SCHOOLDAYS AND MISS ROWDEN’S INFLUENCE
In both the conduct of his establishment and its curriculum, M.
St. Quintin was very thorough, and no doubt it was to this quality
that he owed the large measure of his success as a schoolmaster.
He himself taught the pupils French, history, geography, and a
smattering of science, the scope of which was limited for the very
obvious reason that the tutor knew little of the subject. He was ably
seconded by Miss Rowden, the Fanny Rowden who subsequently endeared
herself greatly to her precocious pupil and, in course of time,
succeeded M. St. Quintin, upon his retirement, as mistress of the
school. She was responsible for the general course of study, being
assisted by special finishing masters for Italian, music, dancing and
drawing. In all of these, save that of music, Mary Mitford became a
proficient pupil, so proficient indeed that she often nonplussed her
teachers by her intelligent questionings.
“Our treasure,” wrote Mrs. Mitford to her husband whilst she was on
a short visit to the school, “was much amused yesterday morning. In
her astronomical lecture, she not only completely posed Miss Rowden,
but M. St. Quintin himself could not reconcile a contradiction which
she had discovered in the author they were perusing. You cannot have
an idea of the gratification the dear little rogue feels in puzzling
her instructors.”
In the month previous to this she had again successfully carried the
day against her tutor in an English composition of which the subject
was “The Advantage of a Well-educated Mind.” In examining this M.
St. Quintin observed a word which struck him as needless, and he was
about to erase it when the pupil in her pretty, meek way, an artless
manner of which she seems to have made good use in her childhood,
urged that it should be left standing. The tutor was immediately
perplexed and appealed to Miss Rowden, who gave judgment in favour of
the pupil, suggesting that in the event of the disputed participle
being dismissed, the whole sentence would need complete alteration.
On a more deliberate view of the subject, St. Quintin agreed to
the retention of the word and “with all the liberality which is so
amiable a point in his character, begged our daughter’s pardon,”
wrote the proud mother.
The year 1802 found her the winner of the prize for both French and
English composition, and so keen was her desire for knowledge that
two months later she wrote home to her mother the information: “I
have just taken a lesson in Latin; but I shall, in consequence, omit
some of my other business. It is so extremely like Italian, that I
think I shall find it much easier than I expected.” For this, Miss
Rowden was immediately responsible, so emulous was the child of her
governess; indeed, Miss Rowden’s influence on the little girl was
undoubtedly far-reaching and must have laid the foundation of all
her love for literature which was so marked a characteristic of Miss
Mitford’s life. Truly, Miss Rowden had in the child a wonderfully
receptive soil in which to plant the seeds of learning—we must not
forget the early precocious years and their association with _Percy’s
Reliques_ and kindred mental exercises—but she was a wise woman, and
fostered and encouraged her pupil to an extent which would demand
a tribute of praise from the most superficial historian of Miss
Mitford’s life. The fact that Miss Rowden was at this time diligently
reading Virgil was sufficient stimulus to her pupil to study to the
same end, hence the letter home announcing her decision. On this
occasion it would appear that Mrs. Mitford entertained a doubt as
to the wisdom of the proposal, and consulted her husband, with the
result that a letter on the subject was forthwith despatched to Hans
Place.
“Your mother and myself,” wrote the Doctor, “have had much
conversation concerning the utility of your learning Latin, and we
both agree that it is perfectly unnecessary, and would occasion you
additional trouble. It would occupy more of your time than you could
conveniently appropriate to it; and we are more than satisfied with
your application and proficiency in everything.”
In this, as in most other matters at this period of her life, the child
had her own way, and the Latin lessons were continued—advantageously,
as the sequel will show.
On the whole, her life at Hans Place was of the happiest, although,
of course, the early days were touched with the miseries of
home-sickness which are the common lot of all children in similar
circumstances.
“I was scarcely less happy,” she wrote in the after years, “in the
great London school than at home; to tell the truth, I was well
nigh as much spoilt in one place as in the other; but as I was a
quiet and orderly little girl, and fell easily into the rules of the
house, there was no great harm done, either to me or to the school
discipline.”
