Chapter C: KEGAN PAUL: ‘William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries.’ (5)

I went by Landor’s desire to Lady Blessington’s, to whom he had named me. She is a charming and remarkable person.... Her dress rich, and her library most splendid. Her book about Lord Byron (now publishing by driblets in the _New Monthly Magazine_), and her other writings, give her in addition the character of a _bel esprit_. Landor says that she was to Lord Blessington the most devoted wife he ever knew. He says, also, that she was by far the most beautiful woman he ever saw, and was so deemed at the Court of George IV. She is now, Landor says, about thirty, but I should have thought her older. [She was forty-five.] She is a great talker, but her talk is rather narrative than declamatory, and very pleasant.

HENRY CRABB ROBINSON: _Diary_, 1832, in ‘Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence,’ edited by T. Sadler. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1871.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Friendship of Count D’Orsay.]

Count D’Orsay was so little guided by principle that he could not expect general credit for the purity of his relations with Lady Blessington; yet, I think, he might honestly have claimed it.

S. C. HALL: ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Gore House demolished.]

On the 10th of May, 1849, I visited Gore House for the last time. The auction was going on. There was a large assemblage of people of fashion. Every room was thronged; the well-known library-saloon, in which the conversationes took place, was crowded, but not with guests.... People, as they passed through the room, poked the furniture, pulled about the precious objects of art and ornaments of various kinds that lay on the table.... It was a relief to leave that room: I went into another, the dining-room, where I had frequently enjoyed, “in goodly company,” the elegant hospitality of one who was indeed “a most kind hostess.”... In another apartment, where the pictures were being sold, portraits by Lawrence, sketches by Landseer and Maclise, innumerable likenesses of Lady Blessington by various artists; several of the Count D’Orsay, representing him driving, riding out on horseback, sporting, and at work in his studio; his own collection of portraits of all the frequenters of note or mark in society of the villa Belvedere, the Palazzo Negroni, the Hotel Ney, Seamore Place, and Gore House, in quick succession were brought to the hammer.... This was the most signal ruin of an establishment of a person of high rank I ever witnessed. Nothing of value was saved from the wreck, with the exception of the portrait of Lady Blessington by Chalon, and one or two more pictures. Here was a total smash, a crash on a grand scale of ruin. To the honor of Lady Blessington be it mentioned, she saved nothing, with the few exceptions I have referred to, from the wreck.... I am able to state, on authority, that the gross amount of the sale was £13,385, and the net sum realized was £11,985 4s. The portrait of Lady Blessington, by Lawrence, which cost originally only £80, I saw sold for £336. It was purchased for the Marquis of Hertford.

R. R. MADDEN: ‘Literary Life and Correspondence of the Countess of Blessington.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A steady friend.]

She was a steady friend, through good report and evil report, for those to whom she professed friendship.... The courage with which she clung to her attachments long after they brought her only shame and sorrow, spoke for the affectionate heart, which no luxury could spoil and no vicissitude sour.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A sunny nature.]

She must have had originally the most sunny of sunny natures. As it was, I have never seen anything like her vivacity and sweet cheerfulness during the early years when I knew her. She had a singular power of entertaining herself by her own stories; the keenness of an Irishwoman in relishing fun and repartee, strange turns of language, and bright touches of character. A fairer, kinder, more universal recipient of everything that came within the possibilities of her mind, I have never known. I think the only genuine author whose merits she was averse to admit was Hood; and yet she knew Rabelais, and delighted in ‘Elia.’ It was her real disposition to dwell on beauties rather than faults. Critical she could be, and as judiciously critical as any woman I have ever known, but she never seemed to be so willingly. When a poem was read to her, or a book given to her, she could always touch on the best passage, the bright point; and rarely missed the purpose of the work, if purpose it had.

HENRY F. CHORLEY: ‘Autobiography, Memoir and Letters.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: “The victim of circumstances.”]

Although I knew her history sufficiently well, I attributed to this particular daughter of Erin her share of the “wild sweet briery fence that round the flower of Erin dwells,” and felt conviction that for the unhappy circumstances of Lady Blessington’s early life, the sins of others, far more than her own, were responsible, and that she had been to a great extent the victim of circumstances. To that opinion I still hold--some thirty years after her death, and more than fifty since I first saw her.

S. C. HALL: ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’

FOOTNOTES:

[11] She was over twenty-eight; she seems always to have looked younger than she actually was.

[12] Leigh Hunt describes her in ‘The Feast of the Violets,’ as

“A Grace after dinner--a Venus grown fat.”

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.

1787-1855.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.

Mary Russell Mitford was born at Alresford, Hampshire, on the 16th of December, 1787. She was the daughter of George Mitford, a physician of good family, and Mary Russell, whose father had been rector of Ashe and Tadley, and vicar of Overton. The little Mary Russell Mitford was but four or five years old when the family removed from Alresford to Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire; thence they went to London. Here occurred, on Mary’s eleventh birthday, the famous incident of the lottery-ticket. Dr. Mitford, reinforced in fortune by his daughter’s childish persistence, next went to reside in Reading. “Mezza,” as her parents called her, remained at school in Hans Place until 1802. About this time Bertram House, a country residence at Grasely, near Reading, in the improvement of which Dr. Mitford had freely expended the fairy gold of the lottery, was at last ready for occupation. This was the home of the Mitford family until 1820, when pecuniary embarrassments, caused by the doctor’s extravagance and love of play, drove them to the now famous cottage at Three Mile Cross.

