That portrait hanging near Wordsworth's is next to seeing Mary Russell
Mitford herself as I first saw her, twenty-three years ago, in her
geranium-planted cottage at Three-Mile Cross. She sat to John Lucas for
the picture in her serene old age, and the likeness is faultless. She
had proposed to herself to leave the portrait, as it was her own
property, to me in her will; but as I happened to be in England during
the latter part of her life, she altered her determination, and gave it
to me from her own hands.
Sydney Smith said of a certain quarrelsome person, that his very face
was a breach of the peace. The face of that portrait opposite to us is a
very different one from Sydney's fighter. Everything that belongs to the
beauty of old age one will find recorded in that charming countenance.
Serene cheerfulness most abounds, and that is a quality as rare as it is
commendable. It will be observed that the dress of Miss Mitford in the
picture before us is quaint and somewhat antiquated even for the time
when it was painted, but a pleasant face is never out of fashion.
An observer of how old age is neglected in America said to me the other
day, "It seems an impertinence to be alive after sixty on this side of
the globe"; and I have often thought how much we lose by not cultivating
fine old-fashioned ladies and gentlemen. Our aged relatives and friends
seem to be tucked away, nowadays, into neglected corners, as though it
were the correct thing to give them a long preparation for still
narrower quarters. For my own part, comely and debonair old age is most
attractive; and when I see the "thick silver-white hair lying on a
serious and weather-worn face, like moonlight on a stout old tower," I
have a strong tendency to lift my hat, whether I know the person or not.
"No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in an autumnal face."
It was a fortunate hour for me when kind-hearted John Kenyon said, as I
was leaving his hospitable door in London one summer midnight in 1847,
"You must know my friend, Miss Mitford. She lives directly on the line
of your route to Oxford, and you must call with my card and make her
acquaintance." I had lately been talking with Wordsworth and Christopher
North and old Samuel Rogers, but my hunger at that time to stand face to
face with the distinguished persons in English literature was not
satisfied. So it was during my first "tourification" in England that I
came to know Miss Mitford. The day selected for my call at her cottage
door happened to be a perfect one on which to begin an acquaintance with
the lady of "Our Village." She was then living at Three-Mile Cross,
having removed there from Bertram House in 1820. The cottage where I
found her was situated on the high road between Basingstoke and Reading;
and the village street on which she was then living contained the
public-house and several small shops near by. There was also close at
hand the village pond full of ducks and geese, and I noticed several
young rogues on their way to school were occupied in worrying their
feathered friends. The windows of the cottage were filled with flowers,
and cowslips and violets were plentifully scattered about the little
garden. Miss Mitford liked to have one dog, at least, at her heels, and
this day her pet seemed to be constantly under foot. I remember the room
into which I was shown was sanded, and a quaint old clock behind the
door was marking off the hour in small but very loud pieces. The
cheerful old lady called to me from the head of the stairs to come up
into her sitting-room. I sat down by the open window to converse with
her, and it was pleasant to see how the village children, as they went
by, stopped to bow and curtsey. One curly-headed urchin made bold to
take off his well-worn cap, and wait to be recognized as "little
Johnny". "No great scholar," said the kind-hearted old lady to me, "but
a sad rogue among our flock of geese. Only yesterday the young marauder
was detected by my maid with a plump gosling stuffed half-way into his
pocket!" While she was thus discoursing of Johnny's peccadilloes, the
little fellow looked up with a knowing expression, and very soon caught
in his cap a gingerbread dog, which the old lady threw to him from the
window. "I wish he loved his book as well as he relishes sweetcake,"
sighed she, as the boy kicked up his heels and disappeared down the
lane.
Her conversation that afternoon, full of anecdote, ran on in a perpetual
flow of good-humor, and I was shocked, on looking at my watch, to find I
had stayed so long, and had barely time to reach the railway-station in
season to arrive at Oxford that night. We parted with the mutual
determination and understanding to keep our friendship warm by
correspondence, and I promised never to come to England again without
finding my way to Three-Mile Cross.
