that Miss Mitford’s father was “a jovial, stick-at-nothing, fox-hunting
squire of the three-bottle class,”--a tolerably correct description,
if we substitute “coursing” for “fox-hunting,” and “doctor” for
“squire.”... It appears from incidental notices that he had a keen
relish for fine wine, and that indulgence in it did not invariably make
him the better. Miss Mitford, no doubt, owed to him much of her natural
buoyancy of spirit, and some of her predilection for country pursuits
and for the canine race, of which greyhounds were his favorites.
Children and dogs loved him, and so did others who did not understand
him, or refused to see his faults. Women have generally represented
Dr. Mitford as amiable and pleasant; there was something cheering and
hearty in his familiarity. The character is not uncommon; he was one
of those good-looking, profligate spendthrifts, who, reckless of
consequences, bring misery upon their families and remain dear to their
mothers and daughters.... Dr. Mitford often did kind actions, which it
is unfair to ignore; he seems even to have had some sort of generosity,
and the ease with which he parted with his money was one of his most
unfortunate weaknesses. But Miss Mitford’s appreciation of her father
was mostly due to filial devotion. Never was affection more severely
tried. She had to see thousands, seventy thousand pounds, passing out
of his careless hands until he became dependent upon the small pittance
she could earn by arduous literary labor.
REV. A. G. L’ESTRANGE: ‘The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford.’ New
York: Harper & Bros., 1882.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Cottage at Three Mile Cross.]
Our residence is a cottage--no, not a cottage--it does not deserve the
name--a messuage or tenement, such as a little farmer who had made
twelve or fourteen hundred 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
parlors, 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 the shelving roof. Behind is a
garden about the size of a good drawing-room, with an arbor 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 Bobadil 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
wood-sorrel blows.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, April 8, 1820; in
the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
I have grown exceedingly fond of this little place. Did I ever
tell you I disliked it? I love it of all things--have taken root
completely--could be content to live and die here. To be sure the rooms
are of the smallest. I, in our little parlor, look something like a
black-bird in a goldfinch’s cage--but it is so snug and comfortable.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, June 21, 1820; in
the former’s ‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The cottage garden.]
My little garden is a perfect rosary--the greenest and most blossomy
nook that ever the sun shone upon. It is almost shut in by buildings;
one a long open shed, very pretty, a sort of a rural arcade, where
we sit. On the other side is an old granary, to which we mount by
outside wooden steps, also very pretty. Then, there is an opening to
a little court, also backed by buildings, but with room enough to let
in the sunshine, the north-west sunshine that comes aslant in summer
evenings, through and under a large elder tree. One end is closed
by our pretty irregular cottage, which, as well as the granary, is
covered by cherry trees, vines, roses, jessamine, honeysuckle, and
grand spires of hollyhocks. The other is comparatively open, showing
over high pales the blue sky and a range of woody hills. All and
every part is untrimmed, antique, weather-stained and homely as can
be imagined--gratifying the eye by its exceeding picturesqueness, and
the mind by the certainty that no pictorial effect was intended--that
it owes all its charms to “rare accident.” My father laughs at my
passionate love for my little garden--and perhaps you will laugh too;
but I assure you it’s a “bonny bit” of earth as ever was crammed full
of lilies and roses.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to B. R. Haydon_, in the former’s ‘Life,’
by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Difficulties with plays.]
I would not recommend any friend to write for the stage because it
nearly killed me with its unspeakable worries and anxieties, and I am
certainly ten years older for having so written; but of all forms of
poetry it is the one I prefer, and I would always advise the writing
with a view to the production of the piece upon the boards, because it
avoids the danger of interminable dialogues of coldness and languor....
Write for the stage, but don’t bring the play out--that is my advice.
If you wish to know my reasons, you may find some of them in the fact
that one of my tragedies had seven last acts, and that two others
fought each other during a whole season at Covent Garden Theatre; Mr.
