SD1652. Mary Russell Mitford to James Thomas Fields

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 366 (in part).

Swallowfield

May 8, 1853.

How shall I thank you enough, dear and kind friend, for the copy of …

Only think of Mrs. Browning giving the most unlimited credence to every “rapping” story which anybody can tell her! Did I tell you that the work on which she is engaged is a fictitious autobiography in blank verse, the heroine a woman artist (I suppose singer or actress), and the tone intensely modern? You will see that “Colombe’s Birthday” has been brought out at the Haymarket. Mr. Chorley (Robert Browning’s most intimate friend) writes me word that Mrs. Martin (Helen Faucit, at whose persuasion it was acted) told him that it had gone off “better than she expected.” …

Text: James T. Fields, Yesterdays with Authors (Boston, 1901), pp. 328–330.

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