SD1392. Mary Russell Mitford to Charles Boner

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 288 (in part).

[Three Mile Cross]

Dec. 27th, 1849.

Thank you a thousand times, dear friend, for your kind wishes and charming letter. …

Yes, Esther is very fine, so are all the series of “Illusions Perdues” stories, to which that belongs, especially the second “Un grand homme de Province, à Paris,” which is, I think, Balzac’s very best novel. Mrs. Browning says she hears a wretched account of him, personally, from an American authoress, and I am well disposed to believe it, for with all his great artistic power the man himself seems quite devoid of generous sentiment and kind impulse. Nevertheless he is a great writer.

Mrs. Browning says that her little boy is the wonder of Italy for strength and size. She herself was well enough this summer at the baths of Lucca to climb the courses of extinct volcanoes, on donkeys, and to lose herself on foot in the chestnut forests. Mr. Lever was there, and we exchanged tender messages.

Text: Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner, ed. R.M. Kettle (London, 1871), I, 171–174.

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