December, 1787. She was the daughter of George Mitford, a physician of
good family, and Mary Russell, whose father had been rector of Ashe
and Tadley, and vicar of Overton. The little Mary Russell Mitford was
but four or five years old when the family removed from Alresford to
Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire; thence they went to London. Here occurred, on
Mary’s eleventh birthday, the famous incident of the lottery-ticket.
Dr. Mitford, reinforced in fortune by his daughter’s childish
persistence, next went to reside in Reading. “Mezza,” as her parents
called her, remained at school in Hans Place until 1802. About this
time Bertram House, a country residence at Grasely, near Reading, in
the improvement of which Dr. Mitford had freely expended the fairy gold
of the lottery, was at last ready for occupation. This was the home of
the Mitford family until 1820, when pecuniary embarrassments, caused
by the doctor’s extravagance and love of play, drove them to the now
famous cottage at Three Mile Cross.
She had already published several books of verse, which have been long
forgotten: _Miscellaneous Poems_, _Christina_, _Blanch of Castile_,
_Narrative Poems on Female Character_, and others. She speaks
disparagingly of one of these volumes in a letter to B. R. Haydon in
1819. “It was written when extreme youth and haste might apologize
for the incorrectness, the silliness, and the commonplace with which
it abounds, but I am afraid it has deficiencies which are worse than
any fault.” “You are aware, I hope,” she says in another letter, “that
all clever people begin by publishing bad poems.” She was now forced,
at thirty-three, to take up her pen in earnest. She worked steadily
both at plays and at the sketches collected in 1824 under the title,
OUR VILLAGE. In 1823 her first tragedy, _Julian_, was successfully
performed at Covent Garden, with Macready as the principal character.
_The Foscari_ appeared in 1826, and _Dramatic Scenes, Sonnets and Other
Poems_, in 1827. Towards the end of 1828, _Rienzi_ was produced at
Drury Lane, Charles Young enacting the hero. Miss Mitford is said to
have received £400 from the theatre, and to have sold eight thousand
copies of the play. Other works in this field were _Otto_, _Inez de
Castro_, and _Charles I_. In 1835 was published BELFORD REGIS, a sequel
to OUR VILLAGE, and in 1852, RECOLLECTIONS OF A LITERARY LIFE. In 1854
a novel, _Atherton_, appeared, and in the same year her dramatic works
were collected.
Mrs. Mitford had died in 1830, Dr. Mitford in 1842. In 1851 Miss
Mitford removed from Three Mile Cross to Swallowfield, where, on the
10th of January, 1855, she died. She had been ill for some time, never
having recovered from the shock of an accident that had occurred in
1853 while she was driving in a pony-chaise.
In reading the Life of Miss Mitford, which the Rev. Mr. L’Estrange has
compiled from her letters, it is interesting to mark the development
of her character by her misfortunes. The indolent, novel-devouring
young lady of Bertram House, with her school-girlish conceit, is a
far less lovable person than the self-sacrificing woman who toiled
uncomplainingly for a spend-thrift father in the cottage at Three Mile
Cross. As was said of her, on the occasion of her accident, by one of
her correspondents, she was “like mignonette, the sweeter the more it
is bruised.”
Her criticism was singularly capricious. For instance, she calmly
pronounced ‘Henry Esmond’ commonplace; the adjective recoils upon
her own work. Commonplace the latter is, but in the same pleasant
sense in which sweet fresh air, and primroses, and cowslips, and the
meadow-sweet she loved, are commonplace.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Precocity.]
