SD1164. Mary Russell Mitford to Lucy Olivia Anderdon
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 379–380 (in part).
[Three Mile Cross]
[5 December 1841]
I thank you most heartily my dear young friend for your most kind & affectionate letter– You will rejoice to hear that my dear father is better– He has had a wretched cough—& having recovered from that, the sense of being better, of having been worse seems to have taken a cheering effect upon his spirits– Even now he is what any one seeing him only occasionally would perhaps hardly believe, so completely does his habitual depression contrast with his momentary exhilaration—but he is a shade less gloomy, & ever for this slight amendment I am most thankful. How I do wish you were nearer! You & Mr & Mrs Oliver Anderdon are among the very few of his more sweet friends whose society he enjoys—& my delight in it you are not now to learn—next summer I do hope that we shall meet. Perhaps before the Spring is over I may revisit Wimpole Street & then I shall try [to see] if I cannot express my favorite wish by bringing you & my precious Invalide together! She is as you may guess difficult to reach—however much she respects & admires the person & however ready she may be to write to her– Never leaving her bedroom—only at uncertain times & hours her own—I doubt if she had admitted a single soul since her return to Town besides her own family Miss Bordman & myself– However I am a good deal privileged in that I see her, & knowing her feelings towards you I think that I might venture upon the measure of taking you to her bedside—certain that the after pleasure would amply compensate for a nervous half hour. Even before her illness she was very retired & shy– Mrs Dupuy who saw her the year after I was in Town told me that she said she had not been out of an evening since the one when she met Mr Wordsworth & myself at Mr Kenyons—& you can imagine how much this feeling grows on any one by sickness– Even the indulgence of such a habit as she has it—but when such illness is added to the habit of seclusion the result is inevitable. I doubt if any of the family except the young lawyer (the second son who goes the Oxford Circuit) visit much—& yet Mr Barrett is an exceedingly clever agreeable man with very easy highbred manners, & the daughters (I mean the two younger ones) remarkably elegant & pleasing– The way of living of the whole family is exactly what Mrs Anderdon would like, full of quiet respectability—fine pictures—rich plate—all the marks of affluence without the slightest show or finery—& a gathering together round their father’s table—& looking up to him—& a conduct & satisfaction in their own happy & elegant home which is one of the truest pledges of a careful & successful education.– My beloved friend suffered much during the short early frost—but is now much better again– I hear from her two or three times a week—& such letters! Put Madame de Sévigné & Cowper together & you can fancy them—I doubt though if ever the French woman wrote so frequently or so diffusely.– She & I have been much puzzled by the impression which Miss Garrow’s poetry has made upon certain very competent & usually very fastidious critics—Mr Kenyon, Walter Savage Landor, &c, &c– You will find a long poem of hers in the last (present) Keepsake. Do look at it, just to confirm (for I know your taste well enough to believe that it will confirm) our opinion– There is an idiotic love, which seems to me the very last, in point of taste & feeling, that I should have liked a daughter of mine to portray—excited merely by a fine person—& not (as in the beautiful old tale of Cymon) awakening the faculties—& the affections—touching both heart & mind.– In the same Keepsake there is a delicious sonnet by Mr Milne[s], & a beautiful poem by John Kenyon—the gems of the Volume.– Miss Garrow’s Poem reminded me of the Ingoldsby Legends without the fun & the marvellous trick of it rising which make those strange freaks of fancy irresistible in their way. Talking of Legends I have just been reading a favorite book of my dear friend[’]s which she sent to me Stilling’s Theory of Pneumatology—a most remarkable collection of ghost stories, dreams &c—very interesting for its singular mixture of credulity simplicity shrewdness & good faith– None but a German could have written it– She says that Stilling’s autobiography which I have not read is still more curious– Herman & Dorothea put into action. If you should meet with that in English my dearest I should be glad to read it—or Hayley’s autobiography—but I greatly fear that neither work is common– I am now very intimate with Miss Dermet Flaxman’s Sister in law & heiress & she does not know where to look for the latter—& yet you know Flaxman & Hayley were bosom friends.– A thousand thanks for your kind offer respecting books– In general we can get any we want at the excellent Reading Library (Lovejoy’s) he or I have all you mention—& most interesting they all are.– If you have a mind to see Haydon’s Fresco & will see my house any day between 2 & 4 I know that he will be glad to show it to you. You will like him– He lives at No 4 Rosewood Place Connaught Terrace– Also if you would like some friends to call upon Mr Lucas No 3 St John’s Wood Road, you will like both his pictures & himself– I like artists– Heaven bless you my dear love! Make our grateful regrets to Mr & Mrs Anderdon & your kind self
Ever most faithfully yours
M R Mitford
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Yale University.
___________________