She had already published several books of verse, which have been long forgotten: _Miscellaneous Poems_, _Christina_, _Blanch of Castile_, _Narrative Poems on Female Character_, and others. She speaks disparagingly of one of these volumes in a letter to B. R. Haydon in 1819. “It was written when extreme youth and haste might apologize for the incorrectness, the silliness, and the commonplace with which it abounds, but I am afraid it has deficiencies which are worse than any fault.” “You are aware, I hope,” she says in another letter, “that all clever people begin by publishing bad poems.” She was now forced, at thirty-three, to take up her pen in earnest. She worked steadily both at plays and at the sketches collected in 1824 under the title, OUR VILLAGE. In 1823 her first tragedy, _Julian_, was successfully performed at Covent Garden, with Macready as the principal character. _The Foscari_ appeared in 1826, and _Dramatic Scenes, Sonnets and Other Poems_, in 1827. Towards the end of 1828, _Rienzi_ was produced at Drury Lane, Charles Young enacting the hero. Miss Mitford is said to have received £400 from the theatre, and to have sold eight thousand copies of the play. Other works in this field were _Otto_, _Inez de Castro_, and _Charles I_. In 1835 was published BELFORD REGIS, a sequel to OUR VILLAGE, and in 1852, RECOLLECTIONS OF A LITERARY LIFE. In 1854 a novel, _Atherton_, appeared, and in the same year her dramatic works were collected.

Mrs. Mitford had died in 1830, Dr. Mitford in 1842. In 1851 Miss Mitford removed from Three Mile Cross to Swallowfield, where, on the 10th of January, 1855, she died. She had been ill for some time, never having recovered from the shock of an accident that had occurred in 1853 while she was driving in a pony-chaise.

In reading the Life of Miss Mitford, which the Rev. Mr. L’Estrange has compiled from her letters, it is interesting to mark the development of her character by her misfortunes. The indolent, novel-devouring young lady of Bertram House, with her school-girlish conceit, is a far less lovable person than the self-sacrificing woman who toiled uncomplainingly for a spend-thrift father in the cottage at Three Mile Cross. As was said of her, on the occasion of her accident, by one of her correspondents, she was “like mignonette, the sweeter the more it is bruised.”

Her criticism was singularly capricious. For instance, she calmly pronounced ‘Henry Esmond’ commonplace; the adjective recoils upon her own work. Commonplace the latter is, but in the same pleasant sense in which sweet fresh air, and primroses, and cowslips, and the meadow-sweet she loved, are commonplace.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Precocity.]

In common with many only children, especially where the mother is of a grave and home-loving nature, I learned to read at a very early age. Before I was three years old my father would perch me on the breakfast-table to exhibit my one accomplishment to some admiring guest, who admired all the more, because, a small, puny child, looking far younger than I really was, nicely dressed, as only children generally are, and gifted with an affluence of curls, I might have passed for the twin sister of my own great doll. On the table was I perched to read some Foxite newspaper, ‘_Courier_,’ or ‘_Morning Chronicle_,’ the Whiggish oracles of the day, and as my delight in the high-seasoned politics of sixty years ago was naturally less than that of my hearers, this display of precocious acquirement was commonly rewarded, not by cakes or sugar-plums, too plentiful in my case to be very greatly cared for, but by a sort of payment in kind. I read leading articles to please the company; and my dear mother recited ‘The Children in the Wood’ to please me. This was my reward; and I looked for my favorite ballad after every performance just as the piping bull-finch that hung in the window looked for his lump of sugar after going through ‘God Save the King.’

[Sidenote: Early home.]

A pleasant home, in truth, it was. A large house in a little town of the north of Hampshire--a town, so small that but for an ancient market, very slenderly attended, nobody would have dreamt of calling it anything but a village. The breakfast-room, where I first possessed myself of my beloved ballads, was a lofty and spacious apartment, literally lined with books, which, with its Turkey carpet, its glowing fire, its sofas and its easy chairs, seemed, what indeed it was, a very nest of English comfort. The windows opened on a large, old-fashioned garden, full of old-fashioned flowers--stocks, roses, honeysuckles, and pinks; and that again led into a grassy orchard, abounding with fruit-trees, a picturesque country church with its yews and lindens on one side, and beyond, a down as smooth as velvet, dotted with rich islands of coppice, hazel, woodbine, hawthorn and holly reaching up into the young oaks, and overhanging flowery patches of primroses, wood-sorrel, wild hyacinths, and wild strawberries. On the side opposite the church, in a hollow fringed with alders and bulrushes, gleamed the bright clear lakelet, radiant with swans and water-lilies, which the simple townsfolk were content to call the Great Pond.

