Two-Way Mirror

by Fiona Sampson

  Friendship with Hunter: this time it may even be Elizabeth who holds the upper hand. As her relationship with RB is beginning, EBB will write: ‘Half the acidities arise from the cream of his affection for me turning sour in a thunderstorm of jealousy, … not of me … but of others in relation to me! […] Poor Mr Hunter is irritable, as persons of great sensibility under adverse circumstances, are apt to be.’ EBB to Mitford 5 April 1845, #1880.

  p. 87

  ‘My poem on the cholera. I think I like it, & shall send it to the Times tomorrow.’ Papa calls it ‘beautiful, most beautiful’. EBB Diary, 9 January and 22 January 1832.

  Boyd, in usual passive-aggressive style, first pours cold water on the idea of publishing Prometheus Unbound, then two days later denies doing so. EBB Diary, 2–18 February 1832. Review in The Athenaeum Journal of Literature, Science and the Fine Arts (London: J. Francis, 1833) p. 362. The accompanying poems are pretty much ignored. Elizabeth retains them as ‘Juvenilia’ in collected editions of her Poetical Works, but comes to see ‘Prometheus’ as, in the words of a future editor, ‘an offence against Aeschylus’, eventually retranslating. ‘The second translation was deliberately intended to efface the first.’ Frederic G. Kenyon, ‘Editor’s Preface, 1887’, in The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (London: John Murray, 1914), p. vi.

  Boyd leaves Sidmouth in May 1834, almost exactly a year after Prometheus Unbound had appeared.

  ‘A nest…’ EBB to Miss Commeline 14 September 1834, #489.

  Three more poems appear in The New Monthly and three in The Athenaeum. Reprinted, some with modified titles, in The Seraphim.

  p. 88

  Poetic homage is itself a feminine tradition: Hemans wrote ‘The Grave of a Poetess’ after the death of Mary Tighe (1772–1810).

  ‘I shall not be pained in leaving Sidmouth, as some time ago, I should have been. […] And after all, I would rather go to London, than to an hundred places I could mention.’ EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks c.4 November 1835, #513.

  Dating Bro’s return: in #513, his return is ‘lately’. EBB to Boyd c.October 1825, #511, which records his arrival, is the second letter after Annie Boyd’s July 1835 visit to Sidmouth and also the second to mention a possible move to London.

  p. 89

  ‘Capacities for living… The sea shore…’ EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks 9 December 1835, #516. ‘Mummy…’ EBB to Julia Martin, 1 January 1836, #519. Chimney: EBB to Julia Martin 7 December 1836, #546. Doves: EBB to Mitford 10 August 1836, #534. We learn that they’re from Jamaica in EBB to Mitford 8 November 1837, #596.

  p. 90

  Coughs: EBB to Boyd 7 January 1836, #520; EBB to Boyd 15 March 1836, #524.

  Kenyon: ‘References to him occur in Southey’s Life, Ticknor’s Life, Letters, and Journals, L’Estrange’s Life of Mary Russell Mitford, Horne’s Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Ingram’s Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Crabb Robinson’s Diary, Clayden’s Rogers and his Contemporaries, Macready’s Reminiscences, Field’s Old Acquaintance …’ James McMullen Rigg, ‘John Kenyon’ in Dictionary of National Biography 1885–1900, vol. 31 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Kenyon,_John_(DNB00) [retrieved 5 March 2019]. Later, he also helped Coleridge’s family financially.

  Robinson: Charles R. Mack, Ilona Schulze Mack, eds, Like a Sponge Thrown Into Water: Francis Lieber’s European Travel Journal of 1844–1845: a Lively Tour Through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria, and Bohemia: with Observations on Politics, the Visual and Performing Arts, Economics, Religion, Penology, Technology, History, Literature, Social Customs, Travel, Geography, Jurisprudence, Linguistics, Personalities, and Numerous Other Matters (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 2002), p. 121. Barred from Oxbridge as a Nonconformist, Robinson helped found the University of London. Thomas Sadler, ed, Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson (London and New York: Macmillan & Co., 3rd Edition with Corrections and Additions, 1872), vol. 2, chapter XXXII, ‘3 May 1828’, p. 54.

  p. 91

  ‘Lions…’ Sadler, ed, Diary, Reminiscences, vol. 3, p. 451, fn.