Nevertheless, there is a lonely touch in one of her early letters
home from Hans Place. It is dated September 15, 1799, and after
thanking the dear papa for certain parcels just received, goes on
to state: “My uncle called on me twice while he stayed in London,
but he went away in five minutes both times. He said that he only
went to fetch my aunt, and would certainly take me out when he
returned. I hope that I may be wrong in my opinion of my aunt; but
I again repeat, I think she has the most hypocritical drawl I have
ever heard. Pray, my dearest papa, come soon to see me. I am quite
miserable without you, and have a thousand things to say to you.”
A year later—November 30, 1800—she wrote exuberantly in her pocket
book: “Where shall I be this day month? At home! How happy I shall
be, and shall be ready to jump out of my skin for joy.”
Of her inability to master music, due to her absolute lack of taste
for it, we have already spoken. Her first attempts were made on the
piano at the age of five, and so determined was her father in the
matter that, waiving all objections, he insisted on her continuing to
practise right up to the date of her removal to the school in Hans
Place and for some years after.
The music-master at Hans Place was Mr. Hook, the father of Theodore
Hook, and a composer of songs for the Vauxhall Gardens. He was, so we
learn, an instructor of average ability, smooth-faced, good-natured
and kindly, but although these commended him to Miss Mitford they
aroused no enthusiasm in her for his art. So he, like many others
who had preceded him in the thankless task of trying to teach little
Mary her notes, was promptly told by the hasty father—who, unlike
his daughter, was not struck by Mr. Hook’s appearance or manner—that
he was no good and must be replaced by some one more competent. This
some one promptly appeared in the person of Herr Schuberl, at that
time engaged in the special tuition of two of Mary’s schoolfellows.
He was an impatient, irritable, but undoubtedly able man, and before
long amply avenged Mr. Hook, by refusing to have anything more to do
with the impossible pupil.
This dismissal was, of course, hailed by the child with great
glee, for she began to entertain the hope that the incident would
put a stop for ever to the attempts being made in regard to her
musical education. But her joy was short-lived; her father was too
pertinacious to be so easily turned from his purpose, and believing
that the failure of his child was due to incompetent teachers and to
his own choice of instrument, he decreed that she must learn the harp.
Apart from any other consideration, this decision had an advantage in
that it was supposed to afford the child an opportunity of learning
what was then designated as an “elegant accomplishment.” So, a harp
was installed at the school, being placed for the convenience of
the tutor and pupil in the principal reception-room, an apartment
connected with the entrance-hall by a long passage and two double
doors, the outer pair of which were covered in green-baize and swung
to with a resounding bang when let go by the person who had opened
them.
Being a reception-room, it was handsomely fitted up with shelves
upon which reposed a number of nicely-bound books, chiefly of French
plays and classics. To this room was the unwilling pupil sent each
morning to practise alone the exercises previously set her by the
“demure little Miss Essex,” the new music mistress; “sent alone,
most comfortably out of sight and hearing of every individual in the
house.”
But there was little of harp-practice, for before long “I betook
myself to the book-shelves, and seeing a row of octavo volumes
lettered _Théâtre de Voltaire_, I selected one of them and had
deposited it in front of the music-stand, and perched myself upon
the stool to read it in less time than an ordinary pupil would have
consumed in getting through the first three bars of ‘Ar Hyd y Nos.’
The play upon which I opened was ‘Zaïre.’ ‘Zaïre’ is not ‘Richard the
Third,’ any more than M. de Voltaire is Shakespeare: nevertheless,
the play has its merits. I proceeded to other plays—‘Œdipe,’
‘Mérope,’ ‘Alzire,’ ‘Mahomet,’ plays well worth reading, but not so
absorbing as to prevent my giving due attention to the warning doors,
and putting the book in its place, and striking the chords of ‘Ar Hyd
y Nos’ as often as I heard a step approaching; or gathering up myself
and my music, and walking quietly back to the school-room as soon as
the hour for practice had expired.”
