A FLIGHT
The “comfortless lodging” mentioned by Miss Mitford was on the Surrey
side of Blackfriars Bridge, where Dr. Mitford, it seems, was able to
find a refuge from his creditors within the rules of the King’s Bench.
“What my father’s plans were,” writes his daughter in later years, “I
do not exactly know; probably to gather together what disposable money
still remained after paying all debts from the sale of books, plate
and furniture at Lyme and thence to proceed ... to practise in some
distant town. At all events London was the best starting-place, and he
could consult his old fellow-pupil and life-long friend, Dr. Babington,
then one of the physicians to Guy’s Hospital, and refresh his medical
studies with experiments and lectures. In the meanwhile his spirits
returned as buoyant as ever, and so, now that fear had changed into
certainty, did mine.”
[Illustration: BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE (1796)]
But at this time, when the prospects of the family seemed to be
irretrievably overclouded and when dire poverty stared them in the
face, an extraordinary event occurred to raise them suddenly into
affluence!
“In the intervals of his professional pursuits,” writes Mary, “my
father walked about London with his little girl in his hand; and one
day (it was my birthday, and I was ten years old) he took me into a not
very tempting-looking place which was, as I speedily found, a lottery
office. An Irish lottery was upon the point of being drawn, and he
desired me to choose one out of several bits of printed paper (I did
not then know their significance) that lay upon the counter.
“‘Choose which number you like best,’ said the dear papa, ‘and that
shall be your birthday present.’
“I immediately selected one, and put it into his hand: No. 2224.
“‘Ah,’ said my father, examining it, ‘you must choose again. I want to
buy a whole ticket, and this is only a quarter. Choose again, my pet.’
“‘No, dear papa, I like this one best.’
“‘Here is the next number,’ interposed the lottery office keeper, ‘No.
2223.’
“‘Ay,’ said my father, ‘that will do just as well. Will it not, Mary?
We’ll take that.’
“‘No,’ returned I obstinately, ‘that won’t do. This is my birthday you
know, papa, and I am ten years old. Cast up _my_ number and you’ll find
that makes ten. The other is only nine.”
“My father, superstitious like all speculators, struck with my
pertinacity and with the reason I gave, resisted the attempt of the
office keeper to tempt me by different tickets, and we had nearly left
the shop without a purchase when the clerk who had been examining
different desks and drawers, said to his principal:
“‘I think, sir, the matter may be managed if the gentleman does not
mind paying a few shillings more. That ticket 2224 only came yesterday,
and we have still all the shares: one-half, one-quarter, one-eighth,
two-sixteenths. It will be just the same if the young lady is set upon
it.’
“The young lady was set upon it, and the shares were purchased.
“The whole affair was a secret between us, and my father, whenever he
got me to himself, talked over our future twenty thousand pounds—just
like Alnaschar over his basket of eggs.
“Meanwhile time passed on, and one Sunday morning we were all preparing
to go to church when a face that I had forgotten, but my father had
not, made its appearance. It was the clerk of the lottery office. An
express had just arrived from Dublin announcing that No. 2224 had
been drawn a prize of twenty thousand pounds, and he had hastened to
communicate the good news.”
“Ah, me!” writes Miss Mitford in later life. “In less than twenty
years what was left of the produce of the ticket so strangely chosen?
What? except a Wedgwood dinner-service that my father had had made to
commemorate the event, with the Irish harp within the border on one
side and his family crest on the other! That fragile and perishable
ware outlasted the more perishable money.”
The writer of a graceful article entitled, “In Miss Mitford’s Country,”
which appeared in a magazine several years ago, saw at a friend’s house
in Reading some odd pieces of this very dinner-service. These consisted
of “a tureen of beautiful shape, two or three soup-plates and a couple
of butter-boats and stands in one, in Wedgwood fashion.” When handling
the china she observed “that the Mitford crest was stamped on one
side of the pieces while on the opposite side appeared a harp bearing
between the strings the mystic number 2224.”
She supposed this to be the Wedgwoods’ private number, and it was
not until she came upon the passage just quoted in Miss Mitford’s
_Recollections of a Literary Life_ that the mystery was solved.