  Talfourd is at Middle and George at Inner Temple. Talfourd has just been created a serjeant, a member of a juridical order dating back to the fourteenth century, and elected the MP for Reading: like George, he’s a barrister. Indeed, the two men will become friends.

  p. 91

  Talfourd’s first night, on 26 May 1836: Sadler, ed, Diary, Reminiscences, vol. 2, Chapter XXXIX, p. 176. The same group dined at 56 Russell Square the night before: ‘Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Landor, and Mr. White dined here.

  I like Mr. Wordsworth of all things; he is a most venerable-looking old man, delightfully mild and placid, and most kind to me. Mr. Landor is a very striking-looking person, and exceedingly clever. Also we had a Mr. Browning, a young poet (author of “Paracelsus”), and Mr. Proctor, and Mr. Chorley, and quantities more of poets.’ Mitford to George Mitford 26 May 1836, SD798. Paracelsus, the first work published by Browning under his own name, was published by Effingham Wilson on 15 August 1835, paid for by RB’s father.

  ‘Dare I…’ EBB to Thomas Noon Talfourd 21 January 1836, #523. ‘I wrote as if writing for my private conscience, & privately repented writing in a day’; EBB to RB 7 December 1845, #2131.

  p. 92

  ‘A Tragedy…’ RB to William Charles Macready 28 May 1836, #526. But they fall out over revisions.

  ‘Wd wish for more harmony…’ EBB to Mitford 10 August 1836, #534. The Athenaeum vol. 454 (1836), p. 491.

  p. 93

  ‘You might think me…’ EBB to Julia Martin 7 December 1836, #546.

  Mary Russell Mitford, Our Village (London: Whittaker & Co.), vol. 1 1824, vol. 2 1826, vol. 3 1828, vol. 4 1830, vol. 5 1832, followed by a new edition in three volumes (London: Whittaker & Co., 1835), with engravings by Baxter. Belford Regis (1835) was also based on life in Three Mile Cross. In 1851 she moved to nearby Swallowfield.

  Mitford’s portrait: 1853 oil by John Lucas after Benjamin Robert Haydon 1824, National Portrait Gallery 404; 1852 chalk drawing by John Lucas, NPG 4045.

  p. 94

  Mitford repackages work to maximise sales, edits annuals, and writes for non-literary magazines.

  ‘Sweet young woman…’ Mitford to George Mitford 27 May 1836, SD799. ‘The most difficult of the Greek plays…’ Mitford to George Mitford 28 & 29 May 1836, SD801.

  When it’s published, The Literary Gazette singles out Elizabeth’s ‘A Romance of the Ganges’ from the Tableaux for praise.

  p. 95

  ‘All that is painful in her shyness…’ Mitford to Lady Dacre 3 July 1836, SD804. ‘Small neighbourhood…’ quoted from ‘Introduction’, by Anne Thackeray Ritchie, to Mary Russell Mitford’s Our Village (London: Macmillan, 1893), p. 1.

  Lady Dacre’s circle: Harriet Kramer Linkin, ‘Mary Tighe and the Coterie of Women Poets in Psyche’ in Jacqueline M. Labbe, ed, The History of British Women’s Writing, 1750–1830, vol. 5 (London: Palgrave, 2010), pp. 303–304. Cambridge University database bizarrely states that Lady Dacre (1768–1854) ‘wrote as an amateur in the Romantic period’: as if a respectable woman could then write in any other way. http://orlando.cambridge.org/public/svPeople?formname=r&person_id=dacrba&heading=c [retrieved 7 March 2019]. This network also has connections with literary men including Mary Tighe’s cousin George, by now a friend of the Shelleys and living in Italy with Mary Wollstonecraft’s mentee Lady Mountcashell.

