SD1332. Mary Russell Mitford to Lucy Olivia Partridge
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 14, 372–373 (in part).
[Three Mile Cross]
[Postmark: 29 September 1847]
I was just thinking of writing to you when your most kind letter arrived my very dear friend to tell you that I had promised dear Mrs Acton Tindal to spend a week next summer at Aylesbury– …
Thank you very much dear friend for your gardening bounties– If it will not be too troublesome to you I shall be most thankful for the basket you mention & you must bring me the seeds when you come after Xmas. Mind that then you are to take a day ticket & dine here & spend as many hours as you can. It is what I used to do once a month to Elizabeth Barrett, & what many persons have done by me this summer. … Mrs Browning was nearly 4 months without writing to me!!!—& we used to write to each other two or three times a week—but I am not an adorer of Mr Browning & the tender friendship of 12 years seems to be forgotten. She does not seem to have seen a creature but her husband (you know the sort of dotage which a woman sometimes has for a man when she marries after the usual time)– They spent all the summer at that hot burning Florence except five days at Vallambrosa—& all the winter at Rome—& except for her husband, her maid, an English Doctor at Pisa & Mrs Jameson she does not seem to have had any intercourse with anybody. Her seeing the Doctor was on account first of her poor maids illness whose health ruined by tremendous sea sickness in crossing from Marseilles to Leghorn at last totally failed—& then by her (Mrs Browning) having a mishap at 5 months.– She said in one or two of her letters that there was absolutely no modern Italian literature that the only books since Ariosto Tasso &c were bad translations from bad french novels. …
Address: Mrs. Partridge / Horsenden House / Prince’s Risb’ro / Bucks.
Publication: Chorley, I, 239–241 (in part, as 29 October 1847).
Manuscript: Yale University.
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