In common with many only children, especially where the mother is of
a grave and home-loving nature, I learned to read at a very early
age. Before I was three years old my father would perch me on the
breakfast-table to exhibit my one accomplishment to some admiring
guest, who admired all the more, because, a small, puny child, looking
far younger than I really was, nicely dressed, as only children
generally are, and gifted with an affluence of curls, I might have
passed for the twin sister of my own great doll. On the table was
I perched to read some Foxite newspaper, ‘_Courier_,’ or ‘_Morning
Chronicle_,’ the Whiggish oracles of the day, and as my delight in the
high-seasoned politics of sixty years ago was naturally less than that
of my hearers, this display of precocious acquirement was commonly
rewarded, not by cakes or sugar-plums, too plentiful in my case to
be very greatly cared for, but by a sort of payment in kind. I read
leading articles to please the company; and my dear mother recited ‘The
Children in the Wood’ to please me. This was my reward; and I looked
for my favorite ballad after every performance just as the piping
bull-finch that hung in the window looked for his lump of sugar after
going through ‘God Save the King.’
[Sidenote: Early home.]
A pleasant home, in truth, it was. A large house in a little town
of the north of Hampshire--a town, so small that but for an ancient
market, very slenderly attended, nobody would have dreamt of calling
it anything but a village. The breakfast-room, where I first possessed
myself of my beloved ballads, was a lofty and spacious apartment,
literally lined with books, which, with its Turkey carpet, its glowing
fire, its sofas and its easy chairs, seemed, what indeed it was, a very
nest of English comfort. The windows opened on a large, old-fashioned
garden, full of old-fashioned flowers--stocks, roses, honeysuckles,
and pinks; and that again led into a grassy orchard, abounding with
fruit-trees, a picturesque country church with its yews and lindens
on one side, and beyond, a down as smooth as velvet, dotted with rich
islands of coppice, hazel, woodbine, hawthorn and holly reaching up
into the young oaks, and overhanging flowery patches of primroses,
wood-sorrel, wild hyacinths, and wild strawberries. On the side
opposite the church, in a hollow fringed with alders and bulrushes,
gleamed the bright clear lakelet, radiant with swans and water-lilies,
which the simple townsfolk were content to call the Great Pond.
What a play-ground was that orchard! and what playfellows were mine!
Nancy [the maid], with her trim prettiness, my own dear father,
handsomest and cheerfullest of men, and the great Newfoundland dog Coe,
who used to lie down at my feet, as if to invite me to mount him, and
then to prance off with his burden, as if he enjoyed the fun as much
as we did. Happy, happy days! It is good to have the memory of such a
childhood!
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: ‘Recollections of a Literary Life.’ New York:
Harper & Bros., 1852.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her play-mate.]
[Sidenote: Mary at six.]
One of William Harness’s earliest friends--born at Alresford, in the
same woodland district--was Mary Russell Mitford. Their families had
long been connected: Dr. Harness gave away Miss Russell, who became
Miss Mitford’s mother; and it was here that the future authoress passed
those happy days--her earliest years were her happiest--to which
she reverted with such fond remembrance in after life. Here, in the
spacious library, lined with her grandfather Russell’s books, or in
the old-fashioned garden, among the stocks and holly-hocks, she and
little William would chase away the summer hours, until the time when
the carriage arrived, which was to carry her playmate back to Wickham.
A picture taken when she was about six years old enables us to form
some idea of her at this time. It represents her with her hair cut
short across her forehead, and flowing down at the back in long glossy
ringlets, while in her face there is a sedateness and gravity beyond
her years, such as we might expect to find in a young lady devoted to
study, and celebrated for early feats of memory.
REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness.’
London: Hurst & Blackett, 1871.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A spoilt child.]
Most undoubtedly I was a spoilt child. Everybody spoilt me, most of all
the person whose power in that way was greatest, the dear papa himself.
Not content with spoiling me indoors he spoilt me out. How well I
remember his carrying me round the orchard on his shoulder, holding
fast my little three-year old feet, while the little hands hung on to
his pigtail, which I called my bridle, ... hung so fast, and tugged so
heartily, that sometimes the ribbon would come off between my fingers,
and send his hair floating, and the powder flying down his back. That
climax of mischief was the crowning joy of all.
