There is a great deal of admirable literature concerning Miss Mitford,
so much of it indeed, that the writer of this little notice feels as if
she almost owed an apology to those who remember, for having ventured to
write, on hearsay only, and without having ever known or ever seen
the author of 'Our Village.' And yet, so vivid is the homely friendly
presence, so clear the sound of that voice 'like a chime of bells,' with
its hospitable cheery greeting, that she can scarcely realise that this
acquaintance exists only in the world of the might-have-beens.
For people who are beginning to remember, rather than looking forward
any more, there certainly exists no more delightful reading than the
memoirs and stories of heroes and heroines, many of whom we ourselves
may have seen, and to whom we may have spoken. As we read on we are led
into some happy bygone region,--such as that one described by Mr. du
Maurier in 'Peter Ibbetson,'--a region in which we ourselves, together
with all our friends and acquaintances, grow young again;--very young,
very brisk, very hopeful. The people we love are there, along with the
people we remember. Music begins to play, we are dancing, laughing,
scampering over the country once more; our parents too are young and
laughing cheerily. Every now and then perhaps some old friend, also
vigorous and hopeful, bursts into the book, and begins to talk or to
write a letter; early sights and sounds return to us, we have NOW, and
we have THEN, in a pleasant harmony. To those of a certain literary
generation who read Miss Mitford's memoirs, how many such familiar
presences and names must appear and reappear. Not least among them
that of her biographer, Mr. Harness himself, who was so valued by his
friends. Mrs. Kemble, Mrs. Sartoris, Charles Allston Collins, always
talked of him with a great respect and tenderness. I used to think they
had a special voice with which to speak his name. He was never among
our intimate friends, but how familiar to my recollection are the
two figures, that of Mr. Harness and Miss Harness, his sister and
housekeeper, coming together along the busy Kensington roadway. The
brother and sister were like characters out of some book, with their
kind faces, their simple spiritual ways; in touch with so much that was
interesting and romantic, and in heart with so much that suffered. I
remember him with grey hair and a smile. He was not tall; he walked
rather lame; Miss Harness too was little, looking up at all the rest of
the world with a kind round face and sparkling eyes fringed with thick
lashes. Mary Mitford was indeed happy in her friends, as happy as she
was unfortunate in her nearer relations.
With much that is sad, there is a great deal of beauty and enjoyment in
Miss Mitford's life. For her the absence of material happiness was made
up for by the presence of warm-hearted sensibility, of enthusiasm, by
her devotion to her parents. Her long endurance and filial piety are
very remarkable, her loving heart carried her safely to the end, and she
found comfort in her unreasoning life's devotion. She had none of the
restlessness which is so apt to spoil much that might be harmonious;
all the charm of a certain unity and simplicity of motive is hers, 'the
single eye,' of which Charles Kingsley wrote so sweetly. She loved
her home, her trees, her surrounding lanes and commons. She loved her
friends. Her books and flowers are real and important events in her
life, soothing and distracting her from the contemplation of its
constant anxieties. 'I may truly say,' she once writes to Miss Barrett,
'that ever since I was a very young girl, I have never (although for
some years living apparently in affluence) been without pecuniary
care,--the care that pressed upon my thoughts the last thing at night,
and woke in the morning with a dreary sense of pain and pressure, of
something which weighed me to the earth.'
Mary Russell Mitford was born on the 16th of December 1787. She was the
only child of her parents, who were well connected; her mother was an
heiress. Her father belonged to the Mitfords of the North. She describes
herself as 'a puny child, with an affluence of curls which made her look
as if she were twin sister to her own great doll.' She could read at
three years old; she learnt the Percy ballads by heart almost before she
could read. Long after, she used to describe how she first studied her
beloved ballads in the breakfast-room lined with books, warmly spread
with its Turkey carpet, with its bright fire, easy chairs, and the
windows opening to a garden full of flowers,--stocks, honeysuckles, and
pinks. It is touching to note how, all through her difficult life,
her path was (literally) lined with flowers, and how the love of them
comforted and cheered her from the first to the very last. In her
saddest hours, the passing fragrance and beauty of her favourite
geraniums cheered and revived her. Even when her mother died she found
comfort in the plants they had tended together, and at the very last
breaks into delighted descriptions of them.
