853. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 126–129.
[London]
Sept 21. 1841
Dearest dearest Miss Mitford, the note I wrote yesterday had scarcely passed from my hands when the flowers came!– I have looked at them & seen you in them, & borne for your sake that some of them shd be put into a vase in my room. It is the first time since the time I cannot speak of, that I have borne to look at flowers so nearly as to have them in my room. They used to find free entrance there, & the people at Torquay were kind in sending me bouquets—but after that time [1] I grew changed you know altogether & shrunk from the things I liked best—& the colour & the smell of these beautiful creations became terrible to me, as if they were noisome instead of beautiful. Since that time, there have been no more flowers in my room until now—& here are yours!– Yes!—here are yours. I denied nature, but could not deny you! And do not think that it has been an effort to me, a bare duty of love! I used to think at Torquay—“I cannot while I stay in this place—but if I live ever to be free from it, one dearest person may send me some of her flowers, & then I will have those!” That was my promise to myself built upon the presumption of your liberality. For you did’nt want notes or commentaries to explain who the “dearest person” was? Oh no!—you guessed that! —because you know me! My beloved & kindest friend, how I thank you for your splendid flowers! Instead of their encomium I have written what is as grave as an epitaph! Yet I do praise & admire them—do today & did yesterday—& can look at them without crying, for your sake!– Dont take any notice of all this weakness. But I felt impelled to explain how I owe a new spring to you—among the rest of the debts!—among all the rest, my beloved & kindest friend!–
All the rest indeed! For how could I thank you first for flowers, when you promise me the gift of yourself. Is it possible?– Come to see me, such a long long way! Oh—how can I thank you enough for even the thought of it? And will you do it? Ought I to let you? I, who am so spent & worn of the little good-for-companionship that ever was in me? Ought I to let you?
There is a question for a debating society of starch consciences!—but mine, I fear, wont make a very long speech about it. It will “let you”, I see from the beginning.
But not just yet—do not come just yet, my beloved friend! I must quite take breath before that joy, & have time for a dream of it. In the meantime—when you come, must you go back the same day?—must you? We are full here, I am sorry to say—but still, I do think with a little more thought, we might conjure up a bedroom for you. I feel myself smiling at the very thought of it. Will you come—or is it too much pleasure for me? I was confessing the other day that I felt myself (now that I had come home) growing credulous of joy, again! The credulity seems to roll on like a bowl. What if I shd set up again for a castle builder!–
When you come, you wont see any “little brothers”—& when I came, I looked for them in vain! Not a brother to be seen out of a long-tailed coat—& even Set (Septimus—you must learn our names!) sidling away from Papa’s morning kiss, because he’s too old! [2] –
But nobody’s too old to like geraniums—not even I!– Yet hold your generous hand, & let us consider a little. Is it the very best time? And if it is, will you promise to send only one or two? We have been luckless in attempts of the kind hitherto. And will you instruct us how we are to prepare the two plants you sent some time ago, for the winter? They appear drooping & inclined to eschew London & winter together. Should we cut them down—quite down—? or should we take them up, out of their pots, & garner them in the cellar. Do give us some advice. And do believe how we thank you! You are Flora herself to us [3] , carrying Plenty’s horn, because there’s nothing else in mythology large enough to hold your gifts of nosegays!
Mr Haydon’s letters shut up in the best letter of all, [4] I received this morning & will return to you in a day or two. I must let Papa just look at them. They interested me much. How I do like the “self glorying” (in the sense of Longinus) of genius [5] —the devotion of heart to noble ends, overlooking life—the joy in self-sacrifice—the consciousness of power! How fine this life of genius is!—& its religion too! If any smile as perhaps they might, & [sic, for at] the artist’s supplication before the great creator, I at least am not one. I like these letters. They spring up like a fountain among the world’s conventionalities—they & such as they.
He is said, you know, to be a vain man, & it may be true for aught the letters say.