What a play-ground was that orchard! and what playfellows were mine! Nancy [the maid], with her trim prettiness, my own dear father, handsomest and cheerfullest of men, and the great Newfoundland dog Coe, who used to lie down at my feet, as if to invite me to mount him, and then to prance off with his burden, as if he enjoyed the fun as much as we did. Happy, happy days! It is good to have the memory of such a childhood!

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: ‘Recollections of a Literary Life.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1852.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Her play-mate.]

[Sidenote: Mary at six.]

One of William Harness’s earliest friends--born at Alresford, in the same woodland district--was Mary Russell Mitford. Their families had long been connected: Dr. Harness gave away Miss Russell, who became Miss Mitford’s mother; and it was here that the future authoress passed those happy days--her earliest years were her happiest--to which she reverted with such fond remembrance in after life. Here, in the spacious library, lined with her grandfather Russell’s books, or in the old-fashioned garden, among the stocks and holly-hocks, she and little William would chase away the summer hours, until the time when the carriage arrived, which was to carry her playmate back to Wickham. A picture taken when she was about six years old enables us to form some idea of her at this time. It represents her with her hair cut short across her forehead, and flowing down at the back in long glossy ringlets, while in her face there is a sedateness and gravity beyond her years, such as we might expect to find in a young lady devoted to study, and celebrated for early feats of memory.

REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness.’ London: Hurst & Blackett, 1871.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: A spoilt child.]

Most undoubtedly I was a spoilt child. Everybody spoilt me, most of all the person whose power in that way was greatest, the dear papa himself. Not content with spoiling me indoors he spoilt me out. How well I remember his carrying me round the orchard on his shoulder, holding fast my little three-year old feet, while the little hands hung on to his pigtail, which I called my bridle, ... hung so fast, and tugged so heartily, that sometimes the ribbon would come off between my fingers, and send his hair floating, and the powder flying down his back. That climax of mischief was the crowning joy of all.

Nor were these my only rides. This dear papa of mine, whose gay and careless temper all the professional _etiquette_ of the world could never tame into the staid gravity proper to a doctor of medicine, happened to be a capital horseman; and abandoning the close carriage, which, at that time, was the regulation conveyance of a physician, almost wholly to my mother, used to pay his country visits on a favorite blood-mare, whose extreme docility and gentleness tempted him, after certain short trials round our old course, the orchard, into having a pad constructed, perched upon which I might occasionally accompany him, when the weather was favorable, and the distance not too great. Very delightful were those rides across the breezy Hampshire downs on a sunny summer morning; and grieved was I when a change of residence from a small town to a large one, and going among people who did not know our ways, put an end to this perfectly harmless, if somewhat unusual pleasure.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: ‘Recollections of a Literary Life.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The lottery ticket.]

On her tenth birthday Dr. Mitford took the child to a lottery-office, and bade her select a ticket. She determined--guided, to all appearance, by one of the unaccountable whims of childhood--that she would have none other than the number 2,224. Some difficulty attended the purchase of the coveted number, but the little lottery patroness had her way at last, and on the day of drawing there fell to the lot of the happy holder of ticket No. 2,224 a prize of £20,000. Alas! the holder of the fortunate ticket was happy only in name. By the time his daughter was a woman, there remained to Dr. Mitford, of all his lottery adventure had brought him, a Wedgwood dinner service with the family crest!

S. C. HALL: _Note in_ ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’ New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1883.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: At school.]

We find the doctor, about the year 1797, residing at Reading, with his phaeton, his spaniels and his greyhounds, and enjoying his good-fortune with all his wonted hilarity of spirit, prodigality of expense, and utter want of consideration for the future.... His daughter was at this time at school in Hans Place--a small square into which you turn on the right hand out of Sloane Street, as you go from Knightsbridge to Chelsea.... Once fairly entered at M. St. Quintin’s school, Mary Russell Mitford seems to have applied herself, with all her heart and mind, to learn whatever the masters and mistresses were prepared to teach her. French, Italian, history, geography, astronomy, music, singing, drawing, dancing, were not enough to satisfy her eager thirst for instruction: and we find her informing her mother that she intended to learn Latin.... Excepting music, there was no branch of education within her reach at the Hans Place School which she was not zealous and successful in the pursuit of; but in that accomplishment she took little pleasure. She never at any time of her life showed much taste or feeling for it.

Like so very many precocious children, she was of a scrofulous temperament, and had suffered much from illness in her infancy. In person she was short for her age; and, there is no possibility of evading the word by any gentle synonym or extenuating periphrasis, she was, in sincere truth and very plain English, decidedly fat. Her face, of which the expression was kind, gentle, and intelligent, ought to have been handsome, for the features were all separately good and like her father’s, but from some almost imperceptible disproportion, and the total change of coloring, the beauty had evanesced. But although very plain in figure and in face, she was never common-looking. She showed in her countenance and in her mild self-possession, that she was no ordinary child; and with her sweet smile, her gentle temper, her animated conversation, her keen enjoyment of life, and her incomparable voice, there were few of the prettiest children of her age who won so much love and admiration from their friends, whether young or old, as little Mary Mitford. And except, indeed, that her hair became white at an early age, few persons, it may be added, in passing through so many vicissitudes of life, ever altered so little, either in character or appearance.