  ‘Depend upon it…’ Mitford to William Harness July 1836, SD803. ‘Of course the poverty…’ Mitford to Lady Dacre 3 July 1836, SD804.

  p. 96

  ‘If events lead her…’ SD804.

  FOURTH FRAME

  p. 98

  Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian G. Gill (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 125.

  BOOK FIVE

  Epigraph

  AL Bk 8, L. 44.

  p. 99

  Coughs: EBB to Mitford, a Tuesday in Ja
nuary 1838, #606; EBB to Boyd mid-January 1838, #609; EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks, c.29 Jan 1838, #611.

  p. 100

  ‘Chimneys…’ EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks, 29 September 1837, #590. An egg on 22 July 1837, the chick hatches on 16 August 1837. EBB to Mitford 22 July 1837, #577; EBB to Julia Martin 16 August 1837, #583. #606. Critique: EBB to Kenyon c.February 1838, #614. Civil List: in 1835, EBB’s cousin Arabella Butler married Ralph Gosset, son of recently knighted Sir William, a former MP. ‘My dear Love…’ Mitford to EBB 1 February 1838, #612.

  p. 101

  ‘I have already had two proof sheets…’ EBB to Boyd 26 March 1838, #620. ‘Valpy is giving up…’ EBB to Boyd 27 February 1838, #615. ‘No more mss…’ EBB to Kenyon, Wednesday c.March 1838, #616. ‘Late remorse…’ EBB to Mitford, a Monday in early April 1838, #621. ‘Rather a dramatic lyric…’ EBB to Mitford, a Monday in March 1838, #617. She’s particularly proud that she managed to reconstruct the whole first part after it was lost by the publisher Colburn. ‘Then, would come…’ #616. ‘Incapable…’ EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks c.13 March 1838, #619. ‘Grand angelic sin…’ #616.

  p. 102

  Henrietta informs Sam about the move: Henrietta Moulton-Barrett to Sam Moulton-Barrett 14 & 15 November 1837, SD835. ‘How the waves…’ #619. ‘My strength flags…’ #617.

  ‘Had no idea…’ The Atlantic barrier, so useful in concealing the disgusting reality of the Jamaican planter ship, also prevents genuine personal contact: an exchange of letters takes roughly two months. A month before his brother’s death, Edward’s letters to him are full of trivia about shipping him gifts: Edward B MB to Samuel B MB 15 November 1837, SD836; Edward B MB to Samuel B MB c.20 November 1837, SD837.

  The legal conveyance of Uncle Sam’s gift to EBB was completed posthumously. Edward B MB to Samuel B MB 24 October 1837, SD832. Boddingtons wrote to Uncle Sam a week after his death, asking for his signature on the Bill of Sale: Boddington & Co. to Samuel B MB 30 December 1837, SD844.

  ‘Uncle brother friend & nurse…’ #619. ‘Kindness melted…’ Henrietta MB to Samuel MB 14–15 November 1837, SD835.

  Value calculated according to the Office for National Statistics composite price index. http://www.in2013dollars.com/uk/inflation/1838?amount=200; http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/#currency-result [retrieved 11 March 2019].

  Sam is coming home ‘for a few months’ only; #619.

  p. 103

  Sam tells his favourite sister his itinerary: Samuel MB to Henrietta MB 21 November 1838, SD956. ‘On account of the gloominess…’ EBB to Julia Martin 7 December 1836, #546. ‘Disappointed… reconciled…’ SD956.

