680. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 115–116.
Torquay,
January 5, 1839.
Ever [1] dearest Miss Mitford,
I do thank you, my beloved friend, for your kindness in making me a partaker of your gladness. I wish all happiness to both of you—to you and dear Dr. Mitford—gratefully responding to your wishes to me on the occasion of this putting on of Dan Time’s new doublet. [2] They have come true already, for Papa has come. May mine for you come true as truly—may God keep you both from January to January, and grant that you may have and feel no less occasion to look gladly on each other than we all have to look thankfully up to him! I may send my love and earnest wishes to Dr. Mitford—now may I not?
Papa says that Mr. Kenyon is out, and looking very well, but a letter from my sister tells me that, when she saw him last in Wimpole Street, his spirits did not appear to be as animated as usual, and I don’t like hearing Mr. Harness’s report of him. It must be that the life he leads will tell at last, and at least, on his spirits. Only the unexcitable by nature can be supposed to endure continual external occasions of excitement. As if there were not enough—too much that is exciting from within. For my own part, I can’t understand the craving for excitement. Mine is for repose. My conversion into quietism [3] might be attained without much preaching, and, indeed, all my favorite passages in the Holy Scriptures are those which express and promise peace, such as, “The Lord of peace Himself give you peace always and by all means,” “My peace I give you, not as the world giveth give I,” and “He giveth his beloved sleep” [4] —all such passages. They strike upon the disquieted earth with such a foreignness of heavenly music—surely the “variety,” the change is to be unexcited, to find a silence and a calm in the midst of thoughts and feelings given to be too turbulent.
My beloved friend, how very glad must be your gladness to watch, as I trust you are doing, the return of health to your dear invalid—the dearer for the thought of what “might have been”—day after day, and to feel in the respect and attachment demonstrated so affectingly around you that there is a sympathy for your gladness as well as your fearing grief. But still I am anxious for you; I am anxious lest your past and present fatigues should prove presently too great for you, and that, when the exultation of joy has subsided, this proving may begin. Do be careful, and do not, at any time you have thirty-six letters to write, write a thirty-seventh to me. I am very thankful for the frequent accounts you have sent me, yet if they helped to tire you—oh, don’t let me tire you ever, dearest Miss Mitford, pray do not.
And this suggests a termination to my letter.
I must, however, say how sorry and glad Papa has been with you through the late changes. The patience and the silence for your sake, the love stronger than pain, they are beautiful to hear of, and very touching they must have been to you.
Poor L. E. L.! You will have been, as I was, startled and saddened to hear the sudden news. I had a prophet in my thoughts about her ever since she went away. It is a fatal climate, and the longest years do not seem to go to the lives of poetesses. Did you know her personally at all? [5]
Good-bye, dearest Miss Mitford. The cream shall be with Dr. Mitford’s coffee as soon as possible.
Your ever attached,
Elizabeth Barrett.
P.S.—I am tolerably well just now, and all the better for the sight of Papa. He arrived the day before yesterday, and I must remember him to you, although he is out walking, and cannot authorize me to intrude upon you in that way.
Text: L’Estrange (1), II, 46–49.
1. L’Estrange gives “You,” an obvious misreading.
2. i.e., the New Year. “Dan” is a poetic form of “Master, Lord.”
3. “A form of religious mysticism (originated by Molinos, a Spanish priest), consisting in passive devotional contemplation, with extinction of the will and withdrawal from all things of the senses; … a state of calmness and passivity of mind or body” (OED).
4. The quotations are, respectively, II Thessalonians, 3:16; John, 14:27 and Psalms, 127:2.
5. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, after her marriage on 7 June 1838 to George Maclean, had gone to Africa, where her husband was Governor of the Cape Coast. She died there on 15 October 1838, but the news was slow to reach London. The first printed announcement of her death appeared in The Watchman, 31 December 1838, but EBB would probably have read the news in The Athenæum of 5 January 1839, which carried an obituary notice. Miss Mitford later said she had met L.E.L. only once (Chorley, I, 280).
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