[Sidenote: Home life after leaving school.]

Her delight in the sports of the field was no more than a sympathetic affection of her father’s pleasure. It was theoretical and not practical. She was no horsewoman. She was capable of very little exercise beyond a modest walk.... She remained at home and received visits. She went out in the green chariot with her mother and returned them. They drove into Reading after their visits were all paid to do their shopping and hear if there were any news, or rather to pick up the present gossip of the neighborhood; and when these affairs were dispatched, and they found themselves again at home, the daughter would lie for hours together on a sofa, with her dog by her side, reading anything--good, bad, or indifferent, which came to hand, guided by chance or fancy, without any apparent attempt at selection. The number of books she read is almost incredible.... Undoubtedly the young lady must have consumed a great deal of trash; but there are some constitutions with which nothing seems to disagree; and probably there was none of these works from which she did not derive some advantage. If she met with nothing good to imitate, she at least learned to see what was bad and to be avoided.

REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Life of Mary Russell Mitford.’ London: Richard Bentley, 1870.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Favorite exercise.]

The exercise which I do dearly love is to be whirled along fast, fast, fast, by a blood-horse in a gig; this under a bright sun, with a brisk wind full in my face, is my highest notion of physical pleasure; even walking is not so exhilarating.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Favorite idleness.]

But reading is my favorite mode of idleness. I like it better than any of my play-works, better than fir-coning, better than violeting, better than working gowntails, better than playing with Miranda (her dog), better than feeding the white kitten, better than riding in a gig, better than anything except that other pet idleness, talking (that is to say _writing_) to you.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Letters.]

I am inclined to think that her correspondence, so full of point in allusions, so full of anecdote and recollections, will be considered among her finest writings. Her criticisms, not always the wisest, were always piquant and readable. She had such a charming humor and her style was so delightful, that her friendly notes had a relish about them quite their own.

JAMES T. FIELDS: ‘Yesterdays With Authors.’ Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1872.

* * * * *

Soon after his friend’s death, Mr. Harness commenced the task of looking through her letters, but he found the work much more arduous than he had anticipated. Although her habits were in every respect frugal, her favorite economy seemed to be in paper. Her letters were scribbled on innumerable small scraps--sometimes on printed circulars--sometimes across engravings--and half a dozen of these would form one epistle and in course of time become confused and interchanged in their envelopes. When we add to this that toward the end of her life Miss Mitford’s handwriting became almost microscopic, it can be easily understood that the arrangement of these sibylline leaves was no short or easy undertaking.

REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Handwriting.]

There are intelligent persons who make a living out of their fellow-creatures by pretending to read character in hand-writing. What would they make, I wonder, out of this delicate, microscopic writing, looking as if it were done with a stylus, and without blot or flaw? The paper is all odds and ends, and not a scrap of it but is covered and crossed; the very flaps of the envelopes, and even the outside of them, having their message. The reason of this is that the writer had lived in a time when postage was very dear; like Southey, she used to boast that she could send more for her money by post than any one else; and when the necessity no longer existed, the custom remained. How, at her age, her eyes could read what she herself had written used to puzzle me.

JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1884.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Her dog “Moss Trooper.”]

He was the greatest darling that ever lived.... He was a large black dog, of the largest and strongest kind of greyhounds; very fast and honest and resolute past example; an excellent killer of hares, and a most magnificent and noble-looking creature. His coat was of the finest and most glossy black, with no white, except a very little under his feet (pretty white shoelings, I used to call them)--little beautiful white spot, quite small, in the very middle of his neck, between his chin and his breast--and a white mark on his bosom. His face was singularly beautiful; the finest black eyes, very bright, and yet sweet, and fond and tender--eyes that seemed to speak; a beautiful, complacent mouth, which used sometimes to show one of the long, white teeth at the side; a jet-black nose; a brow which was bent and flexible ... and gave great sweetness of expression, and a look of thought to his dear face. There never was such a dog! His temper was, beyond comparison, the sweetest ever known. Nobody ever saw him out of humor. And his sagacity was equal to his temper.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: Quoted in her ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Her dog “May Flower.”]

We have a greyhound, called May Flower, of excelling grace and symmetry--just of the color of the May blossom--like marble with the sun upon it; and she kills every hare she sees--takes them up in the middle of the back, brings them in her mouth to my father, and lays them down at his feet. I assure you she is quite a study while bringing the hares--the fine contrast of color--her beautiful position, head and tail up, and her long neck arched like that of a swan--with the shade shifting upon her beautiful limbs, and her black eyes really emitting light!

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Pleasure in a glow-worm.]

Did you ever see a glow-worm half way up a high tree? We did last night. It was a tall elm, stripped of large branches almost to the top, as the fashion is in this country, but the trunk clothed with little green twigs, upon one of which the glow-worm hung like a lamp, looking so beautiful!

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Love of field flowers.]