Nor were these my only rides. This dear papa of mine, whose gay and
careless temper all the professional _etiquette_ of the world could
never tame into the staid gravity proper to a doctor of medicine,
happened to be a capital horseman; and abandoning the close carriage,
which, at that time, was the regulation conveyance of a physician,
almost wholly to my mother, used to pay his country visits on a
favorite blood-mare, whose extreme docility and gentleness tempted
him, after certain short trials round our old course, the orchard,
into having a pad constructed, perched upon which I might occasionally
accompany him, when the weather was favorable, and the distance not too
great. Very delightful were those rides across the breezy Hampshire
downs on a sunny summer morning; and grieved was I when a change of
residence from a small town to a large one, and going among people
who did not know our ways, put an end to this perfectly harmless, if
somewhat unusual pleasure.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: ‘Recollections of a Literary Life.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The lottery ticket.]
On her tenth birthday Dr. Mitford took the child to a lottery-office,
and bade her select a ticket. She determined--guided, to all
appearance, by one of the unaccountable whims of childhood--that she
would have none other than the number 2,224. Some difficulty attended
the purchase of the coveted number, but the little lottery patroness
had her way at last, and on the day of drawing there fell to the lot
of the happy holder of ticket No. 2,224 a prize of £20,000. Alas! the
holder of the fortunate ticket was happy only in name. By the time his
daughter was a woman, there remained to Dr. Mitford, of all his lottery
adventure had brought him, a Wedgwood dinner service with the family
crest!
S. C. HALL: _Note in_ ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’ New York: D.
Appleton & Co., 1883.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: At school.]
We find the doctor, about the year 1797, residing at Reading, with his
phaeton, his spaniels and his greyhounds, and enjoying his good-fortune
with all his wonted hilarity of spirit, prodigality of expense, and
utter want of consideration for the future.... His daughter was at
this time at school in Hans Place--a small square into which you turn
on the right hand out of Sloane Street, as you go from Knightsbridge
to Chelsea.... Once fairly entered at M. St. Quintin’s school, Mary
Russell Mitford seems to have applied herself, with all her heart
and mind, to learn whatever the masters and mistresses were prepared
to teach her. French, Italian, history, geography, astronomy, music,
singing, drawing, dancing, were not enough to satisfy her eager thirst
for instruction: and we find her informing her mother that she intended
to learn Latin.... Excepting music, there was no branch of education
within her reach at the Hans Place School which she was not zealous
and successful in the pursuit of; but in that accomplishment she took
little pleasure. She never at any time of her life showed much taste or
feeling for it.
Like so very many precocious children, she was of a scrofulous
temperament, and had suffered much from illness in her infancy. In
person she was short for her age; and, there is no possibility of
evading the word by any gentle synonym or extenuating periphrasis, she
was, in sincere truth and very plain English, decidedly fat. Her face,
of which the expression was kind, gentle, and intelligent, ought to
have been handsome, for the features were all separately good and like
her father’s, but from some almost imperceptible disproportion, and
the total change of coloring, the beauty had evanesced. But although
very plain in figure and in face, she was never common-looking. She
showed in her countenance and in her mild self-possession, that she was
no ordinary child; and with her sweet smile, her gentle temper, her
animated conversation, her keen enjoyment of life, and her incomparable
voice, there were few of the prettiest children of her age who won so
much love and admiration from their friends, whether young or old, as
little Mary Mitford. And except, indeed, that her hair became white at
an early age, few persons, it may be added, in passing through so many
vicissitudes of life, ever altered so little, either in character or
appearance.
[Sidenote: Home life after leaving school.]
Her delight in the sports of the field was no more than a sympathetic
affection of her father’s pleasure. It was theoretical and not
practical. She was no horsewoman. She was capable of very little
exercise beyond a modest walk.... She remained at home and received
visits. She went out in the green chariot with her mother and returned
them. They drove into Reading after their visits were all paid to do
their shopping and hear if there were any news, or rather to pick up
the present gossip of the neighborhood; and when these affairs were
dispatched, and they found themselves again at home, the daughter would
lie for hours together on a sofa, with her dog by her side, reading
anything--good, bad, or indifferent, which came to hand, guided by
chance or fancy, without any apparent attempt at selection. The number
of books she read is almost incredible.... Undoubtedly the young
lady must have consumed a great deal of trash; but there are some
constitutions with which nothing seems to disagree; and probably there
was none of these works from which she did not derive some advantage.
