SD825.2. Mary Russell Mitford to David Bogue
Addendum to The Brownings’ Correspondence, vol. 3.
Three Mile Cross
Saturday [?August] [1837] [1]
My dear Sir
Very unluckily your parcel did not arrive here until some hours after mine was sent from Reading—for my father himself took it into Reading to go by the nine oclock coach from thence– This is the evil of living between three & four miles from a Town—but I hope it will make no difference. If you will have the goodness to compare the revise with my corrected proof, & if Mr Roger will employ some very careful & intelligent reader there can be no occasion of sending it here. My only reason being to ensure as much correctness as possible to this beautiful book—judging from these proofs which considering my interlined m.s. seem to me very free from fault, I should think there would be no cause to to send a revise—since the absence of Mr Tilt will I am sure quicken your anxiety as it has done mine that nothing may be waiting on our part to the success of the volume. I think the poetry & especially Mr Kenyon’s, Miss Barrett’s, Mr Procter’s, & Mr John Chorley’s remarkably beautiful– Miss Barrett’s ballad is certainly the finest poem I ever saw in an Annual, & she herself (she is still very young) will be probably the most distinguished woman of the age– She has made a translation of The Prometheus Bound the most difficult of the Greek plays which is said by eminent scholars to be the finest version of a Greek Tragedy in the language. I should like her name—but I fear we must be content with her Initials. —May I entreat your particular attention to the corrections in Florence—particularly to those of Mr Kenyon’s Anacreontic about which I am of course more than commonly anxious. I enclose Mrs Howitt’s letter containing the motto to her ballad– What a prodigious tendency she has to length!– My reason for writing so long an article as Marion Campbell was the desire to give an interest to the volume by a narrative more exciting than can be accomplished in very short stories, although I have done my best to put as much story as I could into a brief space—& as much variety in the subjects.– Perhaps you could have the goodness to consult a good map of Spain & send me the name of a chain of mountains in Castile—Siena something—& also to procure for me the name of a church in Madrid– I find that I have Santa Croce in Florence—a very celebrated church—& therefore Santa Croce will not do for Madrid– It had better be some |native point|—any description of Madrid will give it in a moment.– I think the arrangement very good indeed.– Mr Kenyon suggests that in the author’s names there shall be no “Esqre” which I agree with him in thinking vulgar– Either Mr Kenyon &c or John Kenyon—the last I think best. —I have but a short Preface but it does not seem to me eessential if you are afraid about the space. I don’t think the double columns at all disadvantageous. It will be a beautiful book—& I am most anxious not to disgrace it– Miss Morrison (Duffield Bank, Derby) tells me that she has much improved her poem– I am sure you will have the goodness to afford to her corrections.
Ever my dear Sir
Very faithfully your’s
M R Mitford
Address, on integral page: D. Bogue Esqre
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: Brown University.
1. Dated by Miss Mitford’s references to Procter’s, Chorley’s, and her own (“Marion Campbell”) contributions to Findens’ Tableaux. They appeared in Findens’ Tableaux for 1838, which went to press about August 1837. See BC, 3, 273 and 275.
___________________
