the sunbeam”, altho’ he has been friendly to a wonderful degree, & altho’ he has a name I suppose, I cannot guess what it is. [13] Well! but reading the stories put out of my head all the bad & sad thoughts. They have enough in them to propitiate the critics, without explanations—& for my own part I prefer them to those of last year. Do you observe that Mr Fo[r]ster who found fault with you then for not keeping among the lanes, cant help being pleased now in meeting you anywhere? [14] Indeed the whole volume seemed to take a higher place than the former one. The literal Tableaux are very very beautiful—I congratulate you my beloved friend.
I have had such a pleasing note from –––you cant guess from whom––Mr Townsend’s betrothed [15] —but I cant tell you about it.
I am indeed grateful to the Athenæum. Will you say to Mr Chorley how it pleased me with its honor undue. [16]
There remains so much to say. I cant say it. May Dr Mitford like the cream—& may you be able to give me a good account of him. I am better—& what is better than being so, Papa is with me. Your letter was enclosed to me from London by those who knew that tho’ I could wait for books & seeds, I could not for that. Thank you dearest Miss Mitford for the seeds– So kind it is in you!——
Ever your attached
EBB——
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 97–100.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Year provided by the reference to Findens’ Tableaux.
2. Landor’s remark; see letter 582.
4. Findens’ Tableaux of the Affections: a Series of Picturesque Illustrations of the Womanly Virtues, in which EBB’s poem “The Romaunt of the Page” was given first place, came out in late October 1838.
5. “Stunned silence.” Its cause was Miss Mitford’s description, in the preface to Findens’, of EBB’s contribution as “best and dearest.”
6. Miss Mitford contributed “The Buccaneer,” “The Baron’s Daughter,” “The Cartel” and “A Story of the Woods.”
7. The Merchant of Venice, IV, 1, 99. Miss Mitford had been forced to prune her own stories to keep within the prescribed number of pages for the volume. In a letter to Lucy Anderdon, 5 November 1838, she speaks of cutting the proofs “within an inch of their lives,” adding that she preferred that course to risking “the damage I should have done to my contributors by cutting away their poetry” (Chorley, I, 159).
8. Townsend’s contribution was “The Coronation.”
9. “The Minstrel of Provence.”
10. They contributed “The Treason of Gomez Arias” (poetry) and “The Sister of Charity” (prose) respectively. John Rutter Chorley (1806–67), the brother of H.F. Chorley, was for some years secretary of the Liverpool-Birmingham Grand Junction Railway. He had devoted himself to the formation of a superb collection of Spanish dramas, many restored by himself; the collection was given to the British Library.
11. The review of 20 October 1838 (pp. 757–758) includes the comment: “There are few capable of writing such stories as ‘The Buccaneer,’ and ‘The Cartel,’ who would have been content to exhibit so self-denying a good taste.”
12. Cf. Dryden, “The Fourth Satire of Persius” (1692, line 127).
14. The reviewer (Forster) in The Examiner (28 October 1838, p. 677) refers to “poems of higher tone and aim than are usually found in embellished publications” and says of EBB’s contribution that it is “a poem with the spirit of the elder and better day of poetry in every line of it—in truth, a very sweet and noble composition.” (For the full text, see p. 405.) For his comments on the previous Findens’, see letter 596, note 6.
15. Emma Martha Sheppard (see letter 664, note 11).
16. For the full text of Chorley’s review, see pp. 375–378.
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