In truth, nothing can be more vulgar than my taste in flowers, for which I have a passion. I like scarcely any but the common ones. First and best I love violets, and primroses, and cowslips, and wood anemones, and the whole train of field flowers; then roses of every kind and color, especially the great cabbage rose; then the blossoms of the lilac and laburnum, the horse-chestnut, the asters, the jasmine, and the honeysuckle; and to close the list, lilies of the valley, sweet peas, and the red pinks which are found in cottagers’ gardens. This is my confession of faith.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Pet robin.]

All this warm weather I sit out of doors in the plantations; just on one side of my seat is a filbert tree, the branches of which spread quite across my feet, and on these branches every day comes a young red-breast. First of all he appeared at a distance, then he came nearer, then he came close home, and now, the moment I call “Bobby,” he comes.... He comes on my feet and my gown, feeds almost on my hand (not quite), and has by example tamed his papa and one or two of his brothers and sisters, who come like him and feed from a board on the tree, quite close to me; but they do not, like my own Bobby, come when they are called. Is this usual in the summer? I know they are tame in the winter; but this is quite a young bird--has never known cold or hunger. He had not a red feather in his breast a fortnight ago. He likes very much to be talked to, in a soft, monotonous, caressing tone--“Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!”--and turns his little head in the prettiest attitudes of listening that you can imagine, and generally finishes by taking two or three flights across me, so close as almost to touch my face.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Dogs and geraniums, in later life.]

Her dogs and her geraniums were her great glories. She used to write me long letters about Fanchon, a dog whose personal acquaintance I had made some time before, while on a visit to her cottage. Every virtue under heaven she attributed to that canine individual; and I was obliged to allow in my return letters, that, since our planet began to spin, nothing comparable to Fanchon had ever run on four legs. I had also known Flush, the ancestor of Fanchon, intimately, and had been accustomed to hear wonderful things of that dog; but Fanchon had graces and genius unique.

JAMES T. FIELDS: ‘Yesterdays with Authors.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Removal from Bertram House.]

The last days of March, 1820, were employed in removing from the home which they had occupied for nearly twenty years, at first in affluence and comfort, but latterly with a severe economy, and a constant struggle against encroaching ruin. Every visit of the doctor to London was followed by some fresh privation to his wife and daughter. Within six years of the completion of Bertram House--so early as 1808--great reductions had been required in the establishment. The servant out of livery had been dispensed with. There had ceased to be any lady’s maid. The footman had degenerated into an awkward lad, who was not only expected to wait at table and go out with the carriage, but to make himself useful in the stable or the garden. The carriage horses were employed on the work of the farm.... By and by Mrs. Mitford is harassed by difficulties in obtaining remittances for the moderate expenses of her diminished household. Tradesmen refuse to serve the house with the common requirements of the family till previous accounts are settled. On several occasions they are at a loss whence to procure food for the greyhounds, and once Mrs. Mitford writes imploringly to the doctor, with the greatest earnestness, but without the slightest intimation of reproach, requesting him to send her a _one pound note_ by return of post, as they are actually in want of bread.... And who was the author of this distress? The father alone. The wife, by the most careful management and self-denial; the daughter, by her literary industry; were doing every thing in their power to lighten its pressure and ward off its fall. It was the sole work of the husband. The cause of all this misery was the doctor’s love of play, and its concomitant dabbling in gambling speculations.

REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Life of Mary Russell Mitford.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Character of Dr. Mitford.]

Mr. Horne, in his edition of Mrs. Barrett Browning’s letters, tells us that Miss Mitford’s father was “a jovial, stick-at-nothing, fox-hunting squire of the three-bottle class,”--a tolerably correct description, if we substitute “coursing” for “fox-hunting,” and “doctor” for “squire.”... It appears from incidental notices that he had a keen relish for fine wine, and that indulgence in it did not invariably make him the better. Miss Mitford, no doubt, owed to him much of her natural buoyancy of spirit, and some of her predilection for country pursuits and for the canine race, of which greyhounds were his favorites. Children and dogs loved him, and so did others who did not understand him, or refused to see his faults. Women have generally represented Dr. Mitford as amiable and pleasant; there was something cheering and hearty in his familiarity. The character is not uncommon; he was one of those good-looking, profligate spendthrifts, who, reckless of consequences, bring misery upon their families and remain dear to their mothers and daughters.... Dr. Mitford often did kind actions, which it is unfair to ignore; he seems even to have had some sort of generosity, and the ease with which he parted with his money was one of his most unfortunate weaknesses. But Miss Mitford’s appreciation of her father was mostly due to filial devotion. Never was affection more severely tried. She had to see thousands, seventy thousand pounds, passing out of his careless hands until he became dependent upon the small pittance she could earn by arduous literary labor.

REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1882.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Cottage at Three Mile Cross.]

