| Description | (Includes author's desire to purchase an invalid carriage, and her recent illness; plans to meet Miss Goldsmid at Whiteknights; comments on "dear Mr [James] Payn" ("a charming lad he is if it please God to spare him. K: says he is sure to die"), and on Charlotte Brontë, Villette and Elizabeth Gaskell, Ruth ("I liked Villette in spite of its bad tone … Where can she [Charlotte Brontë] have lived? … although not ladies and gentlemen her personages are men & women … as to Ruth it has much merit of course but seems to me far more unhealthy in its tone than Villette. Of course I agree with her in the cause she pleads … Is not my K: [Miss Mitford's maid Kerenhappuck Taylor] for instance cheerful useful serviceable kind worth a thousand sighing crying dying Magdalens? … Who would ever read it a second time?") and comparing it unfavourably with Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth.) |