'Are your characters and descriptions true?' somebody once asked our
authoress. 'Yes, yes, yes, as true, as true as is well possible,' she
answers. 'You, as a great landscape painter, know that in painting a
favourite scene you do a little embellish and can't help it; you avail
yourself of happy accidents of atmosphere; if anything be ugly you
strike it out, or if anything be wanting, you put it in. But still the
picture is a likeness.'
So wrote Miss Mitford, but with all due respect for her and for Sir
William Elford, the great landscape painter, I cannot help thinking
that what is admirable in her book, are not her actual descriptions
and pictures of intelligent villagers and greyhounds, but the more
imaginative things; the sense of space and nature and progress which she
knows how to convey; the sweet and emotional chord she strikes with so
true a touch. Take at hazard her description of the sunset. How simple
and yet how finely felt it is. Her genuine delight reaches us and
carries us along; it is not any embellishing of effects, or exaggeration
of facts, but the reality of a true and very present feeling... 'The
narrow line of clouds which a few minutes ago lay like long vapouring
streaks along the horizon, now lighted with a golden splendour, that the
eye can scarcely endure; those still softer clouds which floated above,
wreathing and curling into a thousand fantastic forms as thin and
changeful as summer smoke, defined and deepened into grandeur, and
hedged with ineffable, insufferable light. Another minute and the
brilliant orb totally disappears and the sky above grows, every moment,
more varied and more beautiful, as the dazzling golden lines are mixed
with glowing red and gorgeous purple, dappled with small dark specks,
and mingled with such a blue as the egg of the hedge-sparrow.... To
look up at that glorious sky, and then to see that magnificent picture
reflected in the clear and lovely Loddon water, is a pleasure never to
be described, and never to be forgotten. My heart swells, and my eyes
fill as I write of it, and think of the immeasurable majesty of nature
and the unspeakable goodness of God, who has spread an enjoyment so
pure, so peaceful, and so intense before the meanest and lowliest of His
creatures.'
But it is needless now to go on praising 'Our Village,' or to recount
what a success was in store for the little book. Certain books hold
their own by individual right and might; they are part of everybody's
life as a matter of course. They are not always read, but they tacitly
take their place among us. The editions succeeded editions here and in
America; artists came down to illustrate the scenes. Miss Mitford, who
was so delighted with the drawings by Mr. Baxter, should have lived to
see the charming glimpses of rural life we owe to Mr. Thomson. 'I don't
mind 'em,' says Lizzy to the cows, as they stand with spirited bovine
grace behind the stable door. 'Don't mind them indeed!'
I think the author would assuredly have enjoyed the picture of the
baker, the wheelwright and the shoemaker, each following his special
Alderney along the road to the village, or of the farmer driving his old
wife in the gig.... One design, that of the lady in her pattens, comes
home to the writer of these notes, who has perhaps the distinction of
being the only authoress now alive who has ever walked out in
pattens. At the age of seven years she was provided with a pair by a
great-great-aunt, a kind old lady living at Fareham, in Hampshire,
where they were still in use. How interesting the little circles looked
stamped upon the muddy road, and how nearly down upon one's nose one was
at every other step!
But even with all her success, Miss Mitford was not out of her troubles.
She writes to Mr. Harness saying: 'You cannot imagine how perplexed I
am. There are points in my domestic situation too long and too painful
to write about; the terrible improvidence of one dear parent, the
failure of memory and decay of faculty in that other who is still
dearer, cast on me a weight of care and fear that I can hardly bear up
against.' Her difficulties were unending. The new publisher now stopped
payment, so that even 'Our Village' brought in no return for the moment;
Charles Kemble was unable to make any offer for 'Foscari.' She went up
to town in the greatest hurry to try and collect some of the money owing
to her from her various publishers, but, as Mr. Harness says, received
little from her debtors beyond invitations and compliments. She
meditates a novel, she plans an opera, 'Cupid and Psyche.'
