854. EBB to Mary Russell Mitford
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 129–132.
[London]
Thursday. Sept 23d 1841
My beloved friend,
Here are the letters returned to you, [1] for which I thanked you yesterday .. & I think Arabel will be tempted into the impudence you encourage, (you being the tempting angel) of using your charmed name to gaze upon the new manifestation of Uriel. [2] When you come you will visit the artist, wont you?,—& help him on from rapture to rapture? [3] And this consideration helps me to a juster one of times & seasons. We must’nt put off your avatar until the winter—must we?– When is the best hour for my gladness? Think yourself. But oh—how remorseless, to “let you come”!–
I remember Mr Lucas perfectly. A pale body-thinking looking person—diffident in his manners. I remember perfectly.
With the other things, which accident delayed until they cd be sent in your flowerbasket, you will find Mr Browning’s Pippa & Mr Horne’s “False Medium”. Tell me your thoughts of the last. They will not pass over it, of course, in entire approbation—they will find some rashness & violence—much magnanimous madness. What I regret most is a note upon Shelley’s expulsion from the university, together with a page or two round about it! [4] The generous indignation will occasionally like ambition ‘overleap itself’. [5] I know, I think I may say, I know, that Shelley’s sins against the God of his own poetry are more lamented by Mr Horne than by the fiercest lifter up of the collegiate brand. As to the brand, Milton was struck first. [6]
Mr Horne sent me Martinuzzi to read, a day or two ago,—together with these sentences upon the great speculation, .. “Of course in such an undertaking we never expected to make money. Owing to the disasters of the first night, the press with its usual intelligence & high principle, has made a crusade against us [7] —but there are certain parties in this matter who are not to be put down. On the whole we have made a good floundering beginning.”
Such being the opinion of the persons concerned, ‘the mourners’ need not “go about the streets”. [8] The fact is—that Martinuzzi is in a course of performance still—if it has’nt a run, it has a walk. [9] After the fatal first night, sundry corrections & reformations were made in the tragedy—& then, it walked! I have however, in my secret self, & so far out of the way that nobody can say “get out of it,[”] I have an opinion of my own which walks too. I cannot think highly of Martinuzzi. There it is, alive & upright, though most innocent.
The tragedy has fine things in it, but not very frequently & always broken into chips. Both story & character seem to be (that is, seem to me) defective, & the building up of the lofty verse, is tumbling down instead. Mr Horne lent me the play—& now I have only to stutter out the truth to him in all courtesy. I never could admire in a train—& least of all, poetry. And I do wonder that those members of the new Theatrical committee who are not Mr Stephens, shd have dared to take their first step upon Martinuzzi.
In regard to certain other poets (so called) you may be right, my beloved friend, although I do not know enough of the parties to be sure that you are. For my own part, I dare to believe of myself that I am not hypercritical, & that I love poetry too deeply, not to recognize & kiss the faintest mark of her foot. At the same time, I have no business in the judgment seat.
Mr Bezzi I never saw, & never read a word from his pen—only recollecting of him gratefully that he ran down once through the rain, with a book which he heard I wanted, & had borrowed for me. He is, you know, very musical—& by some occult enchantment independent of his music he draws everybody after him like Orpheus. [10] Never was anything like his popularity—but popularity is naught—& I can quite understand something of what you intimate. Does it refer to the talent— or the what? As to the former, a man who produces nothing is after all second rate. Henrietta likes him very much—but then she saw him in society & in reference to it.
Well—perhaps we may have a little gossipping before long—if I shall be able to do anything but look at you dearest dearest friend, when I have you to look at. You must be prepared for the change that has come over the spirit of my dream in many ways—notwithstanding the surprising revival of this summer & notwithstanding that everyone here says “Oh, you look so much better than I expected to see you”!– But then my voice—my poor voice has shrunk away into the mythological destiny of the nymph Echo– [11] I cant speak out of a whisper– I cant recover my old tones! I lost my voice again & again & recovered it—but it is gone now so long & far that it cant get back!
They gossip dreadfully at Torquay—past the ridge of scandal– Perhaps this voice may tell you a little, if you can hear it! Oh how pleasant to think, to dream, of hearing you? Do you repent leading me into this extravagance of hope? Do you? Say yes—if you do.
The post is going.
My love to dear Dr Mitford. Flush is in high spirits. He likes London, he says, very much indeed.
Ever your own
EBB–
Address: Miss Mitford / Three Mile Cross / near Reading.
Publication: EBB-MRM, I, 278–280 (as 22 September 1841).
Manuscript: Wellesley College.
1. EBB means Haydon’s letters to Miss Mitford, mentioned in the previous letter, but, as the following letter indicates, EBB forgot to enclose them. Miss Mitford has interpolated “Haydon’s,” on the manuscript.
2. The archangel Uriel, described by Milton as the “regent of the sun” (Paradise Lost, III, 690). In a letter to Miss Mitford of 26 August 1841 (presumably one of those EBB speaks of returning), Haydon had described how he decided to experiment with fresco: “getting leave of my worthy landlord to knock my walls to pieces, if necessary, I proceeded … to chip off the outer coat … and, following Cennini, spread the requisite quantity of wet mortar … In four hours I produced a colossal sketch of ‘Uriel disturbed by Satan in disguise of an Angel’.” (Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk, 1876, II, 137.) Haydon’s son, Frederick Wordsworth Haydon (1827–86), described it as being of “ideal and unearthly beauty” and said that he was the model for it (Pope, V, 83). For a report on the fresco by Arabel and Sette, see letter 861.
3. Miss Mitford did see the fresco when she came to London at the end of October. She described it as “a very interesting specimen of a restored art, the first ever executed by an English painter” but thought “the want of shadow will tell against it in a large picture—no depth” (Chorley, I, 191, 283).
4. On p. 241 of his book, speaking of men of genius, Horne referred to “their probable inability to shine, or even make a moderate progress in the usual collegiate studies” and of their behaviour being “deficient in proper respect to professors, and their general conduct, wild, refractory, and not to be endured.” A footnote stated “One of the highest honours that can attend a youth’s outset in life, is to be expelled from college, for manifesting a resistance to servile ignorance and brutal tyranny. Such was the case with Shelley, and many others.”
5. Macbeth, I, 7, 27.
6. Milton had had some quarrel with his tutor, which resulted in a temporary departure from Cambridge (see DNB).
7. The Examiner of 28 August 1841 (no. 1752, pp. 548–549) dealt with the presentation of Stephens’s drama under the auspices of “the Council of the Dramatic Authors’ Theatre. Established for the full Encouragement of English Living Dramatists.” Although wishing “heartily well to every attempt to throw open the stage,” the writer had serious reservations about the selection of Martinuzzi for that purpose: “the construction of the whole must be characterized as eminently unfortunate. The stage at the last was strewn with dead bodies: each having fallen to the untragical accompaniment of a roar. So mirthful an audience never before presided over a matter of so much gravity.” The Times of 27 August reviewed the play in similar terms, commenting that “From an unfortunate anti-climax that was uttered about the middle of the piece … the audience caught an unlucky humour, and a constant disposition to seize on the ridiculous side of everything was manifest to the end” and concluding that the injustice of the managers of the patent theatres in refusing to produce it had not been proved.
8. Ecclesiastes, 12:5.
9. The play only survived for a month; its last performance was on 25 September.
10. Orpheus, son of the Muse Calliope, was such a master of the lyre that even inanimate objects were moved by his music.
11. Echo was deprived of freedom of speech by Juno, being permitted only to answer questions put to her.
___________________
