533. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 184–185.
Three Mile Cross,
[ca. 31 July] 1836. [1]
My dear young Friend,
I sit down to write to you after a day of excitement and fatigue, which (it being now four o’clock in the morning) ought to send me to bed; but my friend Mr. Chorley, [2] who is, I am very sorry to say, going away to-morrow, will be the bearer of my letter and of a few flowers, and if he have the good luck to be let in, as I hope he may, will tell you all about our doings. He is worthy of the pleasure of seeing you, not merely in right of admiration of your poems, but because he is one of the most perfectly right-minded and high-minded persons that I have ever known.
To be sure I will come and see you when next I visit London, and I shall feel to know you better when I have had the pleasure of being introduced to Mr. Barrett; to be better authorized to love you and to take a pride in your successes—things which, at present, I take the liberty of doing without authority.
<…> [3]
This is a terrible liberty from me to you, but I have seen so much high poetical faculty lost and buried from the one fault of obscurity, that I would impress upon every young writer the paramount necessity of clearness.
Use your interest with Mr. Kenyon in my favor, that he may come and see me, and stay more than one day.
Ever, my dear young friend,
Most faithfully yours,
M. R. Mitford.
Address: Miss Barrett, 74, Gloucester Place.
Text: L’Estrange (2), III, 54–55 (as June 1836).
1. Dated by reference to the following letter and the gift of flowers.
2. Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808–72), author and critic on the staff of The Athenæum. He later (1869–72) edited Miss Mitford’s letters.
3. According to L’Estrange, here follows an illegible paragraph of advice on the necessity for clearness of style.
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