During the conversation that day, Miss Mitford had many inquiries to
make concerning her American friends, Miss Catherine Sedgwick, Daniel
Webster, and Dr. Chancing. Her voice had a peculiar ringing sweetness in
it, rippling out sometimes like a beautiful chime of silver bells; and
when she told a comic story, hitting off some one of her acquaintances,
she joined in with the laugh at the end with great heartiness and
_naïveté_. When listening to anything that interested her, she had a way
of coming into the narrative with "Dear me, dear me, dear me," three
times repeated, which it was very pleasant to hear.
From that summer day our friendship continued, and during other visits
to England I saw her frequently, driving about the country with her in
her pony-chaise, and spending many happy hours in the new cottage which
she afterwards occupied at Swallowfield. Her health had broken down
years before, from too constant attendance on her invalid parents, and
she was never certain of a well day. When her father died, in 1842,
shamefully in debt (for he had squandered two fortunes not exactly his
own, and was always one of the most improvident of men, belonging to
that class of impecunious individuals who seem to have been born
insolvent), she said, "Everybody shall be paid, if I sell the gown off
my back or pledge my little pension." And putting her shoulder to the
domestic wheel, she never nagged for an instant, or gave way to
despondency.
She was always cheerful, and her talk is delightful to remember. From
girlhood she had known and had been intimate with most of the prominent
writers of her time, and her observations and reminiscences were so
shrewd and pertinent that I have scarcely known her equal.
Carlyle tells us "nothing so lifts a man from all his mean
imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration"; and Miss
Mitford admired to such an extent that she must have been lifted in this
way nearly all her lifetime. Indeed she erred, if she erred at all, on
this side, and overpraised and over-admired everything and everybody
whom she regarded. When she spoke of Beranger or Dumas or Hazlitt or
Holmes, she exhausted every term of worship and panegyric. Louis
Napoleon was one of her most potent crazes, and I fully believe, if she
had been alive during the days of his downfall, she would have died of
grief. When she talked of Munden and Bannister and Fawcett and Emery,
those delightful old actors for whom she had had such an exquisite
relish, she said they had made comedy to her a living art full of
laughter and tears. How often have I heard her describe John Kemble,
Mrs. Siddons, Miss O'Neil, and Edmund Kean, as they were wont to
electrify the town in her girlhood! With what gusto she reproduced
Elliston, who was one of her prime favorites, and tried to make me,
through her representation of him, feel what a spirit there was in the
man. Although she had been prostrated by the hard work and increasing
anxieties of forty years of authorship, when I saw her she was as fresh
and independent as a skylark. She was a good hater as well as a good
praiser, and she left nothing worth saving in an obnoxious reputation.
I well remember, one autumn evening, when half a dozen friends were
sitting in her library after dinner, talking with her of Tom Taylor's
Life of Haydon, then lately published, how graphically she described to
us the eccentric painter, whose genius she was among the foremost to
recognize. The flavor of her discourse I cannot reproduce; but I was too
much interested in what she was saying to forget the main incidents she
drew for our edification, during those pleasant hours now far away in
the past.
"I am a terrible forgetter of dates," she used to say, when any one
asked her of the _time when_; but for the _manner how_ she was never at
a loss. "Poor Haydon!" she began. "He was an old friend of mine, and I
am indebted to Sir William Elford, one of my dear father's
correspondents during my girlhood, for a suggestion which sent me to
look at a picture then on exhibition in London, and thus was brought
about my knowledge of the painter's existence. He, Sir William, had
taken a fancy to me, and I became his child-correspondent. Few things
contribute more to that indirect after-education, which is worth all the
formal lessons of the school-room a thousand times told, than such
good-humored condescension from a clever man of the world to a girl
almost young enough to be his granddaughter. I owe much to that
correspondence, and, amongst other debts, the acquaintance of Haydon.
Sir William's own letters were most charming,--full of old-fashioned
courtesy, of quaint humor, and of pleasant and genial criticism on
literature and on art. An amateur-painter himself, painting interested
him particularly, and he often spoke much and warmly of the young man
from Plymouth, whose picture of the 'Judgment of Solomon' was then on
exhibition in London. 'You must see it,' said he, 'even if you come to
town on purpose.'"--The reader of Haydon's Life will remember that Sir
William Elford, in conjunction with a Plymouth banker named Tingecombe,
ultimately purchased the picture. The poor artist was overwhelmed with
astonishment and joy when he walked into the exhibition-room and read
the label, "Sold," which had been attached to his picture that morning
before he arrived. "My first impulse," he says in his Autobiography,
"was gratitude to God."
