801. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 27–29.
[Torquay]
Tuesday. [March 1841] [1]
If being angry with myself, ashamed of myself, & in the metaphorical sackcloth & ashes of dry repentance can avail anything except the making me more unhappy than the sense of making you uneasy has rendered me, do my dearest kindest & ever until now forgiving friend, accept the atonement. No—nobody has the influenza & I am not worse than usual. What is to be said for me! And here have I been making you uneasy when it might have been otherwise! What is to be said for me? And after that long delightful letter of yours which brightened my spirits for a whole day—that long kind most delightful letter!!– Oh! can anything be said for me?–
Most very bad people as to reputation, are not perhaps quite as bad as they seem—& perhaps even I [2] am not. I loved you & thought of you through every day & night of the whole long silence, & prized your letter my beloved friend deeply as I loved you– I prized it & thought how kind you were to waste all that brightness upon me—besides breathing aside my clouds to let in that brightest dream of coming to see me in London when the summer comes & I am there. Thank you, thank you!– How can I thank you!– I felt myself smiling to myself over the words as I read them, & after reading them, cd scarcely forget or willingly & consciously neglect their writer.
No– The real cause of the silence was your tragedy. I wont write (was my soliloquy) till I know of Ulfried [3] —or of somebody else who is tragic: and I who am denuded of books in this place, sent to the right hand & left, & waited for Wraxall [4] & others to be sent to me .. being disappointed on all sides & unconscious on all days of the flight of time– You cant think how when a person exists as I do, saturdays are taken for mondays, & mondays for saturdays. And then I wanted, waited for books on Spanish-Moorish times—having a fancy in my head from a word you once dropped close to me, that a subject for you was to be sought there. And now,—after all .. a pretty business I have made of it!– Made you uneasy!—and all my good news, .. that we have not the influenza!——
You have been ill my beloved Miss Mitford—& are not well, I fear, even now. That sickness!– I know how distressing it is, .. having suffered myself from it dreadfully—in consequence of no stomachic affection, but mere debility. All the latter part of last year, .. indeed until very lately the simplest causes .. even speaking a little too much, .. provoked the most violent vomiting which of course increased the weakness in which it originated. So I can feel for you—know fully what you suffer. You suffer .. ah—may that be a wrong word now .. a wrong tense for the word. Mind you tell me exactly, when you write my dearest friend. I say, you see “when you write”, not daring to say “Write”.
In the long letter, you mentioned friends of yours who had suffered deep affliction. Tell me how they are.
Then the little puppies, Flush’s puppies, whom you & Ben were nursing. Dont forget about the puppies.
And tell Master Ben .. will you?—with my thanks for his kind message to me that I hope he may see my Flush some day & judge with his own judgment as to whether he was thrown away upon me, in the matter of being cared for & educated & spoilt properly. For voices north & south cry out “Flush is spoilt”! “Flush wont eat mutton—he objects to it!– Flush wont be left in the room by himself .. he cant bear it![”]– And worse than all, if somebody is’nt ready to play with Flush just when he likes, he thinks himself ill-used & begins to cry with that inward moaning cry which exacts the attention he desires. Very affectionate he is! But tell Ben that as to “going through fire & water” [5] under any possible circumstances or for any possible body, such heroic self-devotion is quite out of Flush’s line. Flush is, in fact, the prince of cowards .. if he does not wear the crown—shudders all over at his own shadow in a looking-glass, runs away from the least of little dogs in his path, & in the case of a coal cracking in the fire, leaps upon the bed to me to be taken care of. In fact Flush is a proverb for cowardice in this household. There never was such a coward—not even his mistress!– And with that bond of sympathy added to other still faster bonds, he & I are very near and dear– The first person who comes to wake me in the morning is Flush,—to wake me & remind me of you! There he comes, all in the dark .. before the shutters are open .. pushes through the bedcurtains & leaps into the nearest place by me & bites each of my hands very gently after the manner of his customary salems. [6] Every morning he does this—and once when I wdnt see him & kept my eyes fast shut, Flush began to moan, quite despairingly.
So you see what friends we are! But it is not only he & I who are friends!– Everybody likes Flush—everybody in the house. Even after he has done all the mischief possible, torn their letters, spoilt their books, bitten their shoes into holes (these favorites, these Buckinghams [7] are always full of mischief) everybody likes Flush, & nobody refuses his pretty paw when he holds it out apologetically “to shake hands & make friends”.
I have written myself tired, my dearest Miss Mitford– May God bless & keep you & yours.
I shd like much to hear something of the tragedy—whether any suggestion wd be quite too late now. I wring my useless hands for being so useless to you!——
Give my love to dear Dr Mitford. May he & you be both quite well—& happy .. as far as that can be here.
Your EBB.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 217–219.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. Dated by the further reference to Miss Mitford’s projected tragedy.
2. Underscored twice.
3. In a letter of 28 March 1841, Miss Mitford had written that her bad writing had misled Miss Anderdon, her correspondent “as to the name, which is Umfried” (Chorley, I, 179–180)—presumably a character in a plot she had outlined to EBB, who had been similarly misled.
4. Nathaniel William Wraxall (1751–1831); his Posthumous Memoirs of His Own Time (1836) is doubtless the book EBB wished to refer to.
5. Cf. The Merry Wives of Windsor, III, 4, 103.
6. An 18th-century version of “salaams” (OED).
7. George Villiers (1592–1628) was introduced to James I in 1614, and the “good-looking sprightly youth caught James’s fancy” (DNB). He was made Cupbearer to the King, the first step in his advancement, through the king’s favour, to the post of Lord High Admiral and the duchy of Buckingham.
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