SD1629. Mary Russell Mitford to Emily E. Jephson

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 18, 378 (in part).

[Swallowfield]

[9 January 1853]

To-day, my very dear Emily, brought me your dear letter, and one equally charming from dear Mr. Starkey. …

John Ruskin … has a great contempt for the modern Italians. He wrote to me last summer that the women’s heads were good for nothing but to stick flowers in, and the men’s to hang beards to; and, at the bottom of her heart, I expect Mrs. Browning to have the same feeling. Over and over she has said of them to me, “My Italians are too soft.” That book, the “Casa Guidi Windows,” is a book without convictions—one feels that as one reads it. She took up the subject because she had a mind to be an Italian George Sand, and because it was something to write about, and that’s all. …

Text: L’Estrange (1), II, 240–246.

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