1335.7. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 7.
[Three Mile Cross]
[ca. 25 July 1843] [1]
<***> Well, but of course. Mr. Lever’s are exaggerations—so much—& after all far less obvious than the atrocities of la jeune France– They tell me that he is charming—full of a brilliancy & character from morning to night which no really tippling person ever had– I hate detest & loathe all tippling—all smoking—all sensuality—but I fear, I greatly fear that there was more of this in Coleridge poor man—in Byron—in Bulwer (all in different ways) than in a thousand Mr Levers, talking of the thing & joking over it– I would wager something that he is not a tippler– I never saw him—& have only heard of him from his artist young Browne—a young man of the highest merit, who ever since he was 17 has supported a widowed mother & three sisters—& he spoke of Mr Lever with enthusiasm—& Mrs Niven the purest of the pure—the best of the good—the choicest of the choice—likes his books as well as I do—likes them for what she calls their “chivalry”– Of course my dear love all those Irish Scenes are caricatures—I grant you that—so one could imagine them to be truer than Falstaff’s “seven in buckram”—one laughs over their exaggerations—although I really believe that in the times of which Jack Hinton speaks those identical men did practice something not very unlike similar atrocities– What a blessing that people do not tipple now!– The present abomination is smoking, which I hate to the point of thinking that Sir Walter Raleigh really justly deserved his death for introducing that most horrible practice– It makes me sick– <***>
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library, Joseph Milsand Archive.
1. Miss Mitford’s references to “la jeune France,” “hate,” “detest,” “loathe,” “sensuality,” “joking,” and “Mrs. Niven,” all in reference to Charles James Lever, suggest that this letter is MRM’s response to letter 1333 ([22] July 1843) and that letter 1336 ([?late July 1843]) is EBB’s response to this letter.
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