  ‘Ghost of paint…’ EBB to Mitford 23–24 April 1838, #627. ‘Little slip of sitting room…’ EBB to Mitford 1 June 1838, #636. They stay at number 129 with Ann Smith, daughter of Dr Adam Clarke and a friend of Mr Boyd’s.

  p. 104

  ‘We are dying…’ is admittedly the letter in which Papa announces Bro’s probable drowning. Edward B MB to George Goodin MB 13 July 1840, SD1129.

  p. 105

  ‘Do you conjecture…’ EBB to RB 11 August 1845, #1996.

  p. 106

  ‘I have not been asleep…’ EBB to Kenyon c.January 1838, #607. ‘Flannel waistcoats…’ EBB to Arabella MB and Mary Hunter 27 September 1838, #666. ‘Used to—frighten me…’ EBB to Mitford 8 June 1836, #528.

  p. 107

  ‘Consensus…’ The Athenaeum 7 July 1838 pp. 466–68. The other reviews appear in: The Atlas (23 June 1838), p. 395; The Examiner (24 June 1838), pp. 387–88; Blackwood’s (August 1838), pp. 279–84; The Metropolitan Magazine (August 1838), pp. 97–101; The Monthly Chronicle (August 1838), p.195; The Monthly Review (September 1838), pp. 125–30; The Sunbeam (1 September 1838), pp. 243 & 245, (8 September), pp. 254–55, (23 September), pp. 269–70, (6 October) p. 287, (13 October), pp. 293–95; The Literary Gazette (1 December 1838), pp. 759–60; and The Quarterly Review (September 1840), pp. 382–89. The Metropolitan Magazine and The Examiner concede that The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost also pose the problem of religious poetry.

  p. 108

  ‘Elizabeth’s own faith…’ The Revd Hunter and his daughter Mary remain in the family’s life.

  ‘Forcing houses…’ Both Byron and Shelley first published books of poetry at seventeen: respectively, Fugitive Pieces (1805) and Original Poetry; By Victor and Cazire (1810); unlike Elizabeth, they followed these up promptly.

  p. 109

  ‘Indeed it does seem…’ EBB to Mitford 8 June 1836, #528. ‘Let me apply my theory about “spoiling children” to your practice of spoiling me—& go on to maintain that nobody is injured by too much love!’ EBB to Mitford 30 October 1838, #669.

  ‘In seeing Lady Dacre…’ EBB to Mitford 3 July 1838, #651. ‘The most eloquent woman I ever heard speak, certainly—and the vainest in speaking of herself’: EBB to Mitford 27 September 1839, #713.

  ‘Brother in law…’ SD835.

  p. 110

  ‘I have been…’ EBB to Mitford 1 June 1838, #636. ‘& my weakness…’ EBB to Boyd 21 June 1838, #645.

  According to Forster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, note 1 to chapter 6, pp. 378–79, ‘At a meeting of the Browning Society in 1985, two eminent doctors’ agreed on Dr Chambers’s proficiency, and that therefore EBB doesn’t suffer from TB at this point.

  ‘A helpless being…’ EBB to Lady Margaret Cocks 4 August 1838, #658. With ‘only a too great fullness of the blood vessels upon them’: EBB to Mitford 10 August 1838, #660.

  p. 111

  ‘Sisterless…’ Henrietta MB to Sam MB 15 September 1838, SD943: ‘I was in a most terrible state of inquietude & anxiety, about the probability that existed of not obtaining permission to accompany our dearest Ba to these genial shores, but Papa very kindly gave it to me at last.’

  The Hedleys’ elegant Regency hilltop house is ‘The Braddens’. This move is ‘The difference between the coldest situation in Torquay & the warmest’. EBB to Mitford 10 October 1838, #668.

  Bummy arrives from Frocester: SD943.

  Crow’s mother will be living in Caistor when Crow returns to her for the birth of her first child.