Our residence is a cottage--no, not a cottage--it does not deserve the name--a messuage or tenement, such as a little farmer who had made twelve or fourteen hundred pounds might retire to, when he left off business to live on his means. It consists of a series of closets, the largest of which may be about eight feet square, which they call parlors, and kitchens and pantries; some of them minus a corner, which has been unnaturally filched for a chimney; others deficient in half a side, which has been truncated by the shelving roof. Behind is a garden about the size of a good drawing-room, with an arbor which is a complete sentry-box of privet. On one side a public-house, on the other a village shop, and right opposite a cobbler’s stall.... Notwithstanding all this, “the cabin,” as Bobadil says, “is convenient.” It is within reach of my dear old walks; the banks where I find my violets; the meadows full of cowslips; and the woods where the wood-sorrel blows.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, April 8, 1820; in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

I have grown exceedingly fond of this little place. Did I ever tell you I disliked it? I love it of all things--have taken root completely--could be content to live and die here. To be sure the rooms are of the smallest. I, in our little parlor, look something like a black-bird in a goldfinch’s cage--but it is so snug and comfortable.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, June 21, 1820; in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The cottage garden.]

My little garden is a perfect rosary--the greenest and most blossomy nook that ever the sun shone upon. It is almost shut in by buildings; one a long open shed, very pretty, a sort of a rural arcade, where we sit. On the other side is an old granary, to which we mount by outside wooden steps, also very pretty. Then, there is an opening to a little court, also backed by buildings, but with room enough to let in the sunshine, the north-west sunshine that comes aslant in summer evenings, through and under a large elder tree. One end is closed by our pretty irregular cottage, which, as well as the granary, is covered by cherry trees, vines, roses, jessamine, honeysuckle, and grand spires of hollyhocks. The other is comparatively open, showing over high pales the blue sky and a range of woody hills. All and every part is untrimmed, antique, weather-stained and homely as can be imagined--gratifying the eye by its exceeding picturesqueness, and the mind by the certainty that no pictorial effect was intended--that it owes all its charms to “rare accident.” My father laughs at my passionate love for my little garden--and perhaps you will laugh too; but I assure you it’s a “bonny bit” of earth as ever was crammed full of lilies and roses.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to B. R. Haydon_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

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[Sidenote: Difficulties with plays.]

I would not recommend any friend to write for the stage because it nearly killed me with its unspeakable worries and anxieties, and I am certainly ten years older for having so written; but of all forms of poetry it is the one I prefer, and I would always advise the writing with a view to the production of the piece upon the boards, because it avoids the danger of interminable dialogues of coldness and languor.... Write for the stage, but don’t bring the play out--that is my advice. If you wish to know my reasons, you may find some of them in the fact that one of my tragedies had seven last acts, and that two others fought each other during a whole season at Covent Garden Theatre; Mr. Macready insisted on producing one, Charles Kemble was equally bent upon the other--neither of them even pretending to any superiority of either play but because one, a man of fifty, would play the young man’s part, and the other insisted that none but himself should have anything like a telling part at all. Both were read in the green-room, both advertised--and just think of the poor author in the country all the time, while the money was earnestly wanted, and the non-production fell upon her like a sin!

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Mr. Digby Starkey_, in ‘Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

I would rather serve in a shop--rather scour floors--rather nurse children, than undergo these tremendous and interminable disputes, and this unwomanly publicity.

[Sidenote: Drudgery.]

Pray forgive this sad no-letter. Alas! the free and happy hours, when I could read and think and prattle for you, are passed away. Oh! will they ever return? I am now chained to a desk, eight, ten, twelve hours a day, at mere drudgery. All my thoughts of writing are for hard money. All my correspondence is on hard business.... A washerwoman hath a better trade.... I myself hate all my own doings, and consider the being forced to this drudgery as the greatest misery that life can afford. But it is my wretched fate and must be undergone--so long, at least, as my father is spared to me. If I should have the misfortune to lose him, I shall go quietly to the workhouse, and never write another line--a far preferable destiny.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Lionized in London.]

Every day we had from sixty to seventy visitors, and three times more parties made for me than I could have attended, even if I had refused all exhibiting show parties and gone only to friends, dining with what they called quiet parties of twenty or thirty, and thirty or forty more arriving to tea. At last, however, I was forced to break off this, or I should have returned to the country without seeing any public place whatever; and my last week or ten days were spent in seeing all to be seen in London in the morning, and attending operas and plays every evening--the artists all writing to show me their galleries, and the very best private boxes everywhere being reserved for my accommodation--no queen could have been more deferentially received.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Emily Jephson_, 1834, in ‘Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford,’ by L’Estrange.

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[Sidenote: Town and country manners.]

Miss Landon called her “Sancho Panza in petticoats”; yet among the lanes and glades of her own sunny Berkshire she might have aptly seemed a merry milk-maid--proper to the place. Her round figure, jolly face, perpetual smile, ready greeting, kindly words, seemed of kin to the nature that is away from crowded streets. Assuredly she was more at home at Three-Mile Cross than she was in London. In London she seemed always _en garde_, thought an air of patronage was the right thing, and that an author about whom the whole world was talking, and who had achieved the greatest of all literary successes--the production of a tragedy--was bound to be stately as well as cordial--to have company manners that she would have thrown off as a paralyzing incumbrance where the breezes blew among the trees that shaded her native heath.

S. C. HALL: ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’

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[Sidenote: Mrs. Hall’s first impression of Miss Mitford.]

