SD1669. Mary Russell Mitford to Charles Boner

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 19, 371 (in part).

[Swallowfield]

July 28 [1853]

I have been reading with absorbing interest Haydon’s life. …

Did I tell you that on the Thursday before his death, sending some things to be taken care of by Miss Barrett, he sent my portrait (a head cut out of a great picture larger than life, over-coloured but strangely like) as a present; then called and said he would only leave it as a loan—on Tuesday he killed himself. There is no mention of that episode of my portrait in the book (I dare say Mr. Taylor did not know it), and I cannot tell what has become of it. …

Text: Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner, ed. R.M. Kettle (London, 1871), I, 263–266.

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