Macready insisted on producing one, Charles Kemble was equally bent
upon the other--neither of them even pretending to any superiority of
either play but because one, a man of fifty, would play the young man’s
part, and the other insisted that none but himself should have anything
like a telling part at all. Both were read in the green-room, both
advertised--and just think of the poor author in the country all the
time, while the money was earnestly wanted, and the non-production fell
upon her like a sin!
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Mr. Digby Starkey_, in ‘Friendships of
Mary Russell Mitford,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
I would rather serve in a shop--rather scour floors--rather nurse
children, than undergo these tremendous and interminable disputes, and
this unwomanly publicity.
[Sidenote: Drudgery.]
Pray forgive this sad no-letter. Alas! the free and happy hours, when
I could read and think and prattle for you, are passed away. Oh! will
they ever return? I am now chained to a desk, eight, ten, twelve hours
a day, at mere drudgery. All my thoughts of writing are for hard money.
All my correspondence is on hard business.... A washerwoman hath a
better trade.... I myself hate all my own doings, and consider the
being forced to this drudgery as the greatest misery that life can
afford. But it is my wretched fate and must be undergone--so long, at
least, as my father is spared to me. If I should have the misfortune to
lose him, I shall go quietly to the workhouse, and never write another
line--a far preferable destiny.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Sir William Elford_, in the former’s
‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Lionized in London.]
Every day we had from sixty to seventy visitors, and three times more
parties made for me than I could have attended, even if I had refused
all exhibiting show parties and gone only to friends, dining with what
they called quiet parties of twenty or thirty, and thirty or forty more
arriving to tea. At last, however, I was forced to break off this,
or I should have returned to the country without seeing any public
place whatever; and my last week or ten days were spent in seeing all
to be seen in London in the morning, and attending operas and plays
every evening--the artists all writing to show me their galleries,
and the very best private boxes everywhere being reserved for my
accommodation--no queen could have been more deferentially received.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Emily Jephson_, 1834, in ‘Friendships
of Mary Russell Mitford,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Town and country manners.]
Miss Landon called her “Sancho Panza in petticoats”; yet among the
lanes and glades of her own sunny Berkshire she might have aptly seemed
a merry milk-maid--proper to the place. Her round figure, jolly face,
perpetual smile, ready greeting, kindly words, seemed of kin to the
nature that is away from crowded streets. Assuredly she was more at
home at Three-Mile Cross than she was in London. In London she seemed
always _en garde_, thought an air of patronage was the right thing,
and that an author about whom the whole world was talking, and who had
achieved the greatest of all literary successes--the production of a
tragedy--was bound to be stately as well as cordial--to have company
manners that she would have thrown off as a paralyzing incumbrance
where the breezes blew among the trees that shaded her native heath.
S. C. HALL: ‘Retrospect of a Long Life.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mrs. Hall’s first impression of Miss Mitford.]
I certainly was disappointed, when a stout little lady, tightened
up in a shawl, rolled into the parlor in Newman Street, and Mrs.
Hofland announced her as Miss Mitford; her short petticoats showing
wonderfully stout leather boots, her shawl _bundled_ on, and a little
black coal-scuttle bonnet--when bonnets were expanding--added to the
effect of her natural shortness and rotundity; but her manner was
that of a cordial country gentlewoman; the pressure of her fat little
hands (for she extended both) was warm; her eyes both soft and bright,
looked kindly and frankly into mine; and her pretty, rosy mouth dimpled
with smiles that were always sweet and friendly. At first I did not
think her at all “grand or stilted,” though she declared she had been
quite spoilt--quite ruined since she came to London, with all the
fine compliments she had received; but the trial was yet to come.