"It so happened," continued Miss Mitford, "that I merely passed through
London that season, and, being detained by some of the thousand and one
nothings which are so apt to detain women in the great city, I arrived
at the exhibition, in company with a still younger friend, so near the
period of closing, that more punctual visitors were moving out, and the
doorkeeper actually turned us and our money back. I persisted, however,
assuring him that I only wished to look at one picture, and promising
not to detain him long. Whether my entreaties would have carried the
point or not, I cannot tell; but half a crown did; so we stood
admiringly before the 'Judgment of Solomon.' I am no great judge of
painting; but that picture impressed me then, as it does now, as
excellent in composition, in color, and in that great quality of telling
a story which appeals at once to every mind. Our delight was sincerely
felt, and most enthusiastically expressed, as we kept gazing at the
picture, and seemed, unaccountably to us at first, to give much pleasure
to the only gentleman who had remained in the room,--a young and very
distinguished-looking person, who had watched with evident amusement our
negotiation with the doorkeeper. Beyond indicating the best position to
look at the picture, he had no conversation with us; but I soon surmised
that we were seeing the painter, as well as his painting; and when, two
or three years afterwards, a friend took me by appointment to view the
'Entry into Jerusalem,' Haydon's next great picture, then near its
completion, I found I had not been mistaken.
"Haydon was, at that period, a remarkable person to look at and listen
to. Perhaps your American word _bright_ expresses better than any other
his appearance and manner. His figure, short, slight, elastic, and
vigorous, looked still more light and youthful from the little
sailor's-jacket and snowy trousers which formed his painting costume.
His complexion was clear and healthful. His forehead, broad and high,
out of all proportion to the lower part of his face, gave an
unmistakable character of intellect to the finely placed head. Indeed,
he liked to observe that the gods of the Greek sculptors owed much of
their elevation to being similarly out of drawing! The lower features
were terse, succinct, and powerful,--from the bold, decided jaw, to the
large, firm, ugly, good-humored mouth. His very spectacles aided the
general expression; they had a look of the man. But how shall I attempt
to tell you of his brilliant conversation, of his rapid, energetic
manner, of his quick turns of thought, as he flew on from topic to
topic, dashing his brush here and there upon the canvas? Slow and quiet
persons were a good deal startled by this suddenness and mobility. He
left such people far behind, mentally and bodily. But his talk was so
rich and varied, so earnest and glowing, his anecdotes so racy, his
perception of character so shrewd, and the whole tone so spontaneous and
natural, that the want of repose was rather recalled afterwards than
felt at the time. The alloy to this charm was a slight coarseness of
voice and accent, which contrasted somewhat strangely with his constant
courtesy and high breeding. Perhaps this was characteristic. A defect of
some sort pervades his pictures. Their great want is equality and
congruity,--that perfect union of qualities which we call _taste_. His
apartment, especially at that period when he lived in his painting-room,
was in itself a study of the most picturesque kind. Besides the great
picture itself, for which there seemed hardly space between the walls,
it was crowded with casts, lay figures, arms, tripods, vases, draperies,
and costumes of all ages, weapons of all nations, books in all tongues.
These cumbered the floor; whilst around hung smaller pictures, sketches,
and drawings, replete with originality and force. With chalk he could do
what he chose. I remember he once drew for me a head of hair with nine
of his sweeping, vigorous strokes! Among the studies I remarked that day
in his apartment was one of a mother who had just lost her only
child,--a most masterly rendering of an unspeakable grief. A sonnet,
which I could not help writing on this sketch, gave rise to our long
correspondence, and to a friendship which never flagged. Everybody feels
that his life, as told by Mr. Taylor, with its terrible catastrophe, is
a stern lesson to young artists, an awful warning that cannot be set
aside. Let us not forget that amongst his many faults are qualities
which hold out a bright example. His devotion to his noble art, his
conscientious pursuit of every study connected with it, his unwearied
industry, his love of beauty and of excellence, his warm family
affection, his patriotism, his courage, and his piety, will not easily
be surpassed. Thinking of them, let us speak tenderly of the ardent
spirit whose violence would have been softened by better fortune, and
who, if more successful, would have been more gentle and more humble."
