SD1377. Mary Russell Mitford to Jane Ouvry
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 286 (in part).
[Three Mile Cross]
[September 1849]
It was quite a long time since we had heard from each other …
Mrs Browning is at the Baths of Lucca—where Mr Lever is the great celebrité—she speaks of him as a most delightful person which I can well believe. Lucca has been so cool that the thermometre in the sun has not been above 72—often at 68 & she is afraid they will not be able to stay the vintage for the cold—which seems like a contradiction in terms. Her boy is a very fine healthy child—& she is so well that she scrambles up the mountains & loses herself in the chesnut forests. She dreads returning to Florence she says & the noise of the Austrian Drums. It is a miserable bookless life. I recommended to her de Cormenin’s Portraits des Orateurs Francais—not by any means a new book—(Do you know it? He is Timon you know—by far the most brilliant writer since Paul Louis Courier) & she says that except a little shop where there are about 20 French novels the most recent Le Gentilhomme Campagnard there is not a book French English or Italian in the place—& that Florence is pretty nearly as bad quite so as to recent works. They see a two day old Galignani & think themselves in luck—I hope they’ll come back here to books & friends & the Times newspaper. …
Publication: Chorley, II, 102–105.
Manuscript: Reading Central Library.
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