SD1169. Mary Russell Mitford to Henrietta Harrison
Published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 5, 382 (in part).
[Three Mile Cross]
March 3rd, 1842.
I find that there is a carrier from Reading to Aylesbury, so that I can send you a packet of flower seeds, which I have prepared, should you think it worth your acceptance, and some American books, amongst which are the “Memoirs and Remains of Margaret Davidson,” reviewed in the “Quarterly;” but not, I believe (neither are the others), reprinted in England. If you think these worth the trouble of sending for to Aylesbury, and the seed worthy your acceptance. The books worth reading I shall be delighted to forward them on Saturday week, addressed either to Dinton, or to the care of my tradesman in Aylesbury, which, as your post, is probably your nearest town.– I earnestly hope to hear good news of you all, my hope being mixed with so much fear as to cause anxiety on account of the singularly unhealthy season. We have had nothing but wet. Indeed the whole of the last year has been one of flood and desolation, and in this house we have suffered much. The strong, tall, bony woman who chiefly attends my father, being so useful from her strength in getting him in and out of bed, &c., has had, night after night, and week after week, fits of the most frightful kind; so that I and the poor little girl, who is my principal comfort, are black and blue from holding her, though compelled to call in half the village. Then a girl hired to help fell sick, too; my poor pony has had the influenza, and will, I think, die of it; and last and worst, my father has had a fearful attack of English cholera, which has left him sensibly reduced and exhausted, that I am alive is a wonder and a mercy; since without me, what would have become of my dear father? But I bless God that I have held out. I read to him all day, and nearly all night, for it is his only pleasure, and yet (from habit, partly) he groans all through, and you can hardly imagine what a trial it is to read, much more to talk, with such an accompaniment. As I said before, I can only be humbly thankful that strength is given when so much wanted. May Heaven, my dear young friend, long bless you, with your dear parents, in health and happiness! Are you writing? I hope so. It is a grief of griefs to me that I have no time nor strength to earn money as I would fain do by humble prose; but my dear Miss Barrett is, I bless God, stronger and better than for the last three years. She is now printing in the “Athenæum,” accounts, with translations, of the “Early Christian Poets,” better known as orators and theologians under the name of the Fathers. Do look at these fine papers, if the “Athenæum” is within your reach, as it is probably taken in at the nearest circulating library; she has as yet only published two numbers, one of which was in the last “Athenæum,” the other in one some weeks back. I do wish that you and this sweet creature knew each other, and I hope some day or other my wish may be realised. I owe my knowledge of her to my kind friend, Mr. Kenyon, to whom she is distantly related, and for some years back her health has been such as almost to confine her to her bed; but she has borne this winter in Wimpole Street better than the two preceding, and that, I think, affords some grounds of hope that her life may be spared, and even that a comparative recovery may be anticipated; she now walks from the bed to the sofa, which she had not done for years before, and the brilliant and graceful prose of her last papers is in itself an omen of life.
Text: Chorley, I, 286–288.
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