She was sent to school in the year 1798 to No. 22 Hans Place, to a Mrs.
St. Quintin's. It seems to have been an excellent establishment. Mary
learnt the harp and astronomy; her taste for literature was encouraged.
The young ladies, attired as shepherdesses, were also taught to skip
through many mazy movements, but she never distinguished herself as a
shepherdess. She had greater success in her literary efforts, and her
composition 'on balloons' was much applauded. She returned to her home
in 1802. 'Plain in figure and in face, she was never common-looking,'
says Mr. Harness. He gives a pretty description of her as 'no ordinary
child, her sweet smiles, her animated conversation, her keen enjoyment
of life, and her gentle voice won the love and admiration of her
friends, whether young or old.' Mr. Harness has chiefly told Miss
Mitford's story in her own words by quotations from her letters, and, as
one reads, one can almost follow her moods as they succeed each other,
and these moods are her real history. The assiduity of childhood, the
bright enthusiasm and gaiety of her early days, the growing anxiety of
her later life, the maturer judgments, the occasional despairing
terrors which came to try her bright nature, but along with it all, that
innocent and enduring hopefulness which never really deserted her. Her
elastic spirit she owed to her father, that incorrigible old Skimpole.
'I am generally happy everywhere,' she writes in her youth--and then
later on: 'It is a great pleasure to me to love and to admire, this is a
faculty which has survived many frosts and storms.' It is true that
she adds a query somewhere else, 'Did you ever remark how superior old
gaiety is to new?' she asks.
Her handsome father, her plain and long-enduring mother, are both
unconsciously described in her correspondence. 'The Doctor's manners
were easy, natural, cordial, and apparently extremely frank,' says Mr.
Harness, 'but he nevertheless met the world on its own terms, and was
prepared to allow himself any insincerity which seemed expedient. He was
not only recklessly extravagant, but addicted to high play. His wife's
large fortune, his daughter's, his own patrimony, all passed through his
hands in an incredibly short space of time, but his wife and daughter
were never heard to complain of his conduct, nor appeared to admire him
less.'
The story of Miss Mitford's 20,000 pounds is unique among the adventures
of authoresses. Dr. Mitford, having spent all his wife's fortune, and
having brought his family from a comfortable home, with flowers and a
Turkey carpet, to a small lodging near Blackfriars Bridge, determined to
present his daughter with an expensive lottery ticket on the occasion
of her tenth birthday. She had a fancy for No. 2224, of which the added
numbers came to 10. This number actually came out the first prize of
20,000 pounds, which money started the family once more in comparative
affluence. Dr. Mitford immediately built a new square house, which he
calls Bertram House, on the site of a pretty old farmhouse which he
causes to be pulled down. He also orders a dessert-service painted with
the Mitford arms; Mrs. Mitford is supplied with a carriage, and she
subscribes to a circulating library.
A list still exists of the books taken out by her for her daughter's
use; some fifty-five volumes a month, chiefly trash: 'Vicenza,' 'A
Sailor's Friendship and Soldier's Love,' 'Clarentina,' 'Robert and
Adela,' 'The Count de Valmont,' 'The Three Spaniards,' 'De Clifford' (in
four volumes) and so on.
The next two or three years were brilliant enough; for the family
must have lived at the rate of three or four thousand a year. Their
hospitality was profuse, they had servants, carriages, they bought
pictures and furniture, they entertained. Cobbett was among their
intimate friends. The Doctor naturally enough invested in a good many
more lottery tickets, but without any further return.
The ladies seem to take it as a matter of course that he should
speculate and gamble at cards, and indeed do anything and everything he
fancied, but they beg him at least to keep to respectable clubs. He is
constantly away. His daughter tries to tempt him home with the bloom of
her hyacinths. 'How they long to see him again!' she says, 'how greatly
have they been disappointed, when, every day, the journey to Reading has
been fruitless. The driver of the Reading coach is quite accustomed
to being waylaid by their carriage.' Then she tells him about the
primroses, but neither hyacinths nor primroses bring the Doctor away
from his cards. Finally, the rhododendrons and the azaleas are in bloom,
but these also fail to attract him.