All of which was, of course, very naughty, and scarcely what
the dear papa, blissfully ignorant away in Reading, would have
desired! But worse was to follow. In time Voltaire was exhausted,
and, hunting along the shelves, the omnivorous Miss came upon the
comedies of Molière, which plunged her at once into the gaieties
of his delightful world, blotting out all thought of present
things—harp, music-books, and lessons—and even demure little Miss
Essex vanished into thin air along with “Ar Hyd y Nos.” Fascinated
by the tribulations of “Sganarelle” or the lessons of the “Bourgeois
Gentilhomme,” she was at length caught by none other than M. St.
Quintin, who found her laughing till she cried over the apostrophes
of the angry father to the galley in which he is told his son has
been taken captive. “Que diable alloit-il faire dans cette galère!”
an apostrophe which, as she quaintly wrote, “comes true with regard
to somebody in a scrape during every moment of every day, and was
never more applicable than to myself at that instant.”
M. St. Quintin could not chide, for, apart from his own adoration of
Molière, an adoration he did not extend to music, he was convinced
that no proficiency in any art could be gained without natural
qualifications and sincere goodwill. So he joined in the tearful
laughter, and when he could compose himself, complimented rather
than rebuked the pupil upon her relish for the comic drama. More
than this, he spoke plainly to the dear papa, with the result that
the harp and Miss Essex went together, that music was henceforth
abandoned, and the event crowned with the gift of a cheap edition of
Molière for the wayward little maid’s own reading.
These were the foundations skilfully laid and built upon by Miss
Rowden. They marked the beginnings of a distinct and strong literary
taste and a passion for the Drama which, had she and her father but
known at the time, were to furnish and equip her for the stern battle
of life in which she was to engage, a battle for the bare necessities
of life for herself and the provision of luxuries for the careless
and thriftless parent upon whom she doted and spent herself.
In August, 1802—she would then be fifteen years of age—she writes
to her father: “I told you that I had finished the _Iliad_, which I
admired beyond anything I ever read. I have now begun the _Æneid_,
which I cannot say I admire so much. Dryden is so fond of triplets
and alexandrines, that it is much heavier reading; and though he is
reckoned a more harmonious versifier than Pope, some of his lines
are so careless that I shall not be sorry when I have finished it.
I shall then read the _Odyssey_. I have already gone through three
books, and shall finish it in a fortnight ... I am now reading
that beautiful opera of Metastasio, _Themistocles_; and when I have
finished that, I shall read Tasso’s _Jerusalem Delivered_. How you
would dote on Metastasio; his poetry is really heavenly,” a letter
which, apart from the excusable conventional school-girl gush of its
closing words, is not only remarkable for its style, but for its
display of a critical faculty really astounding in a girl of fifteen.
Later, in the same month, she wrote to her mother: “I am glad my
sweet mamma agrees with me with regard to Dryden, as I never liked
him as well as Pope. Miss Rowden had never read any translation of
Virgil but his, and consequently could not judge of their respective
merits. If we can get Wharton’s _Æneid_, we shall finish it with
that. After I have read the _Odyssey_, I believe I shall read Ovid’s
_Metamorphoses_. I shall be very glad of this, as I think they are
extremely beautiful.... I am much flattered, my darlings, by the
praises you bestowed on my last letter, though I have not the vanity
to think I deserved them. It has ever been my ambition to write like
my darlings, though I fear I shall never attain their style.”
A week later, she followed this with another in similar strain: “M.
St. Quintin was perfectly delighted with my French on Saturday.
Signor Parachiretti is sure that I shall know Italian as well as I do
French by Christmas. I know you will not think it is through vanity
that I say this, who should not say it; but I well know you like
to hear that your darling is doing well, and I consult more your
gratification than false modesty in relating it to you. I went to the
library the other day with Miss Rowden, and brought back the first
volume of Goldsmith’s _Animated Nature_. It is quite a lady’s natural
history, and extremely entertaining. The style is easy and simple,
and totally free from technical terms, which are generally the
greatest objection to books of that kind. I am likewise reading the
_Odyssey_, which I even prefer to the _Iliad_. I think it beautiful
beyond comparison.”
