READING AND SCHOOL DAYS AT CHELSEA
Dr. Mitford’s spirit was a sanguine one; he could not believe that
Dame Fortune intended to frown on him and his for ever. With much to
commend it in a general way, the possession of such a spirit may yet
be a menace, a positive danger. To a man of Dr. Mitford’s character
it was a danger. It led him into the rashest of speculations; it
launched him upon the wildest of wild schemes and left him, nearly
always, a loser.
On one occasion, however, Fortune smiled on him in so dramatic a
fashion that thereafter his belief in himself could never be shaken.
It happened some long time after the family had been settled in the
dingy London apartments and, in accordance with his usual practice,
the Doctor had taken his little daughter to walk about London—a
never-failing source of delight to her, both then and in later life.
“One day”—her own description of the event is so expressive and
circumstantial—“he took me into a not very tempting-looking place,
which was, as I speedily found, a lottery-office. It was my birthday,
and I was ten years old. An Irish lottery was upon the point of being
drawn, and he desired me to choose one out of several bits of printed
paper (I did not then know their significance) that lay upon the
counter.
“‘Choose which number you like best,’ said the dear papa, ‘and that
shall be your birthday present.’
“I immediately selected one, and put it into his hand; No. 2,224.
“‘Ah!’ said my father, examining it, ‘you must choose again. I want
to buy a whole ticket; and this is only a quarter. Choose again, my
pet.’
“‘No, dear papa, I like this one best.’
“‘Here is the next number,’ interposed the lottery-office keeper,
‘No. 2,223.’
“‘Ay,’ said my father, ‘that will do just as well. Will it not, Mary?
We’ll take that.’
“‘No!’ returned I obstinately; ‘that won’t do. This is my birthday,
you know, papa, and I am ten years old. Cast up _my_ number, and
you’ll find that makes ten. The other is only nine.’
“My father, superstitious like all speculators, struck with my
pertinacity and with the reason I gave, which he liked none the less
because the ground of preference was tolerably unreasonable, resisted
the attempt of the office-keeper to tempt me by different tickets,
and we had nearly left the shop without a purchase, when the clerk,
who had been examining different desks and drawers, said to his
principal:—
“‘I think, sir, the matter may be managed if the gentleman does not
mind paying a few shillings more. That ticket, 2,224, only came
yesterday, and we have still all the shares: one half, one quarter,
one eighth, two sixteenths. It will be just the same if the young
lady is set upon it.’
“The young lady was set upon it, and the shares were purchased.
“‘The whole affair was a secret between us, and my father, whenever
he got me to himself, talked over our future twenty thousand
pounds—just like Alnaschar over his basket of eggs.
“Meanwhile time passed on, and one Sunday morning a face that I had
forgotten, but my father had not, made its appearance. It was the
clerk of the lottery-office. An express had just arrived from Dublin,
announcing that No. 2,224 had been drawn a prize of twenty thousand
pounds, and he had hastened to communicate the good news.”
Twenty thousand pounds! Dame Fortune was indeed rewarding the
optimist. Dr. Mitford was nothing if not magnanimous, and although
he had presented the lottery ticket as a birthday present to his
daughter, and although it was due to her persistence only that the
winning number, 2,224, had been chosen, he at once claimed the
success as his own, and, when informing his friends, added that he
should settle the whole amount on his daughter.
No trace of any such settlement can be discovered; if it was made it
was speedily annulled and in the course of a very few years it had
been all squandered in the Doctor’s own reckless fashion.
“Ah, me!” reflects Miss Mitford. “In less than twenty years what was
left of the produce of the ticket so strangely chosen? What? except
a Wedgwood dinner-service that my father had made to commemorate the
event with the Irish harp within the border on one side, and his
family crest on the other!”
The infinite possibilities of twenty thousand pounds were not
lost on the Doctor. Forthwith he moved with his wife, child and
few belongings to Reading, then a fairly prosperous and eminently
respectable town, swarming “with single ladies of that despised
denomination which is commonly known by the title of old maids.”
At the period of which we are now writing its commerce was
practically confined to trading in the products of the rural
districts surrounding it—principally in malt, corn and flour. Being
on the direct coach-road from London to the West of England, it was,
naturally, a great and important centre for the carrying trade, as
witness whereof the many quaint old inns still standing. An air of
prosperity pervaded the streets, for the ancient borough was just
beginning to rouse itself from the lethargy into which it had drifted
when its staple trade, the manufacture of cloth, dwindled and died
scarcely a century before.
“Clean, airy, orderly and affluent; well paved, well lighted,
well watched; abounding in wide and spacious streets, filled with
excellent shops and handsome houses,” is Miss Mitford’s description
of it, and she might have added that it was once again comporting
itself in the grand manner as was proper to a town whose origin is
lost in the mists of antiquity, but whose records, from the twelfth
century at least, are records of great doings of both Church and
State.