“Suppose--suppose ‘Rienzi’ should be--” and she shook her head. Of
course, in full chorus, we declared that impossible. “No! she would
not spend an evening with us until after the first night; if the play
went ill, or even coldly, she would run away, and never be again seen
or heard of; if it succeeded”--She drew her rotund person to its full
height, and endeavored to stretch her neck, and the expression of her
beaming face assumed an air of unmistakable triumph. She was always
pleasant to look at, and had her face not been cast in so broad--so
“outspread”--a mould, she would have been handsome; even with that
disadvantage, if her figure had been tall enough to carry her head with
dignity, she would have been so; but she was most vexatiously “dumpy.”
[Sidenote: A little spoiled by success.]
She kept her promise to us, and after ‘Rienzi’s’ triumph, spent an
evening at our house, “the observed of all observers.” She did not,
however, appear to advantage that evening; her manner was constrained,
and even haughty. She got up tragedy looks, which did not harmonize
with her naturally playful expression. She seated herself in a high
chair, and was indignant at the offer of a foot-stool, though her
feet barely touched the ground; she received those who wished to be
introduced to her _en reine_; but such was her popularity just then,
that all were gratified. She was most unbecomingly dressed in a striped
satin something, neither high nor low, with very short sleeves, for
her arms were white and finely formed; she wore a large yellow turban,
which added considerably to the size of her head. She had evidently
bought the hideous thing _en route_, and put it on in the carriage,
as she drove down to our house, for pinned at the back was a somewhat
large card, on which were written, in somewhat large letters, these
astounding words, “Very chaste--only five and three-pence.” Under
pretence of settling her turban, I removed the obnoxious notice.
MRS. S. C. HALL: ‘Book of Memories.’ London: Virtue & Co., 1871.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Herself again.]
We found Miss Mitford living literally in a cottage, neither _ornée_
nor poetical--except inasmuch as it had a small garden crowded with the
richest and most beautiful profusion of flowers--where she lives with
her father, a fresh, stout old man who is in his seventy-fifth year.
She herself seemed about fifty, short and fat, with very gray hair,
perfectly visible under her cap, and neatly arranged in front. She has
the simplest and kindest of manners, and entertained us for two hours
with the most animated conversation, and a great variety of anecdotes,
without any of the pretensions of an author by profession, and without
any of the stiffness that generally belongs to single ladies of her age
and reputation.
GEORGE TICKNOR: _Journal_, July 26th, 1835, in ‘Life, Letters and
Journals.’ Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1876.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her one complaint of her father.]
My father--very kind to me in many respects, very attentive if I’m ill,
very solicitous that my garden should be nicely kept, that I should
go out with him and be amused--is yet, so far as art, literature and
the drama are concerned, of a temper infinitely difficult to deal
with. He hates and despises them, and all their professors ...; and is
constantly taunting me with my “friends” and my “people” (as he calls
them), reproaching me if I hold the slightest intercourse with author,
editor, artist, or actor, and treating with frank contempt every one
not of a certain station in the county. I am entirely convinced that he
would consider Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, and Mrs. Siddons
as his inferiors. Always this is very painful--strangely painful.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letter to Rev. William Harness_, in the former’s
‘Life,’ by L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Hard life.]
After frittering away the whole day, incessantly on foot, or otherwise
fatiguing herself, at his beck and call, and receiving his friends, and
reading him to sleep in the afternoons till she had no voice left, the
hour came when she might put him to bed. But her own day’s work still
remained to be done. It was not a sort of work which could be done by
powers jaded like hers, without some stimulus or relief; and hence the
necessity of doses of laudanum to carry her through her task. When the
necessity ceased by the death of her father, her practice of taking
laudanum ceased; but her health had become radically impaired, and her
nervous system was rendered unfit to meet any such shock as that which
overthrew it at last. Miss Mitford so toiling by candle-light, while
the hard master who had made her his servant all day was asleep in the
next room, is as painful an instance of the struggles of human life as
the melancholy of a buffoon, or the heart-break--that “secret known to
all”--of a boasting Emperor of all the Russias.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: ‘Biographical Sketches.’ New York: Leypoldt & Holt,
1869.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Miss Mitford in 1839.]
