684. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 121–123.
[Torquay]
[late March 1839] [1]
My dearest Miss Mitford,
The fishermen in these waters certainly have not genius enough to pull up a Genius—& even after the promises of yesterday, I am advised by my maid “to write only what I might write any day” without any personalities touching the fish tribes. We are obliged to be particular as to the freshness on account of the distance. I am so glad that you & dear Dr Mitford liked what I last sent, & so anxious that you shd not have to wait another day. Were you visitors or residents at Lyme—Lyme Regis in this county? Then—in the latter case—you must have seen the Pinny Cliffs—& then (a still surer then) you never can have forgotten them. They seem to me the counterpart of Dreamland, on the earth. We made an excursion to Lyme, for the sake of the vision, when we resided at Sidmouth [2] —& I was obliged to lie in bed almost all the next day from the exercise, to which I was quite unequal but which that most surpassing scenery beguiled me into taking. Hills rocks & seas got into my head—& if I ever made oath in the Temperance Society, my conscience wd consider itself bound never to let me look at them again– By the way I hope you are not a member!—& by the way again, I could not help smiling whilst I was writing that. Not that the whole system in question is not far too foolish, yes, & too anti-scriptural besides, for me to feel inclined to smile at it in general.
How very very kind of you my dearest Miss Mitford to send more seeds to my gardeners in Wimpole Street—how too kind! And then Arabel tells me of a kind note addressed to her which appears to have quite delighted her both for the kindness’ sake & the autograph’s. [3] They are all very busy she says, struggling for a garden!——& with your name for a charm, I shd think the flowers might grow without roots–
It is a great gladness to me to hear your good news of Dr Mitford—& altho’ you say nothing of your own health, I try to believe in its being something to be glad about, too– I am better & stronger now—but since I wrote to you there has been—there was for some days—an exhausting increase of hemorrhage which however yielded to styptics—& Dr Barry is of opinion that if I can be kept from becoming worse thro’ this trying early part of the spring, I am likely to be satisfactorily better as the weather settles. God’s mercies have been very great to me—& it wd be a no less ingratitude than a folly, to doubt His will to act out His own love whether by life or death. “If therefore there is any consolation in Christ Jesus—–”––! [4] how beautiful that passage is—how pathetic that appeal––& how without an hypothesis that if!––
Beloved Papa & Sette were obliged to go away two days ago—& I miss them so as not yet to have left off hearing their footsteps on the stairs at the usual hours of their coming to sit with me. Sette’s gossipings & secret-tellings were such delightful old newnesses. I used to think in quite the old times when he read Cæsar to me—his eyes (after the ubiquitous manner of Cæsar himself) holding communion with Punch out of the window, [5] —that I was unfortunate to have no more power in the way of enforcing discipline. It is better as it is– It is better to be loved than feared––or worse word of all!—respected. And if Sette had read Cæsar to me without a look at Punch, I shd hear now none of the gossip or the secrets. You see how we great pedagogues console ourselves! <***>
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 114–116 (as [early April 1839]).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by the reference to EBB’s father and brother leaving Torquay. Edward Moulton-Barrett was still in Torquay on 9 March (see SD990), but letter 686 makes it clear that he was back in London by the end of March.
2. Miss Mitford had lived briefly at Lyme Regis as a child (see letter 685). EBB’s outing to the Pinhay Cliffs is described in letter 508.
3. See SD992.
4. Philippians, 2:1.
5. The reference to “old times” indicates that EBB is speaking of Hope End days, so Punch would have been a pet, probably a dog, rather than the Punch and Judy character.
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