In Miss Mitford’s day there were still many picturesque examples of
fifteenth-century domestic architecture bordering the streets, while
the ruined magnificence of the Great Abbey, with its regal tomb of
Henry I before the High Altar, lent it a touch of dignity the like of
which few other provincial towns could assume.
The move from London to Reading took place in 1797, and the house
they inhabited was a new and handsome red-brick structure on the
London Road, fortunately still standing, and now known as “Kendrick
View.” Here, with his phaeton, his spaniels and greyhounds, Dr.
Mitford proceeded to enjoy himself with, apparently, no regard
whatever for the future. The swarms of old maids excelled in
arranging card-parties to which, by inviting the wives, they managed
to secure the presence and company of the husbands. At these parties
the Doctor was an ever-welcome guest, for, as we have already noted,
he was one of the finest whist-players of his time. Everything he
did was performed on a lavish scale. His greyhounds, for instance,
were the best that money could procure—no coursing meeting either in
the neighbourhood or the country for many miles round was considered
complete unless the Mitford kennel was represented, nor, as the
Doctor was impatient of defeat, did he consider the meeting a success
unless the Mitford kennel carried all before it.
Meanwhile, and when not engaged in the mild excitements of cribbage
and quadrille, Mrs. Mitford paced the garden at the rear of the
house, “in contented, or at least uncomplaining, solitude,” for even
now, she could never be certain whether, at any moment, the hazardous
life her husband was leading might not plunge them once again into a
miserable poverty; “a complaining woman uncomplaining.”
Their daughter’s education now became a matter of moment, for she
was in her eleventh year. Accordingly, she was entered as a boarder
at the school kept by M. St. Quintin, a French _émigré_, at 22, Hans
Place, Sloane Street, then almost surrounded by fields, and even now,
although much altered, a pleasant enough situation.
[Illustration: “Kendrick View,” Reading, where the Mitfords lived,
1797-1805]
M. St. Quintin and his wife enjoyed a reputation of no ordinary
character, and before venturing on the Hans Place establishment had
built up a good connection and secured an equally good name, in the
conduct of the Abbey School at Reading in a house adjoining what is
known to have been the Inner Gateway of the famous Abbey. In this
Abbey School—though not under the tuition of Monsieur and Madame
St. Quintin—Jane Austen received much of her education, as did also
another famous author, Mrs. Sherwood.
Their reputation in Reading was, doubtless, the deciding factor
in favour of sending Mary Mitford to them in London, and that the
decision was a happy one there can be no question.
Little Mary, from her very early years, had not enjoyed the best
of health. As is common with precocious children, she was somewhat
scrofulous; coupled with this she was further disadvantaged by being
short and fat. Nor was she pretty. Her portrait, painted when she
was three years old, while it depicts an intelligent face, shows
nothing of the beauty usual in children of that age. On the other
hand, we have it on the authority of those who knew her well, that
whatever defects of form and feature she may have suffered were
amply compensated by the winsome smile, the gentle temper, keen
appreciation of life and all it had to give, and by the silver-toned
voice, all of which endeared her to those who came under the spell
of her personality.
She was essentially the child of her parents, combining the
quiet acquiescent nature of her mother with all the optimistic
characteristics of her father; and although, happily, she never gave
evidence of emulating her father in his selfishness or those other
worse attributes of character which he sometimes displayed, the fact
has to be recorded that, occasionally, here and there, among the
originals of her letters to her father is to be detected a certain
coarseness of thought and expression which go to prove that even she
was not altogether proof against the influence of this unwise parent.
Monsieur St. Quintin’s establishment was well calculated to interest
the observant child, and of her schoolmaster and his associates she
has given us an amusing and picturesque description.
“He had been secretary to the Comte de Moustiers, one of the last
Ambassadors, if not the very last, from Louis Seize to the Court of
St. James’s. Of course he knew many emigrants of the highest rank,
and, indeed, of all ranks; and being a lively, kind-hearted man, with
a liberal hand and a social temper, it was his delight to assemble
as many as he could of his poor countrymen and countrywomen around
his hospitable supper-table. Something wonderful and admirable it
was to see how these Dukes and Duchesses, Marshals and Marquises,
Chevaliers and Bishops, bore up under their unparalleled reverses!
How they laughed and talked, and squabbled, and flirted,—constant
to their high heels, their rouge, and their furbelows, to their old
liaisons, their polished sarcasms, their cherished rivalries! For the
most part, these noble exiles had a trifling pecuniary dependency;
some had brought with them jewels enough to sustain them in their
simple lodgings in Knightsbridge or Pentonville; to some a faithful
steward contrived to forward the produce of some estate, too small to
have been seized by the early plunderers; to others a rich English
friend would claim the privilege of returning the kindness and
hospitality of by-gone years.”
Many of them eked out a precarious living by teaching languages,
fencing, dancing and music; while some, like Monsieur St. Quintin,
were fortunate in being able to found and carry on an educational
establishment on a somewhat large scale.
