A CHOSEN CORRESPONDENT
Among the many names of well-known people that occur in Miss Mitford’s
letters of this period is that of Cobbett, to whom she had addressed
one of her early odes. He was an intimate friend of her father’s,
and we are told that some of his letters to the Doctor “are written
enigmatically and evidently with a view to secrecy, whilst others, on
the contrary, express his sentiments as openly as did the ‘Porcupine.’”
In these latter the violent denunciations of the King and the
Government, and indeed of all persons in authority, comically recall to
the mind of the reader the admirable skit upon Cobbett in the _Rejected
Addresses_. His letters to the Doctor usually conclude with the words,
“God bless you, and d—— the ministers!”
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.
Describing their first acquaintance in later years to a friend,
Mary said: “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 schoolroom a thousand times told, than such good-humoured
condescension from a clever man of the world to a girl almost young
enough to be his grand-daughter. I owe much to that correspondence....
Sir William’s own letters were most charming—full of old-fashioned
courtesy, of quaint humour, and of pleasant and genial criticism on
literature and on art.”[6]
[Footnote 6: See _Yesterdays with Authors_, by James T. Fields.]
Sometimes he would send Mary a few verses he had written upon some
congenial subject. Amongst these occur the following lines, composed
after witnessing a performance of Mrs. Siddons in the Plymouth theatre:—
“Her looks, her voice, her features so agree, Uniting all in such fine
harmony, That from her _voice_ the blind her looks declare, And in her
sparkling _eyes_ the deaf may hear.”
In one of his early letters to Mary he remarks: “Pray never refrain
from writing much because you want time and inclination to read over
what you have written. I would a thousand times rather see what falls
from your pen naturally and spontaneously than the most polished and
beautiful composition that ever went to the press, and so would you I
doubt not from your correspondents.... Pope’s maxim (if it is his) that
‘easy writing is not easily written’ is certainly true with respect to
what is intended for the world ... but is utterly false as applied to
familiar writing, of which his own letters—pretended to be warm from
the brain, but in reality polished and revised on publication—are a
striking proof. Write away then, my dear, as fast as you can drive your
quill, and abuse Miss Seward as much as you please.”
These words call to mind the same kind of advice given by the good
“Daddy” Crisp about forty years earlier to the young Fanny Burney:
“Let this declaration serve once for all, that there is no fault in an
epistolary correspondence like stiffness and study. Dash away whatever
comes uppermost; the sudden sallies of imagination clap’d down on
paper, just as they arise, are worth folios, and have all the warmth
and merit of that sort of nonsense that is eloquent in love.”
Crisp had greater powers as a critic than Sir William Elford, but Sir
William had qualities that specially suited the case in question. He
supplied a channel through which Mary could express and think out her
views on all kinds of topics, always secure of a kind and friendly
listener, and one whose judgment she valued. Being an only child and
with few intimate female friends, this was a great boon, and we owe
to their correspondence a fuller knowledge of Mary’s mind in its
development from youth to womanhood than we could have obtained by any
other means.
The allusion to Miss Seward, the “Swan of Lichfield,” by Sir William
refers to the following passage in one of Mary’s letters: “Have you
seen Miss Seward’s Letters? The names of her correspondents are
tempting, but alas! though addressed to all the eminent literati of
the last half-century, all the epistles bear the signature of Anna
Seward.... Did she not owe some of her fame, think you, to writing
printed books at a time when it was quite as much as most women could
do to read them?... I was always a little shocked at the sort of
reputation she bore in poetry. Sometimes affected, sometimes _fade_,
sometimes pedantic and sometimes tinselly, none of her works were ever
simple, graceful, or natural. Her letters ... are affected, sentimental
and lackadaisical to the highest degree. Who can read a page of Miss
Seward’s writings on any subject without finding her out at once [as]
the pedantic coquette and cold-hearted sensibility monger?”
“Anna Seward,” continues Miss Mitford, “sees nothing to admire in
Cowper’s letters—in letters (the playful ones of course I mean) which
would have immortalized him had the _Task_ never been written,
and which (much as I admire the playful wit of the two illustrious
namesakes Lady M. W. and Mrs. Montagu) are in my opinion the only
perfect specimens of epistolary composition in the English language....
They have to me, at least, all the properties of grace; a charm now
here, now there; a witchery rather felt in its effect than perceived in
its cause.”
“The attraction of Horace Walpole’s letters,” she adds, “is very
different, though almost equally strong. The charm which lurks in them
is one for which we have no term, and our Gallic neighbours seem to
have engrossed both the word and the quality. _Elles sont piquantes_
to the highest degree. If you read but a sentence you feel yourself
spellbound till you have read the volume.”
On another occasion Mary discusses the merits of Pope. She holds the
same opinion as that of Sir William respecting his letters “which,” as
she says, “affect to be unaffected and work so hard to seem quite at
their ease.” “Pope is,” she remarks, “even in his poetry, of a lower
flight and a weaker grasp than his predecessor [Dryden].... _They_ must
be born without an ear who can prefer the melodious monotony of Pope to
the stateliness, the ease, the infinite variety of Dryden. I should as
soon think of preferring the tinkling guitar to the full-toned organ!
“... In short, Pope is in the fullest sense of the word a mannerist.
When you have said ‘The Dunciad,’ ‘The Eloise’ and ‘The Rape of the
Lock’ you can say nothing more but ‘The Rape of the Lock,’ ‘The
Dunciad’ and ‘The Eloise.’ I have some notion,” she adds, “that you are
of a different opinion, and I am very glad of it; I love to make you
quarrel with me. Nothing is so tiresome as acquiescence; I would at
any time give a dozen civil Yes’s for one spirited No, especially in
correspondence, which is exactly like a game of shuttle-cock, and would
be at an end in an instant if both battledores struck the same way.”
In another letter, writing of her special favourites amongst
Shakespeare’s plays, she remarks: “And last, not least, _Much Ado About
Nothing_. The Beatrice of this play is indeed my standard of female
wit and almost of female character; nothing so lively, so clever, so
unaffected and so warm-hearted ever trod this workaday world. Benedick
is not quite equal to her; but this, in female eyes, is no great
sin. Shakespeare saw through nature, and knew which sex to make the
cleverest. There’s a challenge for you! Will you take up the glove?”