Miss Mitford herself as she grows up is sent to London more than
once, to the St. Quintin's and elsewhere. She goes to the play and to
Westminster Hall, she sees her hero, Charles James Fox, and has the
happiness of watching him helped on to his horse. Mr. Romilly delights
her, but her greatest favourite of all is Mr. Whitbread. 'You know I am
always an enthusiast,' she writes, 'but at present it is impossible to
describe the admiration I feel for this exalted character.' She speaks
of his voice 'which she could listen to with transport even if he spoke
in an unknown language!' she writes a sonnet to him, 'an impromptu, on
hearing Mr. Whitbread declare in Westminster Hall that he fondly trusted
his name would descend to posterity.'
'The hope of Fame thy noble bosom fires,
Nor vain the hope thy ardent mind inspires;
In British breasts whilst Purity remains,
Whilst Liberty her blessed abode retains,
Still shall the muse of History proclaim
To future ages thy immortal name!'
There are many references to the celebrities of the time in her
letters home,--every one agrees as to the extreme folly of Sheridan's
entertainments, Mrs. Opie is spoken of as a rising authoress, etc. etc.
etc.
Miss Austen used to go to 23 Hans Place, and Miss Mitford used to stay
at No. 22, but not at the same time. Mrs. Mitford had known Miss Austen
as a child. She may perhaps be forgiven for some prejudice and maternal
jealousy, in her later impressions, but Mary Mitford admired Jane Austen
always with warmest enthusiasm. She writes to her mother at length from
London, describing everything, all the people and books and experiences
that she comes across,--the elegant suppers at Brompton, the Grecian
lamps, Mr. Barker's beauty, Mr. Plummer's plainness, and the destruction
of her purple gown.
Mrs. Mitford writes back in return describing Reading festivities, 'an
agreeable dinner at Doctor Valpy's, where Mrs. Women and Miss Peacock
are present and Mr. J. Simpson, M.P.; the dinner very good, two full
courses and one remove, the soup giving place to one quarter of lamb.'
Mrs. Mitford sends a menu of every dinner she goes to.
In 1806 Dr. Mitford takes his daughter, who was then about nineteen,
to the North to visit his relations; they are entertained by the
grandparents of the Trevelyans and the Swinburnes, the Ogles and the
Mitfords of the present day. They fish in Sir John Swinburne's lake,
they visit at Alnwick Castle. Miss Mitford kept her front hair in papers
till she reached Alnwick, nor was her dress discomposed though she had
travelled thirty miles. They sat down, sixty-five to dinner, which was
'of course' (she somewhat magnificently says) entirely served on plate.
Poor Mary's pleasure is very much dashed by the sudden disappearance
of her father,--Dr. Mitford was in the habit of doing anything he felt
inclined to do at once and on the spot, quite irrespectively of the
convenience of others,--and although a party had been arranged on
purpose to meet him in the North, and his daughter was counting on his
escort to return home, (people posted in those days, they did not take
their tickets direct from Newcastle to London), Dr. Mitford one morning
leaves word that he has gone off to attend the Reading election, where
his presence was not in the least required. For the first and apparently
for the only time in her life his daughter protests. 'Mr. Ogle is
extremely offended; nothing but your immediate return can ever excuse
you to him! I IMPLORE you to return, I call upon Mamma's sense of
propriety to send you here directly. Little did I suspect that my
father, my beloved father, would desert me at this distance from home!
Every one is surprised.' Dr. Mitford was finally persuaded to travel
back to Northumberland to fetch his daughter.
The constant companionship of Dr. Mitford must have given a curious
colour to his good and upright daughter's views of life. Adoring her
father as she did, she must have soon accustomed herself to take his
fine speeches for fine actions, to accept his self-complacency in the
place of a conscience. She was a woman of warm impressions, with a
strong sense of right. But it was not within her daily experience, poor
soul, that people who did not make grand professions were ready to do
their duty all the same; nor did she always depend upon the uprightness,
the courage, the self-denial of those who made no protestations. At that
time loud talking was still the fashion, and loud living was considered
romantic. They both exist among us, but they are less admired, and
there is a different language spoken now to that of Dr. Mitford and his
school. * This must account for some of Miss Mitford's judgments of what
she calls a 'cynical' generation, to which she did little justice.
*People nowadays are more ready to laugh than to admire when
they hear the lions bray; for mewing and bleating, the
taste, I fear, is on the increase.