When one turns from Miss Mitford's works to the notices in the
biographical dictionary (in which Miss Mitford and Mithridates occupy
the same page), one finds how firmly her reputation is established.
'Dame auteur,' says my faithful mentor, the Biographic Generale,
'consideree comme le peintre le plus fidele de la vie rurale en
Angleterre.' 'Author of a remarkable tragedy, "Julian," in which
Macready played a principal part, followed by "Foscari," "Rienzi," and
others,' says the English Biographical Dictionary.
'I am charmed with my new cottage,' she writes soon after her last
installation; 'the neighbours are most kind.' Kingsley was one of
the first to call upon her. 'He took me quite by surprise in his
extraordinary fascination,' says the old lady.
Mr. Fields, the American publisher, also went to see Miss Mitford at
Swallowfield, and immediately became a very great ally of hers. It was
to him that she gave her own portrait, by Lucas. Mr. Fields has left an
interesting account of her in his 'Yesterdays with Authors'--'Her dogs
and her geraniums,' he says, 'were her great glories! She used to write
me long letters about Fanchon, a dog whose personal acquaintance I had
made some time before, while on a visit to her cottage. Every virtue
under heaven she attributed to that canine individual; and I was obliged
to allow in my return letters that since our planet began to spin,
nothing comparable to Fanchon had ever run on four legs. I had
also known Flush, the ancestor of Fanchon, intimately, and had been
accustomed to hear wonderful things of that dog, but Fanchon had graces
and genius unique. Miss Mitford would have joined with Hamerton, when he
says, 'I humbly thank Divine Providence for having invented dogs, and I
regard that man with wondering pity who can lead a dogless life.'
Another of Miss Mitford's great friends was John Ruskin,* and one can
well imagine how much they must have had in common. Of Miss Mitford's
writings Ruskin says, 'They have the playfulness and purity of the
"Vicar of Wakefield" without the naughtiness of its occasional wit, or
the dust of the world's great road on the other side of the hedge.... '
*It is Mr. Harness who says, writing of Ruskin and Miss Mitford, 'His
kindness cheered her closing days. He sent her every book that would
interest, every delicacy that would strengthen her.'
Neither the dust nor the ethics of the world of men quite belonged to
Miss Mitford's genius. It is always a sort of relief to turn from her
criticism of people, her praise of Louis Napoleon, her facts about Mr.
Dickens, whom she describes as a dull companion, or about my father,
whom she looked upon as an utter heartless worldling, to the natural
spontaneous sweet flow of nature in which she lived and moved
instinctively.
Mr. James Payn gives, perhaps, the most charming of all the descriptions
of the author of 'Our Village.' He has many letters from her to quote
from. 'The paper is all odds and ends,' he says, 'and not a scrap of
it but is covered and crossed. The very flaps of the envelopes and the
outsides of them have their message.'
Mr. Payn went to see her at Swallowfield, and describes the small
apartment lined with books from floor to ceiling and fragrant with
flowers. 'Its tenant rose from her arm-chair with difficulty, but with a
sunny smile and a charming manner bade me welcome. My father had been
an old friend of hers, and she spoke of my home and belongings as only a
woman can speak of such things, then we plunged into medea res, into men
and books. She seemed to me to have known everybody worth knowing from
the Duke of Wellington to the last new verse-maker. And she talked like
an angel, but her views upon poetry as a calling in life, shocked me
not a little. She said she preferred a mariage de convenance to a love
match, because it generally turned out better. "This surprises you," she
said, smiling, "but then I suppose I am the least romantic person that
ever wrote plays." She was much more proud of her plays, even then
well-nigh forgotten, than of the works by which she was well known,
and which at that time brought people from the ends of the earth to see
her....
'Nothing ever destroyed her faith in those she loved. If I had not known
all about him from my own folk I should have thought her father had been
a patriot and a martyr. She spoke of him as if there had never been such
a father--which in a sense was true.'
Mr. Payn quotes Miss Mitford's charming description of K., 'for whom
she had the highest admiration.' 'K. is a great curiosity, by far the
cleverest woman in these parts, not in a literary way [this was not to
disappoint me], but in everything that is useful. She could make a Court
dress for a duchess or cook a dinner for a Lord Mayor, but her principal
talent is shown in managing everybody whom she comes near. Especially
her husband and myself; she keeps the money of both and never allows
either of us to spend sixpence without her knowledge.... You should see
the manner in which she makes Ben reckon with her, and her contempt for
all women who do not manage their husbands.'
Another delightful quotation is from one of Charles Kingsley's letters
to Mr. Payn. It brings the past before us from another point of view.
'I can never forget the little figure rolled up in two chairs in the
little Swallowfield room, packed round with books up to the ceiling--the
little figure with clothes on of no recognised or recognisable pattern;
and somewhere, out of the upper end of the heap, gleaming under a great
deep globular brow, two such eyes as I never perhaps saw in any other
Englishwoman--though I believe she must have had French blood in her
veins to breed such eyes and such a tongue, the beautiful speech which
came out of that ugly (it was that) face, and the glitter and depth too
of the eyes, like live coals--perfectly honest the while....' One would
like to go on quoting and copying, but here my preface must cease, for
it is but a preface after all, one of those many prefaces written out of
the past and when everything is over.