  ‘And indeed…’ EBB to Mitford 14 August 1838, #662.

  p. 112

  ‘She is an excellent…’ EBB to Mitford 9 August 1841, #841. ‘A young man…’ EBB to Mitford ?25 October 1839, #715, makes clear this sequence of events. ‘Haunted… London habit…’ EBB to Mitford 25 September 1838, #664. ‘On the occasion… These partings…’ EBB to Arabella MB and Mary Hunter, 27 September 1838, #666.

  p. 113

  ‘I had a doctor…’ EBB to RB 11 August 1845, #1996. ‘Encouraged… the blister &c…’ #666. Inhalations like Tincture of Benzoin have been around since the 1760s.

  ‘Dear Bro’s individual opinion was that he would do better in returning to London’: #666. Her brothers will ‘quench the energies of their lives in hunting & fishing’ if the family retreats to a Welsh estate where they cannot practise their professions. EBB to George Goodin MB 15 April 1841, #805.

  ‘The lovely bay…’ #668.

  p. 114

  ‘After only one hour…’ Samuel Goodin Barrett to R. W. Appleton 23 May 1839, SD1005.

  ‘Able and most kind…’ EBB to Mitford ?14 September 1839, #710. ‘He has taken a great interest in her which is also very much in his favor—as he has not received as yet a farthing for his attendance, she wrote to him the other day requesting he would let her know “the pecuniary part of her obligations to him” he sent in his account £125—a moderate charge I think for so long a time’: Henrietta MB to Samuel MB 14 September 1839, SD1042. #715.

  ‘Comes to see her…’ Henrietta MB to Samuel MB 14 December 1839, SD1090. ‘Not any thinner…’ SD1090.

  Sam and Stormie were sent to Jamaica together on the 26 June 1839.

  After Sam’s death, Stormie returned in December 1840: Henrietta MB to Samuel MB 14–15 July 1839, SD1018.

  p. 115

  Sleeping a
round: Forster, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, p. 97, no ref given. ‘Never taken the sacrament…’ Hope Waddell to Edward B MB 20 February 1840, SD1116. ‘It was a heavy blow…’ EBB to Richard Hengist Horne 15 May 1840, #756. Papa hurries to Torquay: ‘When I saw her she appeared crushed by the intelligence; she has never wept, nor has ever alluded to the distressing subject’: Edward B MB to Septimus MB 4 May 1840, SD1121. ‘It is a monstrous time…’ Edward B MB to Septimus MB 24 June 1840, SD1127.

  p. 116

  ‘Occupation…’ EBB to George Goodin MB 17 June 1840, #766.

  Gatecrashing: Edward B MB to EBB 9 March 1840, #741; EBB to Mitford 28 March 1840, #748.

  The family are enthusiastically pro-monarchy. EBB publishes verses on the royal marriage in The Athenaeum; Miss Mitford conspires to get them to the Queen via a lady-in-waiting.

  Bro’s romance: Henrietta MB to Samuel MB 14–15 July 1839, SD1018; #766; EBB to RB 12 December 1845, #2136.

  p. 117

  Edward B MB to George Goodin MB 13 July 1840, SD1129.

  p. 118

  ‘It is a wonder…’ Edward B MB to Septimus MB 1 August 1840, SD1131. ‘These walls…’ EBB to Mitford early October 1840, #772. ‘If I dont return soon, my affairs will be so enta[n]gled that I shall never be able to unravel them’; Edward B MB to Septimus MB 26 August 1840, SD1132. ‘She cannot hear…’ SD1131. ‘Months roll…’ EBB to Mitford, a Monday in November 1840, #773; #772. ‘Tea & cake…’ EBB to George Goodin MB 20 July 1841, #830.

  p. 119

  ‘One heart… Say nothing…’ EBB to George Goodin MB 15 April 1841, #805. Matilda Carter is painting her miniature. It won’t turn out well, to EBB’s amusement; EBB to Mitford 14 June 1841, #819. ‘Prison…’ EBB to Mitford 18 July 1841, #829.