“Poor little Flush.” You may well say so. He did’nt like London at all at first—not through rural preferences so much, as through fear of the crowds of strangers which presented terrors to him on all sides. The journey, Mr Flush enjoyed no less than any other classical traveller inclusive of Eustace. [6] He wdnt sleep in the carriage, but sate at the window upon Arabel’s knee or Crow’s, with his two paws on the sill, & his glittering ears dancing up & down over his nose—the eyes dilating with the prospect. Through all my exhaustion, I could’nt help now & then smiling at Flush. No student of the picturesque ever gazed more intently upon hill & valley—only he had a decided preference for animated nature. A flight of crows—for instance—drew him half out of the window—a flock of sheep produced a wag of the tail—a man on horseback, of the whole body––and, best of all, from this “high sphere” [7] he had the honor of barking at many a large dog who, if both had been on equal ground, wd have gobbled him up– At the inns too, Mr Flush took his pleasure. My bed used to be drawn out of the carriage like a drawer from a table & was carried, by men, with a shawl over the face of the occupant, up stairs to a bedroom. Well!—Flush thought himself bound in duty to pay every attention to this process. He walked & stood & paused & gazed, just as others did—& when I was laid down safely, the first living thing I used to see was Flush standing on his hind legs to reach up & kiss me. Then he established himself on my bed until he was taken down to dinner, always returning, finding out my bedroom door in the strange houses, with as little delay as possible, & most absolute in his resolve of passing the night with me. And every morning, he watched all the preparations for setting out again, evidently rejoicing in all & the first to spring into the carriage & take his usual seat. I am by no means sure that Flush wont bring out as good a two volumes of “Travels” some day—of notes & documents—as anybody from the new world.
Well, but—when he came here—it was different. He liked my room very much indeed,—but my brothers he altogether disapproved of—and, what was rather worse, he thought it necessary (being a moralist & a traveller) to express his disapprobation most loudly & tumultuously—starting up, whether by night or day, everytime he heard a footstep, throwing himself upon my shoulder & barking like a pack of hounds in one. My quiet Flush!—whom I always praised for quietness! Was there ever such a beginning! I was in despair—not so much for myself as for Papa who is not perhaps very particularly fond of dogs & most particularly, of silence. Papa said Flush made him nervous, & that he must not sleep in my bedroom until he was reformed altogether. So Crow took him for a night—& everybody paid court to him—&, in a little time, his terrors passed away & he permitted himself to be walked near & talked to & even patted. Oh—he is quite contented now—quite friends with the whole world. Poor dear little Flush! And he likes London “pretty well, thank you”. He has had two long runs the Hampstead way, & runs out in the Parks, & thinks it pleasant enough.
Oh the post, the post—I shall be too late—& must’nt & wont.
I heard from Mr Horne last night– Tomorrow you shall hear. Yet there is not much—only that he thinks they have made a “pretty good floundering beginning” in the English Opera speculation. [8] I must write again—perhaps tomorrow—certainly next day.
Thank you for thinking of Arabel in regard to the studios. [9] Over-kind you are!– All their love to you—& mine to dear Dr Mitford. Tell me if the tamarinds relieve the thirst. [10] God bless you. I do love you indeed[.]
Your own EBB.
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 274–277.
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. i.e., the death of Bro.
2. At this time the two youngest members of the family, Septimus and Octavius, were 19 and 17 respectively. Sette had always been his father’s particular favourite (see, for example, letter 462).
3. The Roman equivalent of Chloris, the Greek goddess of flowers and gardens.
4. Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846), the painter, had known Miss Mitford since 1817 and had painted her portrait, ca. 1825 (reproduced in EBB-MRM, facing I, 158). He later became one of EBB’s major correspondents, and left his personal papers to her care when he committed suicide on 22 June 1846. (For details of his friendship with EBB, see pp. 370–373.)
5. Cf. On the Sublime, cap. xxxiii.
6. John Chetwode Eustace (1762?–1815), a close friend of Edmund Burke, had published A Tour Through Italy in 1813 (entitled A Classical Tour Through Italy in later editions).
7. Cf. Milton, “On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough” (1673), 39.
8. A reference to the production of Martinuzzi in an attempt to circumvent the legal monopoly of the patent theatres (see letters 845, note 5, and 854).
9. i.e., those of Haydon and Lucas; Miss Mitford provided letters of introduction to them (see letter 857) and letter 861 tells of a visit to their studios by Arabel and Sette.
10. Letter 857 affirms that they gave “great relief.”
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