709. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 190–192.
[Torquay]
August 29th 1839.
Ever dearest Miss Mitford,
You could not please me better than by making me useful to you—& if anything crossed my pleasure in doing this spiriting it was thinking of your being too harrassed & unwell to do it yourself. Unwell again!—and what was the “blow”? Do say how you are. It wd have been an assumption & presumption in me to try to “set to rights” verses of yours, & I am glad you preferred my sending verses of my own. [1] But will you, when you see them, prefer the same? Have I caught the idea in any measure? Am I out of all measure as to length? Pray dont use them unless you like them, but put somebody else into office. I have no right to expect you to like them—you have pleased me enough by treating me as one belonging to you––which I am [2] you know!!– Do treat me so always, & never hesitate about making me do anything, even to mending yr stockings .. particularly if you wish to have them spoilt. But tais toi Jean Jaques [3] —I am betraying myself, exposing myself, dishonoring myself .. in relation too to the great test of female excellence!
Wrong about the genii! My fancy about them a Dulcinea del Toboso—& you cd prove it in a face to face talking of half an hour!! Well! To hear <y>ou talk half an hour I wd submit to be Dulcinea del Toboso myself. Appreciate the compliment––& consider her near connection with that detestable execrable Don Quixotte (the book, I mean) full of blasphemies against the ballads!! & that I wd rather be a windmill in a hurricane than Dulcinea!– [4]
After shutting up my last letter I remembered having forgotten to speak to you of the State Trials. [5] Certainly they have extraordinary power, & are eloquent supremely—with a versification partaking of Crabbe .. & Byron in his Lara & Corsair,—& the sense of vehemence which does occasionally quite take away your breath. At the same time they are not poetry in the high meaning. I hold that Mr Milnes’s poetry is. Do you?– But then I know you delight in the pseudo-Moyle for the dear “action & passion’s” [6] sake, for which Mr Milnes, in this early stage of his career is not t[h]ankworthy– I am so glad you estimate Mr Horne. That is genius .. in the full acceptation of a great word.
In my niggardness of labor in the way of copying, I sent you the only fair copy I had of the ballad—& scarcely remember how many of the lines went to you. There is, I think a line ending—“but I must turn away.” [7] Now if the next were to begin “For though the ashes strew my sin, no soul of Adam’s race”, would <the> first part of that line express the penitence in any sufficient degree? Then there is a false quantity in the word “sacristan” as it stands in two places. Would you change the 4th line in the 3d part to .. “And the sacristans slyly are jesting aside[”.] [8] And somewhere, midway in the same, the short line shd be changed to “As the sacristans told it”—unless “As the legends unfold it” wd be better .. & I myself almost think it wd. [9] Tell me if you object in particular to anything I can alter.
You do not say how dear <Dr Mitford is. … May God> bless both of you. I have been a little wild for <the> last week—with joy at the sight of my dear dear Arabel—& perhaps this letter may not seem to you very particularly tame.
Ever my beloved friend
your EBB–
Address, on integral page: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / Near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 147–149.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Miss Mitford had asked EBB for a second contribution to Findens’ Tableaux. EBB responded by sending “The Dream,” the manuscript of which is no longer with this letter.
2. Underscored three times.
3. “Be silent, Jean Jacques.” A favourite expression of EBB, referring to a childhood incident recounted by Rousseau. As a result of a prank by his young cousin, the tips of two of Rousseau’s fingers were trapped and crushed in the rollers of his uncle’s mill. Rousseau cried out; his cousin, fearing to be punished, begged him to be silent. Rousseau did so, telling his aunt and uncle that a large stone had fallen on his hand (“Quatrième Promenade,” Les Confessions de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1782).
4. Dulcinea del Toboso was the name given by Don Quixote to Aldonza Lorenzo, the country girl whom he took to be a great lady. EBB, who enjoyed using the ballad form of poetry, apparently resents Cervantes’ criticism of that form.
6. “Reason and Belief, no less than Action and Passion” were described by Carlyle as essential components of knowledge in his “Thoughts on History” (Fraser’s Magazine, November 1830, pp. 413–418).
7. As printed in Findens’ Tableaux, this line (in the 4th part of “The Legend of the Brown Rosarie”) ended “but I must look away.” EBB’s suggested change to the next line was not made; the printed text reads “For never sinner, sin-convinced, can dare or bear to gaze”. When reprinted in Poems (1844), EBB altered “look away” to “turn away,” and the next line to “Because no sinner under sun can dare or bear to gaze” (lines 375 and 376).
8. This line was printed as “And the grave young sacristans jest slyly aside”. EBB’s suggested change was incorporated in the 1844 text (line 223).
9. The printed version reads “The sacristans have told it.” The 1844 text was changed to “As the choristers told it” (line 319).
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