Miss Mitford describes Cobbett as “a tall, stout man, fair and sunburnt, with a bright smile and an air compounded of the soldier and the farmer, to which his habit of wearing an eternal red waistcoat contributed not a little.” Mary’s attitude towards politics throughout her life was naturally influenced by her surroundings; but her admiration for Cobbett was caused specially by his love of animals and love of rural scenery, in which she so warmly sympathised. After a while an estrangement arose between the two families through some misunderstanding, but Mary continued to admire Cobbett’s stirling qualities. Writing of him some years later she remarks: “He was a sad tyrant, as my friends the democrats sometimes are. Servants and labourers fled before him. And yet with all his faults he was a man one could not help liking.... The coarseness and violence of his political writings and conversations almost entirely disappeared in his family circle, and were replaced by a kindness, a good humour and an enjoyment in seeing and promoting the happiness of others.... He was always what Johnson would have called ‘a very pretty hater’; but since his release from Newgate he has been hatred itself.... [May] milder thoughts attend him,” she adds: “he has my good wishes and so have his family.” Another political name occurring in Miss Mitford’s correspondence is that of Sir Francis Burdett, the well-known leader of reform and exposer of abuses. Mary writes on March 28th, 1810: “If the House of Commons send Sir Francis to the Tower I should not much like anyone that I loved to be a party in it, for the populace will not tamely submit to have their idol torn from them, and especially for defending the rights and liberties of the subject. As to Sir Francis himself, I don’t think either he or Cobbett would much mind it. They would proclaim themselves martyrs in the cause of liberty, and the ‘Register’ would sell better than ever.” It was in the spring of this same year when visiting London that Mary was first introduced to Sir William Elford, a friend of her father’s, although totally opposed to him in politics. Sir William belonged to an old Devonshire family, and was Recorder for Plymouth, which borough he had represented in Parliament for many years. He was, moreover, a man of cultivated tastes and of much refinement. His interest in Miss Mitford seems to have commenced from the perusal of some of her early verses shown to him by her father.