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To Miss Mitford

[London], 58 Welbeck Street:  Saturday, [June-July 1852].

...  We saw your book in Paris, the Galignani edition, and I read it all except the one thing I had not courage to read.  Thank you, thank you.  We are both of us grateful to you for your most generous and heartwarm intentions to us.  As to the book, it’s a book made to go east and west; it’s a popular book with flowers from the ‘village’ laid freshly and brightly between the critical leaves.  I don’t always agree with you.  I think, for instance, that Mary Anne Browne should never be compared to George Sand in ‘passion,’ and I can’t grant to you that your extracts from her poems bear you out to even one fiftieth degree in such an opinion.  I agree with you just as little with regard to Dr. Holmes and certain others.  But to have your opinion is always a delightful thing, and ‘it is characteristic of your generosity,’ to say the least, we say to ourselves when we are ‘dissidents’ most.

I am writing in the extremest haste, just a word to announce our arrival in England.  We are in very comfortable rooms in 58 Welbeck Street, and my sister Henrietta is some twenty doors away.  To-morrow Robert and I are going to Wimbledon for a day to dear Mr. Kenyon, who looks radiantly well and has Mr. Landor for a companion just now.  Imagine the uproar and turmoil of our first days in London, and believe that I think of you faithfully and tenderly through all.  I am overjoyed to see my sisters, who look well on the whole ... and they and everybody assure me that I show a very satisfactory face to my country, as far as improved looks go.

What nonsense one writes when one has but a moment to write in.  I find people talking about the ‘facts in the “Times"’ touching Louis Napoleon.  Facts in the ‘Times’!

The heat is stifling.  Do send one word to say how you are, and love me always as I love you.

Your most affectionate
BA.

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To Miss Mitford

58 Welbeck Street:  Friday, July 31, 1852 [postmark].

I want to hear about you again, dear, dearest Miss Mitford, and I can’t hear.  Will you send me a line or a word....  I mean to go down to see you one day, but certainly we must account it right not to tire you while you are weak, and not to spoil our enjoyment by forestalling it.  Two months are full of days; we can afford to wait.  Meantime let us have a little gossip such as the gods allow of.

Dear Mr. Kenyon has not yet gone to Scotland, though his intentions still stand north.  He passed an evening with us some evenings ago, and was brilliant and charming (the two things together), and good and affectionate at the same time.  Mr. Landor was staying with him (perhaps I told you that), and went away into Worcestershire, assuring me, when he took leave of me, that he would never enter London again.  A week passes, and lo!  Mr. Kenyon expects him again.  Resolutions are not always irrevocable, you observe.