These few extracts from the letters not only serve to show the
singular thirst for knowledge which the child possessed, but also
indicate the perfect understanding which existed between the mother
and child, resembling, as the Rev. A. G. L’Estrange justly remarks,
“those of one sister to another.”
In return Mrs. Mitford retailed all the gossip and news of Reading,
giving the eager child the fullest accounts of the dinners and
suppers and card-parties which formed a regular interchange of
courtesies between neighbours in that town a century ago. These
accounts, only intended by the fond mother, as we may properly
suppose, to bridge the distance between school and home, were
carefully stored away in the wonderful memory of their recipient,
there to rest until, many years after, they were revivified and
placed on record for all time—as we hope—in the pages of _Belford
Regis_, the work which, quite apart from _Our Village_, has endeared
its writer to all ardent Reading lovers in that it affords them a
true and living picture of the ancient borough as it was in the
opening years of the nineteenth century.
In regard to this correspondence between the mother and daughter,
it has been elsewhere remarked that “no word of advice, moral or
religious, is ever mingled,” and the question: “Was this wisdom?”
is answered by the querist himself that, ruling out the possibility
of carelessness or indifference as the motives which actuated Mrs.
Mitford and “knowing what a devoted daughter Mary Mitford became, we
may be well induced to believe that her mother’s silence on these
more serious arguments originated in deep reflection; and that she
had judiciously determined simply to attach and amuse her child by
her correspondence, and trusted to the impressive persuasion of her
example for the inculcation of higher things.”[7]
With every desire to pay the sincerest tribute to the learned editor
in his difficult task, we are inclined to disagree with him as to the
wisdom of Mrs. Mitford’s plan. If by “example” we are to understand
that the Christian virtues of forbearance with a selfish and
overmastering father and fortitude in adversity are intended, then
we agree that Mary Russell Mitford well learned her lesson, but—and
herein is the basis of our disagreement—had mother and daughter been
less content, for the sake of peace, to pander to the every whim and
caprice of Dr. Mitford, much, if not all, of the miserable poverty
of later years would have been avoided, and the tragedy of Miss
Mitford’s life, with its last days of spiritual doubts and fears,
been averted. The result on her father’s career may be speculative,
but we are inclined to hope that had the two women more boldly
asserted their claims to consideration, the good that was in Dr.
Mitford and which is to be found in all men, would have been roused,
and the cruel selfishness of his life been checked if not altogether
effaced.
These letters from home undoubtedly gave the fullest details of the
daily occurrences, and must occasionally have tickled the schoolgirl
immensely, if we may judge by one of the replies which they evoked.
“I really think,” she wrote, “that my dearly-beloved mother had
better have the jack-asses than the horses. The former will at least
have the recommendation of singularity, which the other has not;
as I am convinced that more than half the smart carriages in the
neighbourhood of Reading are drawn by the horses which work in the
team,” a reply, the whimsicality of which is only equalled by its
pertness, when we remember that the smart carriages alluded to must
have been the conveyances of the county gentry whose estates in the
neighbourhood and whose lineage were not altogether insignificant. At
the same time it is a reply—and for this reason is quoted—which marks
the outcropping of that characteristic which Miss Mitford possessed
and to which she often gave expression—an abiding distaste for
anything approaching snobbery or self-assertion.
We have now come to the year 1802, a red-letter year in the child’s
life, inasmuch as its close was to witness the termination of her
school career and that it brought to her the news that her father
had purchased a house in the country, with land attached, where he
intended to set up a small farm as a hobby and, generally, to live
the life of a country gentleman. It is certain that the child would
receive with pleasure the news of this projected change of residence,
for despite the attractions which her school-life in London had for
her, the interest she always displayed in matters pertaining to the
country, with its free and open life, its close associations with
flowers and animals, and its comparative freedom from restraint,
could leave no doubt in the minds of those who knew her as to the
choice she would make between life in town or country, were such a
choice offered her.
