FAREWELL TO THREE MILE CROSS
Writing to her American friend Mr. Fields in December, 1848, after
a sharp attack of illness, Miss Mitford says: “But I have many
alleviations [to my sufferings] in the general kindness of the
neighbourhood, the particular goodness of many admirable friends, the
affectionate attention of a most attached and affectionate old servant,
and above all in my continued interest in books and delight in reading.
I love poetry and people as well at sixty as I did at sixteen, and can
never be sufficiently grateful to God for having permitted me to retain
the two joy-giving faculties of admiration and sympathy, by which we
are enabled to escape from the consciousness of our own infirmities
into the great works of all ages and the joys and sorrows of our
immediate friends.” Much as she loved reading, however, Miss Mitford
did justice to another source of comfort for women that is open to all,
namely needle-work, “that most effectual sedative, that grand soother
and composer of woman’s distress,” as she truly styles it.
“Is American literature,” she asks Mr. Fields, “rich in native
biography? Just have the goodness to mention to me any lives of
Americans, whether illustrious or not, that are graphic, minute and
outspoken. I delight in French memoirs and English lives, especially
such as are either autobiography or made out by diaries and letters;
and America, a young country, with manners as picturesque and
unhackneyed as the scenery, ought to be full of such works.”
And again she writes later on: “I have been reading the autobiographies
of Lamartine and Chateaubriand.... What strange beings these Frenchmen
are! Here is M. de Lamartine at sixty, poet, orator, historian and
statesman, writing the stories of two ladies—one of them married—who
died for love of him! Think if Mr. Macaulay should announce himself
a lady-killer, and put the details not merely into a book but into a
feuilleton!”
Writing to Mrs. Barrett Browning (then in Italy) in March, 1850,
she says: “My _Country Stories_ are just coming out, to my great
contentment, in the ‘Parlour Library’ for a shilling, or perhaps
ninepence—that being the price of Miss Austen’s novels. I delight
in this, and have no sympathy with your bemoanings over American
editions. Think of the American editions of my prose. _Our Village_
has been reprinted in twenty or thirty places, and _Belford Regis_ in
almost as many; and I like it. So do _you_, say what you may.”
And writing to the same friend a year later, when Miss Mitford’s health
was improving, she says: “You will wonder to hear that I have again
taken pen in hand. It reminds me of Benedick’s speech—‘When I said I
should die a bachelor I never thought to live to be married,’ but it
is our friend Henry Chorley’s fault.” And writing to Mr. Fields on
the same subject, she says: “After eight years’ absolute cessation of
composition, Henry Chorley, of the Athenæum, coaxed me last summer into
writing for a lady’s journal which he is editing for Messrs. Bradbury &
Evans, certain Readings of Poetry, old and new, which will, I suppose,
form two or three separate volumes when collected.... One pleasure will
be the doing what justice I can to certain American poets—Mr. Whittier,
for instance, whose ‘Massachusetts to Virginia’ is amongst the finest
things ever written ... and I foresee that day by day our literature
will become more mingled with rich, bright novelties from America, not
reflections of European brightness but gems all coloured with your own
skies and woods and waters....
“I shall cause my book to be immediately forwarded to you, but I don’t
think it will be ready for a twelvemonth. There is a good deal in it
of my own prose, and it takes a wider range than usual of poetry,
including much that has never appeared in any of the specimen books.”
This work ultimately bore the title of _Recollections of a Literary
Life_. It forms delightful reading, for the author has blended with her
own recollections of the poets or of the places they have immortalized
many interesting experiences of her own life given in her best style
of writing. It is a truly remarkable work when we consider how much
its author was suffering from impaired health during the period of its
composition.
The years 1849-50 were years of sudden changes and convulsions in the
political world of the Continent, and a whiff of the general excitement
penetrated even to little Three Mile Cross!
Mary Mitford writes to an American friend: “We have here one of the
Silvio Pellico exiles—Count Carpinetta—whose story is quite a romance.
He is just returned from Turin, where he was received with enthusiasm,
might have been returned as Deputy for two places, and did recover some
of his property confiscated years ago by the Austrians. It does one’s
heart good to see a piece of poetical justice transferred to real life.”
As a rule Miss Mitford’s judgment, both of books and of character, was
singularly sane, but there were some exceptions, her admiration of
Louis Napoleon being one of “her most potent crazes,” as a warm friend
styled it. She believed that his becoming Emperor would work much good
for France, but had she lived long enough to become acquainted with his
real character and to witness its baleful influence upon the nation we
feel sure she would have changed her opinion.
[Illustration: OLD HOUSE NEAR SWALLOWFIELD]
Among the many visitors from all parts to Three Mile Cross who were
desirous to see the author of _Our Village_ there was a certain Dr.