Although shy and awkward, home-sick and lonely, little Mary soon
found much in the Hans Place establishment to interest and amuse
her. Like all other similar establishments, it contained an element
of exclusiveness fostered by the snobbish half-dozen great girls
who, being “only gentlemen’s daughters, had no earthly right to
give themselves airs.” These the little country girl did not take
seriously enough to give her cause for trouble. But she noticed
them, nevertheless, and watched with youthful contempt their
successful attempts to ostracize other less-favoured girls than
themselves. Her memories of such incidents are epitomized very
charmingly in her _Recollections_, wherein she records the pathetic
story of Mademoiselle Rose, and the triumph over her tormentors of
the neglected, snubbed and shy poor Betsy. It reads almost like
a “moral tale,” but is saved from the general mediocrity of such
effusions by its honest ring of indignation, of sweet girlish
sympathy with the suffering of her fellow-pupil and governess, and of
denunciation of the thoughtless ones.
Mademoiselle Rose was the granddaughter of an aged couple among the
_émigrés_ who gathered at Madame St. Quintin’s supper parties. They
bore noted names of Brittany and had possessed large estates, but
now having lost these and their two sons and been driven from their
country, they were dependent on the charity of others, and on what
their granddaughter Rose could earn by straw-plaiting to make into
the fancy bonnets then in vogue. Mademoiselle Rose deserves to live
in our minds, she was so brave. “Rose!” says Miss Mitford; “what a
name for that pallid drooping creature, whose dark eyes looked too
large for her face, whose bones seemed starting through her skin, and
whose black hair contrasted even fearfully with the wan complexion
from which every tinge of healthful colour had flown!” Even when
she accompanied her grandparents to the supper parties she always
brought her work, and rarely put it down during the whole evening,
so ceaseless was the toil by which she laboured to support the aged
couple now cast upon her duty and her affection.
At length it became necessary to find some other means of income
apart from the straw-plaiting, and so Mademoiselle Rose was installed
as a governess in the St. Quintin establishment, “working as
indefatigably through our verbs and over our exercises as she had
before done through the rattle of the tric-trac[6] table and the
ceaseless chatter of French talk,” now and again putting in a word
for her straw-plaits which in these new circumstances had to be made
during a scanty leisure, and her insistent desire for the sale of
which she made no effort to conceal.
At this juncture arrived Betsy, a child of nine, the daughter of a
cheese-merchant in the Borough, and therefore considered as fair game
by the vulgar and vain daughters of gentlemen. She came with her
father, who although he stayed but five minutes, was so typical a
John Bull in voice and bearing that the elegant French dancing-master
who received him shrugged himself almost out of his clothes with
ill-concealed disgust. “I rather liked the man,” says Miss Mitford;
“there was so much character about him, and, in spite of the
coarseness, so much that was bold and hearty.”
The disgust of the dancing-master was not lost upon him, for his
parting injunction to the mistress of the establishment was “to take
care that no grinning Frenchman had the ordering of his Betsy’s
feet. If she must learn to dance, let her be taught by an honest
Englishman.”
The conduct of both parent and dancing-master was a cue indeed for
the gentlemen’s daughters, of which they quickly took advantage, to
the great discomfort of poor Betsy, who, discarding Mary Mitford’s
advances, sought and found silent comfort with Mademoiselle Rose.
It was only silent comfort she obtained, the comfort of suffering
souls in sympathy with each other, for neither knew the other’s
language, and the only solace they obtained was in working together
over the straw-plaits, in which Betsy quickly became adept. By some
means the child was made aware of Mademoiselle Rose’s story, which
had then become more poignant by reason of the fact that, although
an opportunity had presented itself, by arrangement with the First
Consul, for the re-admission of her grandparents to France and
possibly for the ultimate recovery of some of their property, it
could not be grasped, as they were all too poor to bear the expense.
So poor Rose sighed over her straw-plaits, and submitted. Shortly
afterwards Betsy was summoned home and begged permission to take
one of Rose’s bonnets to show her aunt, with a view to purchase, a
request which was granted. Two hours later Betsy reappeared in the
schoolroom together with her father. The scene which ensued must be
told in Miss Mitford’s own words.
“‘Ma’amselle,’ said he, bawling as loud as he could, with the
view, as we afterwards conjectured, of making her understand
him—‘Ma’amselle, I have no great love for the French, whom I take to
be our natural enemies. But you’re a good young woman; you’ve been
kind to my Betsy, and have taught her how to make your fallals; and,
moreover, you’re a good daughter, and so’s my Betsy. She says that
she thinks you’re fretting because you can’t manage to take your
grandfather and grandmother back to France again; so, as you let her
help you in that other handiwork, why you must let her help you in
this.’ Then throwing a heavy purse into her lap, catching his little
daughter up in his arms, and hugging her to the honest breast where
she hid her tears and her blushes, he departed, leaving poor Mdlle.
Rose too much bewildered to speak, or to comprehend the happiness
that had fallen upon her, and the whole school the better for the
lesson.”
FOOTNOTES:
[6] A game resembling backgammon.