Nevertheless, she was undoubtedly happy at Hans Place, enjoying to
the full the companionship and affection bestowed upon her by Miss
Rowden, and the deference of M. St. Quintin, who regarded her not
only as a prodigy but as a distinct credit to his establishment. Nor
was this all, for her keen sense of humour and quick perception of
the ludicrous side of life, found plenty of scope for their display
in a school where the tutors were of mixed nationality and the
scholars were drawn from various classes of society.
There is evidence of this in a letter which she wrote, some ten years
later, to one of her favourite correspondents, Sir William Elford,
wherein she describes a _contretemps_ into which the French governess
precipitated herself, mainly through over-zeal in her attempts to
correct the untidy habits of her charges and, incidentally, in the
hope of discomposing and so scoring off the dancing-master, whom she
did not like.
[Illustration: _3 Mile † May 10ᵗʰ 1839
G Mitford_
Doctor Mitford.
(From a painting by John Lucas, 1839.)]
It was the custom to signalize the break-up of a term by the
performance of a Drama such as Hannah More’s “Search after
Happiness,” in which Mary Mitford once took the part of Cleora; or
by a ballet, on which occasions “the sides of the school-room were
fitted up with bowers, in which the little girls who had to dance
were seated, and whence they issued at a signal from M. Duval, the
dancing-master, attired as sylphs or shepherdesses, to skip or glide
through the mazy movements which he had arranged for them, to the
music of his kit.” Doubtless the exhibitions proper were carried out
with the utmost decorum by all concerned, seeing that a critical
public, consisting of fond parents, would be assembled, ready to
note, and later to comment upon, any lapse in deportment or manners.
It was, however, in the rehearsals that opportunities for fun
occurred, and one such occasion forms the basis of the description
which we now quote.
“Madame,” was a fine majestic-looking old woman of sixty, but with
all the activity of sixteen and the fidgety neatness of a Dutchwoman.
She had, for days, been murmuring against the untidy habits of the
young ladies, and had threatened to make a terrible example of those
who left their belongings lying about.
“A few exercise books found out of place were thrown into the fire,
and a few skipping-ropes (one of which had nearly broken Madame’s
neck by her falling over it in the dark) thrown out of the window.
This was but the gathering of the wind before the storm.” The storm
itself broke on the dancing-day and when all the pupils, dressed for
the occasion, were assembled in the room. Then, to the consternation
of all, Madame appeared and bidding the young ladies follow her,
commenced a rummage all over the house.
“Oh! the hats, the tippets, the shoes, the gloves, the books, the
music, the playthings, the workthings, that this unlucky search
discovered thrown into holes, and corners, and everywhere but where
they ought to have been! Well, my dear Sir, all this immense quantity
of litter was to be fastened to the person and the dress of the
unfortunate little urchin to whom it belonged.”
The task of apportioning the articles to the delinquents was a severe
one for the governess, to whose inquiries the only reply obtainable
was “Ce n’est pas à moi,” with the result that she had left on her
hands a large quantity of hats, gloves and slippers the ownership of
which no one would acknowledge. But there were many other articles
which refused to be thus abandoned, and the result was a decorative
effect more novel than elegant. Dictionaries were suspended from
necks _en médaillon_, shawls were tied round the waist _en ceinture_,
and loose pieces of music were pinned to the dancing frocks _en
queue_. “I escaped,” says the merry recorder of the incident, “with a
good lecture and a pocket-handkerchief fastened to my frock, which,
as it was quite clean, was scarcely perceptible.”
Unfortunately for Madame, the dancing-master was not due for an
hour, the interval having to be devoted to the drill-sergeant, whose
astonishment, when he arrived and viewed the odd habiliments of the
pupils, may well be imagined. And to make matters more disconcerting
for Madame and more amusing for the culprits, she could not speak a
word of English, while the sergeant knew no word of French; so, as
drill could not be performed by a squad so hampered by extraneous
accoutrements, the sergeant ordered their removal, and Madame, we may
well imagine, retired discomfited.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The Rev. A. G. L’Estrange’s Introduction to _The Life of Mary
Russell Mitford_, related in a Selection from Her Letters to Her
Friends. 3 vols., 1870.