Spencer T. Hall, who had been giving lectures on scientific subjects at
Reading. He recorded his pleasant experiences in an article published
in a newspaper of the day of which we have a copy before us. After
describing Miss Mitford’s cottage by the roadside he goes on to say:
“A good garden at the back of the house produced some of the finest
geraniums and strawberries in the kingdom; and with presents of these
to her London or country friends she could gracefully, and to them
very agreeably, repay their occasional presents of new books and game,
for no woman stood higher in the estimation of some of the ‘county
families’ than did that cottage peeress, on whom they continued their
calls and compliments just as in more showy if not more happy days.
In a corner at the end of the garden there was a rustic summer-house,
and this was where our little party took tea, to which the hostess, by
her quiet, unaffected conversation, added a charm that will be more
easily understood than I can otherwise describe it when I say that it
was rich and piquant as her village stories or that pleasant gossip
to be found in the volume she afterwards published under the title of
_Recollections of a Literary Life_, and with which I trust the whole
country for its own sake is now familiar.”
The reader may remember mention being made earlier in this work of the
wheelwright’s picturesque workshop in the village of Three Mile Cross,
which stands at the turn of Church Lane near to the village pond.
Writing to a friend in November, 1850, Mary Mitford remarks: “Just now
I have been much interested in a painting that has been going on in
the corner of our village street—the inside of an old wheelwright’s
shop—a large barn-like place open to the roof, full of detail, with the
light admitted through the half of hatch doors, and spreading upwards.
It is a fine subject, and finely treated. The artist is one not yet
much known of the name of Pasmore.... It is capitally peopled too—with
children picking up chips and watching an old man sharpening a saw and
peeping in through windows, stretching up to look through them.”
For some years past the cottage at Three Mile Cross had been gradually
getting into decay, so that at last Miss Mitford was obliged to
contemplate a change of abode. “My poor cottage is falling about my
ears,” she writes to a friend in April, 1850. “We were compelled to
move my little pony from his stable to the chaise house because there
were in the stable three large holes big enough for me to escape
through. Then came a windy night and blew the roof from the chaise
house, and truly the cottage proper, where we two-legged creatures
dwell, is in little better condition; the walls seem to be mouldering
from the bottom, crumbling as it were like an old cheese, and whether
anything can be done with it is doubtful. Besides which as it belongs
to Chancery wards there is a further doubt whether the master will
do what may be done.... Yet I cling to it—to the green lanes—to the
commons, the copses, the old trees—every bit of the old country. It
is only a person brought up in the midst of woods and fields in one
country place who can understand that strong local attachment.”
The move, however, was inevitable, but in the meantime a cottage
in the neighbourhood had been found that would suit Miss Mitford’s
requirements, and thither her chief belongings, consisting of a library
of some thousands of volumes and of much furniture, was carted and the
removal accomplished in the month of September (1851).
“It was grief to go,” she writes; “there I had toiled and striven and
tasted as deeply of bitter anxiety, of fear and of hope as often falls
to the lot of woman. There in the fullness of age I had lost those
whose love had made my home sweet and precious.... Friends many and
kind; strangers, whose mere names were an honour, had come to that
bright garden and that garden room. There Mr. Justice Talfourd had
brought the delightful gaiety of his brilliant youth, and poor Haydon
had talked more vivid pictures than he ever painted. The illustrious
of the last century—Mrs. Opie, Miss Porter, Mr. Cary—had mingled there
with poets, still in their earliest dawn. It was a heart-tug to leave
that garden.”
When she was finishing the last series of stories for _Our Village_,
Miss Mitford had addressed some lines of farewell to the spot that she
loved so dearly, and we would give them here. “Sorry as I am,” she
writes, “to part from a locality which has become almost identified
with myself, this volume must and shall be the last.
“Farewell, then, my beloved village! The long straggling street, gay
and bright in this sunny, windy April morning, full of all implements
of dirt and noise—men, women, children, cows, horses, waggons, carts,
pigs, dogs, geese and chickens, busy, merry, stirring little world,
farewell! Farewell to the breezy common, with its islands of cottages
and cottage gardens, its oaken avenues populous with rooks; its clear
waters fringed with gorse, where lambs are straying; its cricket ground
where children already linger, anticipating their summer revelry; its
pretty boundary of field and woodland and distant farms; and latest
and best of its ornaments, the dear and pleasant mansion where dwell
the neighbours of neighbours, the friends of friends; farewell to ye
all! Ye will easily dispense with me, but what I shall do without you I
cannot imagine. Mine own dear village, farewell!”
[Illustration]