And so with her vigilant and appreciative eye she saw, and thus in her
own charming way she talked of, the man whose name, says Taylor, as a
popularizer of art, stands without a rival among his brethren.
She loathed mere dandies, and there were no epithets too hot for her
contempts in that direction. Old beaux she heartily despised, and,
speaking of one whom she had known, I remember she quoted with a fine
scorn this appropriate passage from Dickens: "Ancient, dandified men,
those crippled _invalides_ from the campaign of vanity, where the only
powder was hair-powder, and the only bullets fancy balls."
There was no half-way with her, and she never could have said with M----
S----, when a certain visitor left the room one day after a call, "If we
did not _love_ our dear friend Mr. ---- so much, shouldn't we hate him
tremendously!" Her neighbor, John Ruskin, she thought as eloquent a
prose-writer as Jeremy Taylor, and I have heard her go on in her fine
way, giving preferences to certain modern poems far above the works of
the great masters of song. Pascal says that "the heart has reasons that
reason does not know"; and Miss Mitford was a charming exemplification
of this wise saying.
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. Miss Mitford would have joined with Hamerton in his
gratitude for canine companionship, when he says, "I humbly thank Divine
Providence for having invented dogs, and I regard that man with
wondering pity who can lead a dogless life."
Her fondness for rural life, one may well imagine, was almost
unparalleled. I have often been with her among the wooded lanes of her
pretty country, listening for the nightingales, and on such occasions
she would discourse so eloquently of the sights and sounds about us,
that her talk seemed to me "far above singing." She had fallen in love
with nature when a little child, and had studied the landscape till she
knew familiarly every flower and leaf which grows on English soil. She
delighted in rural vagabonds of every sort, especially in gypsies; and
as they flourished in her part of the country, she knew all their ways,
and had charming stories to tell of their pranks and thievings. She
called them "the commoners of nature"; and once I remember she pointed
out to me on the road a villanous-looking youth on whom she smiled as we
passed, as if he had been Virtue itself in footpad disguise. She knew
all the literature of rural life, and her memory was stored with
delightful eulogies of forests and meadows. When she repeated or read
aloud the poetry she loved, her accents were
"Like flowers' voices, if they could but speak."
She _understood_ how to enjoy rural occupations and rural existence,
and she had no patience with her friend Charles Lamb, who preferred the
town. Walter Savage Landor addressed these lines to her a few months
before she died, and they seem to me very perfect and lovely in their
application:--
"The hay is carried; and the hours
Snatch, as they pass, the linden flow'rs;
And children leap to pluck a spray
Bent earthward, and then run away.
Park-keeper! catch me those grave thieves
About whose frocks the fragrant leaves,
Sticking and fluttering here and there,
No false nor faltering witness bear.
"I never view such scenes as these
In grassy meadow girt with trees,
But comes a thought of her who now
Sits with serenely patient brow
Amid deep sufferings: none hath told
More pleasant tales to young and old.
Fondest was she of Father Thames,
But rambled to Hellenic streams;
Nor even there could any tell
The country's purer charms so well
As Mary Mitford.
Verse! go forth
And breathe o'er gentle breasts her worth.
Needless the task ... but should she see
One hearty wish from you and me,
A moment's pain it may assuage,--
A rose-leaf on the couch of Age."
And Harriet Martineau pays her respects to my friend in this wise: "Miss
Mitford's descriptions of scenery, brutes, and human beings have such
singular merit, that she may be regarded as the founder of a new style;
and if the freshness wore off with time, there was much more than a
compensation in the fine spirit of resignation and cheerfulness which
breathed through everything she wrote, and endeared her as a suffering
friend to thousands who formerly regarded her only as a most
entertaining stranger."
