For three years the Barretts lived at Sidmouth, and their removal to London, in 1835, made important changes in Elizabeth's life. Her health, never good since her fifteenth year, broke down, and from some date shortly after the arrival in London she became an apparently hopeless invalid, confined to her room and often to her bed. Some compensation for this confinement, however, she found in the new friends, few, indeed, but devoted and congenial, who were admitted to her sick room. Chief among these friends of her earlier London years were John Kenyon, a distant cousin, and Mary Russell Mitford, author of _Our Village_. Miss Mitford made the acquaintance of Miss Barrett in one of the latter's rare appearances in society, and she has left an account of the meeting and a description of Miss Barrett which is famous. "She was certainly one of the most interesting persons that I had ever seen. Everybody who then saw her said the same; so that it is not merely the impression of my partiality or my enthusiasm. Of a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either side of a most expressive face, large tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, a smile like a sunbeam, and such a look of youthfulness that I had some difficulty in persuading a friend ... that the translatress of the _Prometheus_ of AEschylus, the authoress of the _Essay on Mind_, was old enough to be introduced into company,--in technical language, was 'out.'" Although Miss Mitford was nineteen years older than Miss Barrett, the friendship which sprang up between them was most close, and lasted until Miss Mitford's death in 1855. Their correspondence was constant and voluminous, as was that, in fact, of Miss Barrett with all of her intimate friends. These letters of hers from her sick room are no more remarkable for number than for brightness and vivacity. Little mention is made of her ailments, except when her friends have specifically demanded news of her health, and the letters deal rather with literary than with other subjects. This was, of course, most natural; the invalid could have little news to communicate from her couch to her friends in the outer world. Her literary activity, too, increased, and she began to contribute to magazines poems of various kinds, which attracted much attention. Not all comment on them was favorable; the people declared that some of them were Sphinx-like--too difficult, if not impossible, of interpretation. But every one realized that here was a real poet, one of striking individuality, and, for a woman, most remarkable learning.