SD1453. Mary Russell Mitford to William Cox Bennett

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 16, 304 (in part).

Three Mile Cross

9 October 1850

My very dear friend,

I do indeed sympathise in your anxiety about your dear and interesting wife—she must take care of herself, for although Mrs. Browning is now recovering from her 4th mishap of the sort and gets up better after every one, it is yet a bad habit to fall into …

Yesterday brought me two long letters from Italy—one from Mrs. Browning who is now at a Villa near Scena [sic, for Siena)—a fine house, well furnished, with gardens and grounds of all sorts full of flowers and fruit and trees, for which they pay eleven shillings fivepence three farthings a week! She is full of the death of the poor d’Ossolis who were drowned in going back to her country America (She was a certain Margaret Fuller. I think—who used to lecture and write for newspapers and seems to have had a personal reputation for talent which her writings hardly bear out)– … I rejoice to find that Mrs. Browning’s is likely to be better than I expected—she has left all the simple poems untouched, and has restored the little words she took out of The House of Clouds! …

Publication: None traced.

Source: Typescript at Berkshire Record Office.

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