At last, better times began to dawn, and she receives 150 pounds down
for a new novel and ten guineas from Blackwood as a retaining fee. Then
comes a letter from Charles Kemble giving her new hope, for her tragedy,
which was soon afterwards produced at Covent Garden.
The tragedies are in tragic English, of course that language of the
boards, but not without a simplicity and music of their own. In the
introduction to them, in some volumes published by Hurst and Blacket in
1854, Miss Mitford describes 'the scene of indescribable chaos preceding
the performance, the vague sense of obscurity and confusion; tragedians,
hatted and coated, skipping about, chatting and joking; the only very
grave person being Liston himself. Ballet-girls walking through their
quadrilles to the sound of a solitary fiddle, striking up as if of its
own accord, from amid the tall stools and music-desks of the orchestra,
and piercing, one hardly knew how, through the din that was going on
incessantly. Oh, that din! Voices from every part; above, below, around,
and in every key. Heavy weights rolling here and falling there.
Bells ringing, one could not tell why, and the ubiquitous call-boy
everywhere.'
She describes her astonishment when the play succeeds. 'Not that I had
nerve enough to attend the first representation of my tragedies. I
sat still and trembling in some quiet apartment near, and thither some
friend flew to set my heart at ease. Generally the messenger of good
tidings was poor Haydon, whose quick and ardent spirit lent him wings on
such an occasion.'
We have the letter to her mother about 'Foscari,' from which I have
quoted; and on the occasion of the production of 'Rienzi' at Drury Lane
(two years later in October 1828), the letter to Sir William Elford
when the poor old mother was no longer here to rejoice in her daughter's
success.
Miss Mitford gratefully records the sympathy of her friends, the
warm-hearted muses of the day. Mrs. Trollope, Miss Landon, Miss
Edgeworth, Miss Porden, Mrs. Hofland, Mrs. Opie, who all appear with
their congratulations.
Miss Mitford says that Haydon, above all, sympathised with her love for
a large canvas. The Classics, Spain, Italy, Mediaeval Rome, these are
her favourite scenes and periods. Dukes and tribunes were her heroes;
daggers, dungeons, and executioners her means of effects.
She moralises very sensibly upon Dramatic success. 'It is not,' she
says, 'so delicious, so glorious, so complete a gratification as, in our
secret longings, we all expect. It does not fill the heart,--it is an
intoxication followed by a dismal reaction.' She tells a friend that
never in all her life was she so depressed and out of spirits as after
'Rienzi,' her first really successful venture. But there is also
a passing allusion to her father's state of mind, to his mingled
irritation and sulkiness, which partly explains things. Could it be
that the Doctor added petty jealousy and envy to his other inconvenient
qualities? His intolerance for any author or actor, in short, for any
one not belonging to a county family, his violent annoyance at any
acquaintances such as those which she now necessarily made, would
naturally account for some want of spirits on the daughter's part;
overwrought, over-taxed, for ever on the strain, her work was exhausting
indeed. The small pension she afterwards obtained from the Civil List
must have been an unspeakable boon to the poor harassed woman.
Tragedy seems to have resulted in a substantial pony and a basket
carriage for Miss Mitford, and in various invitations (from the
Talfourds, among the rest) during which she is lionised right and left.
It must have been on this occasion that Serjeant Talfourd complained so
bitterly of a review of 'Ion' which appeared about that time. His guest,
to soothe him, unwarily said, 'she should not have minded such a review
of HER Tragedy.'
'YOUR "Rienzi," indeed! I should think not,' says the serjeant. '"Ion"
is very different.' The Talfourd household, as it is described by Mr.
Lestrange, is a droll mixture of poetry and prose, of hospitality, of
untidiness, of petulance, of most genuine kindness and most genuine
human nature.
There are also many mentions of Miss Mitford in the 'Life of Macready'
by Sir F. Pollock. The great tragedian seems not to have liked her
with any cordiality; but he gives a pleasant account of a certain
supper-party in honour of 'Ion' at which she is present, and during
which she asks Macready if he will not now bring out her tragedy. The
tragedian does not answer, but Wordsworth, sitting by, says, 'Ay, keep
him to it.'