SD1559. Fanny Appleton Longfellow to Samuel Longfellow

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 360 (in part).

[Cambridge]

March 18, 1852

… Have you seen Miss Mitford’s gossiping book of literary reminiscences? She spoils in it Henry’s ghost story of Washington appearing on a white horse to protect the house while beset by fire on two sides, by leaving out the fire, which was the whole point of it. Fields was her authority. … Why do you say no more of Mrs. Browning? I hoped to hear you had cultivated her acquaintance further, despite the distance. Miss Mitford gives the cause of her melancholy poems, the sudden loss of a brother in a boat with other young people, and it is a sad enough story. …

Text: Mrs. Longfellow: Selected Letters and Journals, ed. Edward Wagenknecht (New York, 1956), p. 185.

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