673. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 108–110.
[Torquay]
Monday, December 3, 1838.
Ever [1] dearest Miss Mitford,
To-day was the day fixed in my mind for writing to you, even if I had not heard from you yesterday. I thought I would wait one day more, and then write, and in the meantime went on building my Bastille in the air [2] about your unusual silence. And do you know, dearest Miss Mitford, the truth came to me among my fancies. I fancied that some illness, and of one dearest to you, kept you silent. It was such a relief to read the first page of your letter, and such a sad confirmation to turn to the second. Well, the evil has passed now. May the shadow of it be kept from your path for very long. While it is, other shadows will fall lightly, and may be trodden upon by a light and, some of them, by a very scorning foot.
My scorn, really indignation is too good a word for such a subject, unites itself to yours as closely as all my sympathies do to you in regard to every detail of your most interesting letter. I am most astonished. Can “high-toned” instruments be strung with such cracked wires? [3] That you should pay, and he “seem to pay.” Yes! and seem to be a poet besides!! Upon which there comes into my head a saying of Plato. I had thought before that it ought to come nowhere, albeit Plato’s, “Poets speak nobly, but understand not what they speak.” [4] I feel sorry. It is disappointing to be thrust aside from our estimation of any person. I have been accustomed to associate certain noblenesses with certain intellectualities. And although I never dared quite to use the words of your prophecy, “He will be a great poet,” on account of the present want of what you call vividness, and I the power of conception, both of us referring to the same deficiency, the one to the effect, and the other to the cause, yet I did see in him a poet, and expect from him more than this.
And you think others capable of this besides! Don’t let us say so till the experience comes. At any rate, dear Miss Mitford, I am unwilling to base the suspicion upon the ground of literary pursuits, small or great. Human nature is surely a better ground than poetical nature, and may it not be very true that the low opinion you have been led to form of a certain class of minds may have arisen from the circumstance, the accidental circumstance of your seeing those minds in a closer relation to their vanities and interests than other minds, and also by naturally expecting something better from such minds, and also by necessarily, however unconsciously, comparing what you yourself think and do in similar situations, and that is always generously and nobly. I am afraid that human nature is corrupt everywhere. I hope it is not most so where corruption is most “without excuse.”
But I am thinking, as I ought and must, more of you, my beloved friend, than of any of those people. I cling to the hope that although Mr. Tilt may be irritated into incivilities towards you, and abominable it is that he should, he is too wise a man to sacrifice his interests to his ill-humour, and lose your editorship of his annual just for the sake of annoying you. But, however it may be, as you think it worth while to put the question (and, while you put it, I do trust you were quite certain what the answer will be) you may make whatever use of me you please, as long as I am alive, and able to write at all. I hope, if he, Mr. Tilt, ventured to dismiss you, [5] he would pay me the compliment of forgetting my existence altogether, but, whichever way it is, “foul me fall” as a minstrel, if I serve liege ladye in “Findens’ Tableaux” except your own self, therefore do not wrong my fealty....
Of dear Mr. Kenyon I have heard more from you than from anyone since his return. My sister had seen him, and Papa was going to see him. I had heard nothing of his doings and enjoyments abroad from either. And so he won’t have anything to say to our narrative poetry in Finden? But he is a heretic, therefore we won’t mind. After all, I am afraid (since it displeases you) that what I myself delight in most, in narrative poetry, is not the narrative. Beaumont and Fletcher, strip them to their plots, [make] them your own Beaumont and Fletcher, and you take away their glory. Alfieri is more markedly a poet of action than any other poet I can think of, and how he makes you shiver! Mr. Wordsworth told me that he could read him only once.
Is there much “heresy” in all this? Forgive it, if there be.
Little thinks the bishop, whose right reverend autograph conveys my letter to you, [6] that he is aiding and abetting the intercourse of such very fierce radicals. Indeed the last time I thought of politics, I believe I was a republican, to say nothing of some perilous stuff of “sectarianism,”which would freeze his ecclesiastical blood to hear of. My uncle and aunt know him very well, and that way came my frank. Were omens busy around him, that he made such great haste and brevity about the name of your village? [7] Do observe the direction. <***>
Text: L’Estrange (1), II, 43–46.
1. L’Estrange gives “You,” an obvious misreading.
2. A reversal of “castle in the air,” to give the meaning of a dark fantasy rather than a bright one.
3. Apparently this and the following remarks refer to Miss Mitford’s friend Townsend and his poem “The Coronation” in the 1839 Findens’ Tableaux. Miss Mitford had praised it as “pure and high-toned” in her preface to the volume. It is not known what particular action of his prompted these remarks.
4. Dialogues, 534B.
5. Charles Tilt, the publisher of Findens’ Tableaux, had apparently expressed dissatisfaction with some aspect of Miss Mitford’s editorship, and had threatened to replace her for the 1840 edition. It may have had to do with the pruning necessary to limit the number of pages in the 1839 edition (see letter 669, note 7).
6. The Bishop of Exeter, Henry Phillpotts (1778–1869), who was known to the Hedleys. As one of the Lords Spiritual, he had the franking privilege.
7. This suggests an abbreviation of “Three Mile Cross” to “3 Mile X.”
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