If she met with nothing good to imitate, she at least learned to see
what was bad and to be avoided.
REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Life of Mary Russell Mitford.’ London: Richard
Bentley, 1870.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Favorite exercise.]
The exercise which I do dearly love is to be whirled along fast, fast,
fast, by a blood-horse in a gig; this under a bright sun, with a brisk
wind full in my face, is my highest notion of physical pleasure; even
walking is not so exhilarating.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s
‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Favorite idleness.]
But reading is my favorite mode of idleness. I like it better than any
of my play-works, better than fir-coning, better than violeting, better
than working gowntails, better than playing with Miranda (her dog),
better than feeding the white kitten, better than riding in a gig,
better than anything except that other pet idleness, talking (that is
to say _writing_) to you.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in ‘Life,’ by
L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Letters.]
I am inclined to think that her correspondence, so full of point in
allusions, so full of anecdote and recollections, will be considered
among her finest writings. Her criticisms, not always the wisest, were
always piquant and readable. She had such a charming humor and her
style was so delightful, that her friendly notes had a relish about
them quite their own.
JAMES T. FIELDS: ‘Yesterdays With Authors.’ Boston: James R. Osgood &
Co., 1872.
* * * * *
Soon after his friend’s death, Mr. Harness commenced the task of
looking through her letters, but he found the work much more arduous
than he had anticipated. Although her habits were in every respect
frugal, her favorite economy seemed to be in paper. Her letters
were scribbled on innumerable small scraps--sometimes on printed
circulars--sometimes across engravings--and half a dozen of these would
form one epistle and in course of time become confused and interchanged
in their envelopes. When we add to this that toward the end of her life
Miss Mitford’s handwriting became almost microscopic, it can be easily
understood that the arrangement of these sibylline leaves was no short
or easy undertaking.
REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Literary Life of the Rev. William Harness.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Handwriting.]
There are intelligent persons who make a living out of their
fellow-creatures by pretending to read character in hand-writing. What
would they make, I wonder, out of this delicate, microscopic writing,
looking as if it were done with a stylus, and without blot or flaw? The
paper is all odds and ends, and not a scrap of it but is covered and
crossed; the very flaps of the envelopes, and even the outside of them,
having their message. The reason of this is that the writer had lived
in a time when postage was very dear; like Southey, she used to boast
that she could send more for her money by post than any one else; and
when the necessity no longer existed, the custom remained. How, at her
age, her eyes could read what she herself had written used to puzzle me.
JAMES PAYN: ‘Some Literary Recollections.’ New York: Harper & Bros.,
1884.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her dog “Moss Trooper.”]
He was the greatest darling that ever lived.... He was a large black
dog, of the largest and strongest kind of greyhounds; very fast and
honest and resolute past example; an excellent killer of hares, and
a most magnificent and noble-looking creature. His coat was of the
finest and most glossy black, with no white, except a very little
under his feet (pretty white shoelings, I used to call them)--little
beautiful white spot, quite small, in the very middle of his neck,
between his chin and his breast--and a white mark on his bosom. His
face was singularly beautiful; the finest black eyes, very bright, and
yet sweet, and fond and tender--eyes that seemed to speak; a beautiful,
complacent mouth, which used sometimes to show one of the long, white
teeth at the side; a jet-black nose; a brow which was bent and flexible
... and gave great sweetness of expression, and a look of thought to
his dear face. There never was such a dog! His temper was, beyond
comparison, the sweetest ever known. Nobody ever saw him out of humor.
And his sagacity was equal to his temper.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: Quoted in her ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her dog “May Flower.”]
