We went down to Reading the other day, as so many of Miss Mitford's
friends have done before, to look at 'our village' with our own eyes,
and at the cottage in which she lived for so long. A phaeton with a
fast-stepping horse met us at the station and whirled us through the
busy town and along the straight dusty road beyond it. As we drove along
in the soft clouded sunshine I looked over the hedges on either side,
and I could see fields and hedgerows and red roofs clustering here
and there, while the low background of blue hills spread towards the
horizon. It was an unpretentious homely prospect intercepted each minute
by the detestable advertisement hoardings recommending this or that
rival pill. 'Tongues in trees' indeed, in a very different sense from
the exiled duke's experience! Then we come within sight of the running
brook, uncontaminated as yet; the river flowing cool and swift, without
quack medicines stamped upon its waters: we reach Whitley presently,
with its pretty gabled hostel (Mrs. Mitford used to drive to Whitley and
back for her airing), the dust rises on the fresh keen wind, the scent
of the ripe corn is in the air, the cows stoop under the elm trees,
looking exactly as they do in Mr. Thomson's pretty pictures, dappled
and brown, with delicate legs and horns. We pass very few people, a baby
lugged along in its cart, and accompanied by its brothers and sisters;
a fox-terrier comes barking at our wheels; at last the phaeton stops
abruptly between two or three roadside houses, and the coachman,
pointing with his whip, says, 'That is "The Mitford," ma'am.--That's
where Miss Mitford used to live!'
Was that all? I saw two or three commonplace houses skirting the dusty
road, I saw a comfortable public-house with an elm tree, and beside it
another grey unpretentious little house, with a slate roof and square
walls, and an inscription, 'The Mitford,' painted over the doorway....
I had been expecting I knew not what; a spire, a pump, a green, a
winding street: my preconceived village in the air had immediately to be
swept into space, and in its stead, behold the inn with its sign-post,
and these half-dozen brick tenements, more or less cut to one square
pattern! So this was all! this was 'our village' of which the author
had written so charmingly! These were the sights the kind eyes had dwelt
upon, seeing in them all, the soul of hidden things, rather than dull
bricks and slates. Except for one memory, Three Mile Cross would seem to
be one of the dullest and most uninteresting of country places....
But we have Miss Mitford's own description. 'The Cross is not a borough,
thank Heaven, either rotten or independent. The inhabitants are quiet,
peaceable people who would not think of visiting us, even if we had a
knocker to knock at. Our residence is a cottage' (she is writing to
her correspondent, Sir William Elford), 'no, not a cottage, it does not
deserve the name--a messuage or tenement such as a little farmer who had
made 1400 pounds might retire to when he left off business to live on
his means. It consists of a series of closets, the largest of which may
be about eight feet square, which they call parlours and kitchens
and pantries, some of them minus a corner, which has been unnaturally
filched for a chimney, others deficient in half a side, which has been
truncated by a shelving roof. Behind is a garden about the size of a
good drawing-room, with an arbour, which is a complete sentry-box of
privet. On one side a public-house, on the other a village shop, and
right opposite a cobbler's stall. Notwithstanding all this "the cabin,"
as Boabdil says, "is convenient." It is within reach of my dear old
walks, the banks where I find my violets, the meadows full of cowslips,
and the woods where the woodsorrel blows.... Papa has already had the
satisfaction of setting the neighbourhood to rights and committing a
disorderly person who was the pest of "The Cross" to Bridewell....
Mamma has furbished up an old dairy; I have lost my only key and stuffed
the garden with flowers....' So writes the contented young woman.
How much more delightful is all this than any commonplace stagey effect
of lattice and gable; and with what pleasant unconscious art the writer
of this letter describes what is NOT there and brings in her banks of
violets to perfume the dull rooms. The postscript to this letter is Miss
Mitford all over. 'Pray excuse my blots and interlineations. They have
been caused by my attention being distracted by a nightingale in full
song who is pouring a world of music through my window.'
'Do you not like to meet with good company in your friends' hearts?'
Miss Mitford says somewhere,--to no one better than to herself does this
apply. Her heart was full of gracious things, and the best of company
was ever hers, 'La fleur de la hotte,' as Madame de Sevigne says.
We walked into the small square hall where Dr. Mitford's bed was
established after his illness, whilst visitors and all the rest of the
household came and went through the kitchen door. In the parlour,
once kept for his private use, now sat a party of homely friends from
Reading, resting and drinking tea: we too were served with smoking cups,
and poured our libation to her who once presided in the quiet place; and
then the landlady took us round and about, showed us the kitchen with
its comfortable corners and low window-frames--'I suppose this is
scarcely changed at all?' said one of us.
'Oh yes, ma'am,' says the housekeeper--'WE uses a Kitchener, Miss
Mitford always kept an open range.'
The garden, with its sentry-box of privet, exists no longer; an iron
mission-room stands in its place, with the harmonium, the rows of straw
chairs, the table and the candlesticks de circonstance. Miss Mitford's
picture hangs on the wall, a hand-coloured copy of one of her portraits.
The kindly homely features smile from the oils, in good humour and
attentive intelligence. The sentiment of to-day is assuredly to be found
in the spirit of things rather than in their outward signs.... Any one
of us can feel the romance of a wayside shrine put up to the memory of
some mediaeval well-dressed saint with a nimbus at the back of her
head, and a trailing cloak and veil.... Here, after all, is the same
sentiment, only translated into nineteenth-century language; uses
corrogated iron sheds, and cups of tea, and oakum matting. 'Mr. Palmer,
he bought the place,' says the landlady, 'he made it into a Temperance
Hotel, and built the Temperance Hall in the garden.'....
No romantic marble shrine, but a square meeting-house of good intent,
a tribute not less sincere because it is square, than if it were drawn
into Gothic arch and curve. It speaks, not of a holy and mythical saint,
but of a good and warm-hearted woman; of a life-long penance borne with
charity and cheerfulness; of sweet fancies and blessings which have
given innocent pleasure to many generations!