I certainly was disappointed, when a stout little lady, tightened up in a shawl, rolled into the parlor in Newman Street, and Mrs. Hofland announced her as Miss Mitford; her short petticoats showing wonderfully stout leather boots, her shawl _bundled_ on, and a little black coal-scuttle bonnet--when bonnets were expanding--added to the effect of her natural shortness and rotundity; but her manner was that of a cordial country gentlewoman; the pressure of her fat little hands (for she extended both) was warm; her eyes both soft and bright, looked kindly and frankly into mine; and her pretty, rosy mouth dimpled with smiles that were always sweet and friendly. At first I did not think her at all “grand or stilted,” though she declared she had been quite spoilt--quite ruined since she came to London, with all the fine compliments she had received; but the trial was yet to come. “Suppose--suppose ‘Rienzi’ should be--” and she shook her head. Of course, in full chorus, we declared that impossible. “No! she would not spend an evening with us until after the first night; if the play went ill, or even coldly, she would run away, and never be again seen or heard of; if it succeeded”--She drew her rotund person to its full height, and endeavored to stretch her neck, and the expression of her beaming face assumed an air of unmistakable triumph. She was always pleasant to look at, and had her face not been cast in so broad--so “outspread”--a mould, she would have been handsome; even with that disadvantage, if her figure had been tall enough to carry her head with dignity, she would have been so; but she was most vexatiously “dumpy.”

[Sidenote: A little spoiled by success.]

She kept her promise to us, and after ‘Rienzi’s’ triumph, spent an evening at our house, “the observed of all observers.” She did not, however, appear to advantage that evening; her manner was constrained, and even haughty. She got up tragedy looks, which did not harmonize with her naturally playful expression. She seated herself in a high chair, and was indignant at the offer of a foot-stool, though her feet barely touched the ground; she received those who wished to be introduced to her _en reine_; but such was her popularity just then, that all were gratified. She was most unbecomingly dressed in a striped satin something, neither high nor low, with very short sleeves, for her arms were white and finely formed; she wore a large yellow turban, which added considerably to the size of her head. She had evidently bought the hideous thing _en route_, and put it on in the carriage, as she drove down to our house, for pinned at the back was a somewhat large card, on which were written, in somewhat large letters, these astounding words, “Very chaste--only five and three-pence.” Under pretence of settling her turban, I removed the obnoxious notice.

MRS. S. C. HALL: ‘Book of Memories.’ London: Virtue & Co., 1871.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Herself again.]

We found Miss Mitford living literally in a cottage, neither _ornée_ nor poetical--except inasmuch as it had a small garden crowded with the richest and most beautiful profusion of flowers--where she lives with her father, a fresh, stout old man who is in his seventy-fifth year. She herself seemed about fifty, short and fat, with very gray hair, perfectly visible under her cap, and neatly arranged in front. She has the simplest and kindest of manners, and entertained us for two hours with the most animated conversation, and a great variety of anecdotes, without any of the pretensions of an author by profession, and without any of the stiffness that generally belongs to single ladies of her age and reputation.

GEORGE TICKNOR: _Journal_, July 26th, 1835, in ‘Life, Letters and Journals.’ Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1876.

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[Sidenote: Her one complaint of her father.]

My father--very kind to me in many respects, very attentive if I’m ill, very solicitous that my garden should be nicely kept, that I should go out with him and be amused--is yet, so far as art, literature and the drama are concerned, of a temper infinitely difficult to deal with. He hates and despises them, and all their professors ...; and is constantly taunting me with my “friends” and my “people” (as he calls them), reproaching me if I hold the slightest intercourse with author, editor, artist, or actor, and treating with frank contempt every one not of a certain station in the county. I am entirely convinced that he would consider Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, and Mrs. Siddons as his inferiors. Always this is very painful--strangely painful.

MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Rev. William Harness_, in the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Hard life.]

After frittering away the whole day, incessantly on foot, or otherwise fatiguing herself, at his beck and call, and receiving his friends, and reading him to sleep in the afternoons till she had no voice left, the hour came when she might put him to bed. But her own day’s work still remained to be done. It was not a sort of work which could be done by powers jaded like hers, without some stimulus or relief; and hence the necessity of doses of laudanum to carry her through her task. When the necessity ceased by the death of her father, her practice of taking laudanum ceased; but her health had become radically impaired, and her nervous system was rendered unfit to meet any such shock as that which overthrew it at last. Miss Mitford so toiling by candle-light, while the hard master who had made her his servant all day was asleep in the next room, is as painful an instance of the struggles of human life as the melancholy of a buffoon, or the heart-break--that “secret known to all”--of a boasting Emperor of all the Russias.

HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Biographical Sketches.’ New York: Leypoldt & Holt, 1869.

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[Sidenote: Miss Mitford in 1839.]