We have a greyhound, called May Flower, of excelling grace and
symmetry--just of the color of the May blossom--like marble with the
sun upon it; and she kills every hare she sees--takes them up in the
middle of the back, brings them in her mouth to my father, and lays
them down at his feet. I assure you she is quite a study while bringing
the hares--the fine contrast of color--her beautiful position, head
and tail up, and her long neck arched like that of a swan--with the
shade shifting upon her beautiful limbs, and her black eyes really
emitting light!
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s
‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Pleasure in a glow-worm.]
Did you ever see a glow-worm half way up a high tree? We did last
night. It was a tall elm, stripped of large branches almost to the top,
as the fashion is in this country, but the trunk clothed with little
green twigs, upon one of which the glow-worm hung like a lamp, looking
so beautiful!
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s
‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Love of field flowers.]
In truth, nothing can be more vulgar than my taste in flowers, for
which I have a passion. I like scarcely any but the common ones.
First and best I love violets, and primroses, and cowslips, and wood
anemones, and the whole train of field flowers; then roses of every
kind and color, especially the great cabbage rose; then the blossoms of
the lilac and laburnum, the horse-chestnut, the asters, the jasmine,
and the honeysuckle; and to close the list, lilies of the valley, sweet
peas, and the red pinks which are found in cottagers’ gardens. This is
my confession of faith.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s
‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Pet robin.]
All this warm weather I sit out of doors in the plantations; just on
one side of my seat is a filbert tree, the branches of which spread
quite across my feet, and on these branches every day comes a young
red-breast. First of all he appeared at a distance, then he came
nearer, then he came close home, and now, the moment I call “Bobby,”
he comes.... He comes on my feet and my gown, feeds almost on my hand
(not quite), and has by example tamed his papa and one or two of his
brothers and sisters, who come like him and feed from a board on the
tree, quite close to me; but they do not, like my own Bobby, come when
they are called. Is this usual in the summer? I know they are tame
in the winter; but this is quite a young bird--has never known cold
or hunger. He had not a red feather in his breast a fortnight ago.
He likes very much to be talked to, in a soft, monotonous, caressing
tone--“Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!”--and turns his little head in the
prettiest attitudes of listening that you can imagine, and generally
finishes by taking two or three flights across me, so close as almost
to touch my face.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s
‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Dogs and geraniums, in later life.]
Her dogs and her geraniums 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.
JAMES T. FIELDS: ‘Yesterdays with Authors.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Removal from Bertram House.]
The last days of March, 1820, were employed in removing from the home
which they had occupied for nearly twenty years, at first in affluence
and comfort, but latterly with a severe economy, and a constant
struggle against encroaching ruin. Every visit of the doctor to London
was followed by some fresh privation to his wife and daughter. Within
six years of the completion of Bertram House--so early as 1808--great
reductions had been required in the establishment. The servant out
of livery had been dispensed with. There had ceased to be any lady’s
maid. The footman had degenerated into an awkward lad, who was not only
expected to wait at table and go out with the carriage, but to make
himself useful in the stable or the garden. The carriage horses were
employed on the work of the farm.... By and by Mrs. Mitford is harassed
by difficulties in obtaining remittances for the moderate expenses of
her diminished household. Tradesmen refuse to serve the house with the
common requirements of the family till previous accounts are settled.
On several occasions they are at a loss whence to procure food for the
greyhounds, and once Mrs. Mitford writes imploringly to the doctor,
with the greatest earnestness, but without the slightest intimation of
reproach, requesting him to send her a _one pound note_ by return of
post, as they are actually in want of bread.... And who was the author
of this distress? The father alone. The wife, by the most careful
management and self-denial; the daughter, by her literary industry;
were doing every thing in their power to lighten its pressure and ward
off its fall. It was the sole work of the husband. The cause of all
this misery was the doctor’s love of play, and its concomitant dabbling
in gambling speculations.
REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘Life of Mary Russell Mitford.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Character of Dr. Mitford.]