Our coachman (who, after telling him that we were Americans, had
complimented us on speaking English, and “very good English, too,”)
professed an acquaintance of some twenty years’ standing with Miss M.,
and assured us that she was “one of the dearest women in England,” and
the doctor (her father) “an ’earty old boy.” And when he reined his
horses up at her door, and she appeared to receive us, he said, “Now
you would not take that little body there for the great author, would
you?” and certainly we should have taken her for nothing more than a
kindly gentlewoman, who had never gone beyond the narrow sphere of the
most refined social life. Miss M. is truly a “little body,” and as
unlike as possible to the faces we have seen of her in the magazines,
which all have a broad humor bordering on coarseness. She has a
pale-gray, soul-lit eye, and hair as white as snow; a wintry sign that
has come prematurely upon her, as like signs come upon us while the
year is yet fresh and undecayed. Her voice has a sweet, low tone, and
her manner a natural frankness and affectionateness that we have been
so long familiar with in their other modes of manifestation that it
would have been indeed a disappointment not to have found them.
She led us directly through her house into her garden, a perfect
bouquet of flowers. “I must show you my geraniums while it is light,”
she said, “for I love them next to my father.”
CATHARINE M. SEDGWICK: ‘Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home.’ New
York: Harper & Bros., 1841.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Looking back.]
There used to be, and there no doubt still is, if I had but the courage
to go and look at it, a small, old-fashioned cottage at Three Mile
Cross, near Reading, which stood in a garden close to the road. A strip
of garden was on one side, a little pony-stable on the other, and the
larger part of the garden at the back. It was a comfortable-looking,
but still a real village cottage, with no town or suburb-look whatever
about it. Small lattice windows, below and above, with roses and
jasmine creeping round them all, established its rural character; and
there was a great buttress of a chimney rising from the ground at the
garden-strip side, which was completely covered with a very ancient and
very fine apricot tree. There the birds delighted to sit and sing among
the leaves, and build too, in several snug nooks, and there in early
autumn the wasps used to bite and bore into the rich ripe brown cracks
of the largest apricots, and would issue forth in rage when any one of
the sweetest of their property was brought down to the earth by the aid
of a clothes-prop, guided under the superintending instructions of a
venerable little gentlewoman in a garden-bonnet and shawl, with silver
hair, very bright hazel eyes, and a rose-red smiling countenance.
Altogether, it was one of the brightest faces any one ever saw.
[Sidenote: Mr. Horne’s recollections.]
“Now, my dear friend,” would she say, “if you will only attend to
my advice, you will get that apricot up there, which is quite in
perfection. I have had my eye upon it these last three weeks, wondering
nobody stole it. The boys often get over into the garden before any
of us are up. There now, collect all those leaves, if you will be so
good--and those too--and lay them all in a heap just underneath, so
that the apricot may fall upon them. If you don’t do that, it will
burst open with a thump. There! now push the prop up slowly, so as to
break the apricot from the stalk; and when it is down, do not be in too
great a hurry to take it up, as it’s sure to have a good large wasp or
two inside. Wasps are capital judges of ripe wall-fruit, as my dear
father used to say. A little lower with the prop! more to the left--now
just push the prong upwards, and gently lift--again--down it comes!
Mind the wasps! three, four--mind! perhaps that’s not all--five! I told
you so!”... “How angry they are!”
“Not more, my dear, than you and I would have been under similar
circumstances.”
[Sidenote: A bright face.]
[Sidenote: Presence of mind.]
