SD1783. Mary Russell Mitford to Charles Boner

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 21, 367–368 (in part).

[Swallowfield]

Nov. 20, 1854

My dear Friend,

It is, indeed, one of the most merciful alleviations of this long dispensation …

Mrs. Browning, to whom at one time (that is to say, for many years) I used to write two or three times a week, always preferred those letters, written in a far more complete abandonment than anything I should do in the way of autobiography, to any of my writings. …

The Brownings are getting on with their respective volumes. His is a series of lyrics, of which she has only seen a part. Hers is a fictitious autobiography, of which, though four thousand lines are written, she has not shown him a single line. …

Text: Memoirs and Letters of Charles Boner, ed. R.M. Kettle (London, 1871), I, 287–292.

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