Our coachman (who, after telling him that we were Americans, had complimented us on speaking English, and “very good English, too,”) professed an acquaintance of some twenty years’ standing with Miss M., and assured us that she was “one of the dearest women in England,” and the doctor (her father) “an ’earty old boy.” And when he reined his horses up at her door, and she appeared to receive us, he said, “Now you would not take that little body there for the great author, would you?” and certainly we should have taken her for nothing more than a kindly gentlewoman, who had never gone beyond the narrow sphere of the most refined social life. Miss M. is truly a “little body,” and as unlike as possible to the faces we have seen of her in the magazines, which all have a broad humor bordering on coarseness. She has a pale-gray, soul-lit eye, and hair as white as snow; a wintry sign that has come prematurely upon her, as like signs come upon us while the year is yet fresh and undecayed. Her voice has a sweet, low tone, and her manner a natural frankness and affectionateness that we have been so long familiar with in their other modes of manifestation that it would have been indeed a disappointment not to have found them.

She led us directly through her house into her garden, a perfect bouquet of flowers. “I must show you my geraniums while it is light,” she said, “for I love them next to my father.”

CATHARINE M. SEDGWICK: ‘Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home.’ New York: Harper & Bros., 1841.

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[Sidenote: Looking back.]

There used to be, and there no doubt still is, if I had but the courage to go and look at it, a small, old-fashioned cottage at Three Mile Cross, near Reading, which stood in a garden close to the road. A strip of garden was on one side, a little pony-stable on the other, and the larger part of the garden at the back. It was a comfortable-looking, but still a real village cottage, with no town or suburb-look whatever about it. Small lattice windows, below and above, with roses and jasmine creeping round them all, established its rural character; and there was a great buttress of a chimney rising from the ground at the garden-strip side, which was completely covered with a very ancient and very fine apricot tree. There the birds delighted to sit and sing among the leaves, and build too, in several snug nooks, and there in early autumn the wasps used to bite and bore into the rich ripe brown cracks of the largest apricots, and would issue forth in rage when any one of the sweetest of their property was brought down to the earth by the aid of a clothes-prop, guided under the superintending instructions of a venerable little gentlewoman in a garden-bonnet and shawl, with silver hair, very bright hazel eyes, and a rose-red smiling countenance. Altogether, it was one of the brightest faces any one ever saw.

[Sidenote: Mr. Horne’s recollections.]

“Now, my dear friend,” would she say, “if you will only attend to my advice, you will get that apricot up there, which is quite in perfection. I have had my eye upon it these last three weeks, wondering nobody stole it. The boys often get over into the garden before any of us are up. There now, collect all those leaves, if you will be so good--and those too--and lay them all in a heap just underneath, so that the apricot may fall upon them. If you don’t do that, it will burst open with a thump. There! now push the prop up slowly, so as to break the apricot from the stalk; and when it is down, do not be in too great a hurry to take it up, as it’s sure to have a good large wasp or two inside. Wasps are capital judges of ripe wall-fruit, as my dear father used to say. A little lower with the prop! more to the left--now just push the prong upwards, and gently lift--again--down it comes! Mind the wasps! three, four--mind! perhaps that’s not all--five! I told you so!”... “How angry they are!”

“Not more, my dear, than you and I would have been under similar circumstances.”

[Sidenote: A bright face.]

[Sidenote: Presence of mind.]

I had not known Miss Mitford very long at this time; but it was her habit to address all those with whom she was on intimate terms, by some affectionate expression. For several years, however, I used to pay a visit of a week or ten days to Miss Mitford’s cottage during the strawberry season, and again during the middle of summer, when her show of geraniums (she resisted all new nomenclatures) was at its height, and sometimes later, when the wonderful old fruit-trees just retained some half-dozen of their choicest treasures. It would be impossible for any engraving or photograph, however excellent as to features, to convey a true likeness of Mary Russell Mitford. During one of these visits, Miss Charlotte Cushman was also staying at the cottage, and exclaimed the first time Miss Mitford left the room, “What a bright face it is!” The effect of summer brightness over all the countenance was quite remarkable. A floral flush overspread the whole face, which seemed to carry its own light with it, for it was the same indoors as out. The silver hair shone, the forehead shone, the cheeks shone, and above all, the eyes shone. The expression was entirely genial, cognoscitive, beneficent. The outline of the face was an oblate round, of no very marked significance beyond that of an apple, or other rural “character”; in fact, it was very like a rosy apple in the sun. Always excepting the forehead and chin. The forehead was not only massive, but built in a way that sculpture only could adequately delineate.... This build of head, and strong outline of head and face, will go far to explain the strength of character displayed by Miss Mitford during the early and most trying periods of her life, with her extravagant and selfish father. It may also account for her general composure and presence of mind, both on great occasions and others, trifling enough to talk and write about, but of a kind to test the nerves of most ladies. For instance, in driving Miss Mitford one day in her little pony-chaise on a visit, she so riveted my attention on the special point of a story, that I allowed one wheel to run into a dry ditch at the roadside, and the pony-chaise must, of course, have turned over, but that we were “brought up” by the hedge. “Hillo! my dear friend!” said Miss Mitford; “we must get out.” We did so; the little trap was at once put on its proper course, and, without one word of comment, the bright-faced old lady took up the thread of her story.

R. H. HORNE: ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, addressed to Richard Hengist Horne.’ (With a Preface and Memoir by R. H. Stoddard.) New York: James Miller, 1877.

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[Sidenote: James T. Fields’ visit.]