I had not known Miss Mitford very long at this time; but it was her
habit to address all those with whom she was on intimate terms, by
some affectionate expression. For several years, however, I used to
pay a visit of a week or ten days to Miss Mitford’s cottage during the
strawberry season, and again during the middle of summer, when her show
of geraniums (she resisted all new nomenclatures) was at its height,
and sometimes later, when the wonderful old fruit-trees just retained
some half-dozen of their choicest treasures. It would be impossible
for any engraving or photograph, however excellent as to features, to
convey a true likeness of Mary Russell Mitford. During one of these
visits, Miss Charlotte Cushman was also staying at the cottage, and
exclaimed the first time Miss Mitford left the room, “What a bright
face it is!” The effect of summer brightness over all the countenance
was quite remarkable. A floral flush overspread the whole face, which
seemed to carry its own light with it, for it was the same indoors
as out. The silver hair shone, the forehead shone, the cheeks shone,
and above all, the eyes shone. The expression was entirely genial,
cognoscitive, beneficent. The outline of the face was an oblate round,
of no very marked significance beyond that of an apple, or other rural
“character”; in fact, it was very like a rosy apple in the sun. Always
excepting the forehead and chin. The forehead was not only massive,
but built in a way that sculpture only could adequately delineate....
This build of head, and strong outline of head and face, will go far
to explain the strength of character displayed by Miss Mitford during
the early and most trying periods of her life, with her extravagant
and selfish father. It may also account for her general composure and
presence of mind, both on great occasions and others, trifling enough
to talk and write about, but of a kind to test the nerves of most
ladies. For instance, in driving Miss Mitford one day in her little
pony-chaise on a visit, she so riveted my attention on the special
point of a story, that I allowed one wheel to run into a dry ditch at
the roadside, and the pony-chaise must, of course, have turned over,
but that we were “brought up” by the hedge. “Hillo! my dear friend!”
said Miss Mitford; “we must get out.” We did so; the little trap was at
once put on its proper course, and, without one word of comment, the
bright-faced old lady took up the thread of her story.
R. H. HORNE: ‘Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, addressed to
Richard Hengist Horne.’ (With a Preface and Memoir by R. H. Stoddard.)
New York: James Miller, 1877.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: James T. Fields’ visit.]
The cottage where I found her was situated on the high road between
Basingstoke and Reading; and the village street on which she was
then living contained the public-house and several small shops near
by. There was also close at hand the village pond full of ducks and
geese, and I noticed several young rogues on their way to school
were occupied in worrying their feathered friends. The windows of
the cottage were filled with flowers, and cowslips and violets were
plentifully scattered about the little garden. Miss Mitford liked to
have one dog, at least, at her heels, and this day her pet seemed to be
constantly under foot. I remember the room into which I was shown was
sanded, and a quaint old clock behind the door was marking off the hour
in small but very loud pieces. The cheerful old lady called to me from
the head of the stairs to come up into her sitting-room. I sat down by
the open window to converse with her, and it was pleasant to see how
the village children, as they went by, stopped to bow and courtesy.
One curly-headed urchin made bold to take off his well-worn cap, and
wait to be recognized as “little Johnny.” “No great scholar,” said
the kind-hearted old lady to me, “but a sad rogue among our flock of
geese. Only yesterday the young marauder was detected by my maid with
a plump gosling stuffed half-way into his pocket!” While she was thus
discoursing of Johnny’s peccadilloes, the little fellow looked up with
a knowing expression, and very soon caught in his cap a ginger-bread
dog, which the old lady threw to him from the window. “I wish he loved
his book as well as he relishes sweetcake,” sighed she, as the boy
kicked up his heels and disappeared down the lane.
JAMES T. FIELDS: ‘Yesterdays with Authors.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Leaves Three Mile Cross for Swallowfield.]
The poor cottage was crumbling around us, and if we had stayed much
longer we should have been buried in the ruins. And yet it was great
grief to go. Besides my general aversion to new habitations, I had
associations with those old walls which endeared them to me more than
I can tell. There I had toiled and striven, and tasted of bitter
anxiety.... There in the fulness of age, I had lost those whose love
had made my home sweet and precious.... Other recollections, less dear
and less sad, added their interest to the place. Friends many and kind;
strangers, whose names were an honor, had come to that bright garden,
and that garden room.... It was a heart-tug to leave that garden.