What lovely drives about England I have enjoyed with Miss Mitford as my
companion and guide! We used to arrange with her trusty Sam for a day
now and then in the open air. He would have everything in readiness at
the appointed hour, and be at his post with that careful, kind-hearted
little maid, the "hemmer of flounces," all prepared to give the old lady
a fair start on her day's expedition. Both those excellent servants
delighted to make their mistress happy, and she greatly rejoiced in
their devotion and care. Perhaps we had made our plans to visit Upton
Court, a charming old house where Pope's Arabella Fermor had passed many
years of her married life. On the way thither we would talk over "The
Rape of the Lock" and the heroine, Belinda, who was no other than
Arabella herself. Arriving on the lawn in front of the decaying mansion,
we would stop in the shade of a gigantic oak, and gossip about the times
of Queen Elizabeth, for it was then the old house was built, no doubt.
Once I remember Miss Mitford carried me on a pilgrimage to a grand old
village church with a tower half covered with ivy. We came to it through
laurel hedges, and passed on the way a magnificent cedar of Lebanon. It
was a superb pile, rich in painted glass windows and carved oak
ornaments. Here Miss Mitford ordered the man to stop, and, turning to me
with great enthusiasm, said, "This is Shiplake Church, where Alfred
Tennyson was married!" Then we rode on a little farther, and she called
my attention to some of the finest wych-elms I had ever seen.
Another day we drove along the valley of the Loddon, and she pointed out
the Duke of Wellington's seat of Strathfieldsaye. As our pony trotted
leisurely over the charming road, she told many amusing stories of the
Duke's economical habits, and she rated him soundly for his money-saving
propensities. The furniture in the house she said was a disgrace to the
great man, and she described a certain old carpet that had done service
so many years in the establishment that no one could tell what the
original colors were.
But the mansion most dear to her in that neighborhood was the residence
of her kind friends the Russells of Swallowfield Park. It is indeed a
beautiful old place, full of historical and literary associations, for
there Lord Clarendon wrote his story of the Great Rebellion. Miss
Mitford never ceased to be thankful that her declining years were
passing in the society of such neighbors as the Russells. If she were
unusually ill, they were the first to know of it and come at once to her
aid. Little attentions, so grateful to old age, they were always on the
alert to offer; and she frequently told me that their affectionate
kindness had helped her over the dark places of life more than once,
where without their succor she must have dropped by the way.
As a letter-writer, Miss Mitford has rarely been surpassed. Her "Life,
as told by herself in Letters to her Friends," is admirably done in
every particular. Few letters in the English language are superior to
hers, and I think they, will come to be regarded as among the choicest
specimens of epistolary literature. When her friend, the Rev. William
Harness, was about to collect from Miss Mitford's correspondents, for
publication, the letters she had written to them, he applied to me among
others. I was obliged to withhold the correspondence for a reason that
existed then; but I am no longer restrained from printing it now. Miss
Mitford's first letter to me was written in 1847, and her last one came
only a few weeks before she died, in 1855. 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. In reading some
of them here collected one will see that she overrated my little
services as she did those of many of her personal friends. I shall have
hard work to place the dates properly, for the good lady rarely took the
trouble to put either month or year at the head of her paper.
She began her correspondence with me before I left England after making
her acquaintance, and, true to the instincts of her kind heart, the
object of her first letter was to press upon my notice the poems of a
young friend of hers, and she was constantly saying good words for
unfledged authors who were struggling forward to gain recognition. No
one ever lent such a helping hand as she did to the young writers of her
country.
The recognition which America, very early in the career of Miss Mitford,
awarded her, she never forgot, and she used to say, "It takes ten years
to make a literary reputation in England, but America is wiser and
bolder, and dares say at once, 'This is fine.'"
Sweetness of temper and brightness of mind, her never-failing
characteristics, accompanied her to the last; and she passed on in her
usual cheerful and affectionate mood, her sympathies uncontracted by
age, narrow fortune, and pain.
A plain substantial cross marks the spot in the old churchyard at
Swallowfield, where, according to her own wish, Mary Mitford lies
sleeping. It is proposed to erect a memorial in the old parish church to
her memory, and her admirers in England have determined, if a sufficient
sum can be raised, to build what shall be known as "The Mitford Aisle,"
to afford accommodation for the poor people who are not able to pay for
seats. Several of Miss Mitford's American friends will join in this
beautiful object, and a tablet will be put up in the old church
commemorating the fact that England and America united in the tribute.