748. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 4, 263–265.
[Torquay]
Saturday [28] March 1840. [1]
My ever beloved friend,
I am grieved past words, at this new sorrow .. the accident to dear Dr Mitford & the accumulation of anxiety to yourself. [2] Dearest Miss Mitford, how it must have shocked you. Looking around us in this world, even where our horizon is rounded to the faces of the most loving & beloved, is a mournful thing– Oh for help & grace to look up more earnestly & perpetually, where the Fountain of Love is also the source of joy!– May the God of all comfort, [3] comfort you in all ways!–
After all, he is doing well––you must think of that, my beloved friend, & take courage. Will you fold up one word of information now & then, directing it to me? I mean, literally, as little in the inside of a note .. as the post-people are at liberty to read outside. I wd not for the world press upon your time—& yet I do want to know how he goes on to be.
But the arm will be strong again & everything well again! I have good hope! I love you & pray for you—be sure of that. And dont neglect yourself– Dont forget to sleep & rest when you should,—I do not say for your sake—which wd be a vain adjuration .. but for his sake .. for the sake of the health & life of one, to whom you are, in a sense, health & life. Think of this, dearest Miss Mitford.
When everything is right again, I shall be delighted to see Mr Darley’s play, if you keep your kind promise of trusting it with me. [4] Happy Mr Darley, to be so prosylytable– Everybody is’nt so!– Oh yes—I have Sylvia or the May Queen among my books in London. [5] Dont you remember telling me to read it, & did’nt I obey you & buy it directly? It overflows with poetry, in the Aminta, Guarini, Sad Shepherd, Faithful Shepherdess way: [6] but does as pastorals can scarcely choose but do, hold on to one by the skirts of one’s fancy rather than by the imagination in a high sense, or by the heart poetical, [7] in any—I mean with the hands of passion & sentiment. Oh but it is true, lovely, fantastical poetry .. & there is besides, power of language & metrical skilfulness. I saw Thomas á Becket, praised, altho’ something coldly as I fancied, in the Athenæum [8] —to which I knew before that Mr Darley contributed. He wrote the able guilty article upon Ion [9] —& he is to be traced very often by his ability. Disinherited for being a poet!! There is an alderman for you!– [10] Consistent, after his kind. “Blame not the cobbler for his black thumbs”. [11] People may have black thumbs you see, without “pen & ink”!–
As to Buckingham Palace, dearest dearest Miss Mitford, I never dreamt of anything beyond silence—or at least if I dreamt, I dreamt. [12] I never thought it. Sette is more successful in making his way to court than I—even with your presentation! Think of Sette’s assurance in costuming himself in a long tailed coat belonging to his elder brother, & squeezing himself into St James’s Palace, with the address from Oxford! [13] of course at the momently risk of being turned out, long coat & all!– But he saw the Queen & Prince Albert .. & thinks no more of the means, Papa says,—than if he had done the most natural thing possible. So when I want to go to court, I shall go with Set!– What nonsense to teaze you with!– I am very anxious about you notwithstanding–
Your ever attached
EBB.
I am so sorry to hear of Mr Kenyon’s having been unwell: was it a rheumatic attack? Did you hear? I am tolerable, assailed by feverishness though towards night more than usual, from that eternal wind. You don’t mention Howell. [14]
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading / Prepaid.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 192–194.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by the reference to Dr. Mitford’s accident.
2. In a letter to Miss Anderdon of 26 March 1840, Miss Mitford said “one rib was broken, if not more, and the right arm. All this at eighty makes a sad amount of suffering. At present the being totally disabled, and the loss of sleep and appetite caused by his confinement, have had a very bad effect upon his spirits—he won’t see any one, and is very much depressed indeed” (Chorley, I, 174).
3. II Corinthians, 1:3.
4. Thomas à Becket (1840) by George Darley (1795–1846), poet and writer for The Athenæum.
5. Published in 1827, Darley’s Sylvia; or, The May Queen formed part of Browning Collections (see Reconstruction, A760).
6. Aminta (1573), by Torquato Tasso (1544–95), first appeared in English translation in 1591. Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538–1612) was the author of Il Pastor Fido (1590), modelled on Aminta, which also provided the basis of the plot of Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess (1609?). Jonson’s play, The Sad Shepherd, was left unfinished at the time of his death in 1637 and was published posthumously.
7. Cf. The Christian Year (1827), XXX, by John Keble (1792–1866), divine and poet.
8. The Athenæum of 14 March 1840 (no. 646, pp. 204–205), in reviewing Thomas à Becket, spoke of its “unsuitability to the stage” and said “we are half-inclined to regret the form which … his work has taken.”
9. A negative review of Talfourd’s Ion, in The Athenæum of 28 May 1836 (no. 448, pp. 371–373), generally attributed to Chorley, was, in fact, written by Darley.
10. According to Miss Mitford, Darley was the “son of a rich alderman of Dublin, who disinherited him because he would write poetry” (L’Estrange (2), III, 56).
11. A variation on the old proverb, “the richer the cobbler, the blacker his thumbs.”
14. i.e., whether she did need the loan of EBB’s copy of Howell’s Letters (see letter 746).
___________________
