DWINDLING FORTUNES AND A GLEAM OF SUCCESS
Miss Mitford’s great and growing affection for the simple delights of
the country is amply proved in some of the letters which she wrote to
Sir William Elford during the years 1812-1815, and in the publication
of her poems on _Watlington Hill_ and _Weston Grove_. Of these two
works _Watlington Hill_ is, on the whole, in praise of coursing,
although it also contains some fine descriptions of scenery which
all who know the locality will recognize and appreciate. The piece
was originally published as a separate poem and dedicated to “James
Webb, Esq., and William Hayward, Esq.,” two coursing friends of her
father’s, the last-named being the owner of the Watlington Farm which
Dr. Mitford made his headquarters whenever a coursing meeting was
in progress in the district. In this form it was published by A.
J. Valpy, but later on was embodied in a volume entitled _Dramatic
Scenes_, and published in 1827, by George B. Whittaker.
_Weston Grove_ is a description of the place of that name, near
Southampton Water, then the seat of William Chamberlayne, Esq.,
M.P.—another friend of the Mitfords—to whom the poem was inscribed.
Neither of these works had a great sale.
In addition to these Miss Mitford made, in 1813, an attempt to
produce a play entitled _The King of Poland_, concerning which
she wrote to her father that “it will be in five acts instead of
three, and runs much more risk of being too long than too short. My
favourite character is a little saucy page ... and who is, I think,
almost a new character on the English stage. We have, it is true,
pages in abundance, but then they commonly turn out to be love-lorn
damsels in disguise. Now mine is a _bona-fide_ boy during the whole
play.”
Late in the year 1815 we find her telling Sir William Elford that she
has “been teased by booksellers and managers, and infinitely more
by papa, for a novel and a play; but, alas! I have been obliged to
refuse because I can only write in rhyme. My prose—when I take pains,
is stiffer than Kemble’s acting, or an old maid’s person, or Pope’s
letters, or a maypole—when I do not, it is the indescribable farrago
which has at this moment the honour of saluting your eyes. This is
really very provoking, because I once—ages ago—wrote four or five
chapters of a novel, which were tolerably lively and entertaining,
and would have passed very well in the herd, had they not been so
dreadfully deficient in polish and elegance. Now it so happens that
of all other qualities this unattainable one of elegance is that
which I most admire and would rather possess than any other in the
whole catalogue of literary merits. I would give a whole pound of
fancy (and fancy weighs light), for one ounce of polish (and polish
weighs heavy). To be tall, pale, thin, to have dark eyes and write
gracefully in prose, is my ambition; and when I am tall, and pale,
and thin, and have dark eyes, then, and not till then, will my prose
be graceful.”
In this outline of qualifications for the writing of graceful
prose Miss Mitford did herself scant justice, as time has proved;
for while her verse is forgotten, it is her prose alone which has
lived and by which she is remembered. Had personal bulk been the
deciding factor, then, assuredly she would have been ruled out, for
in a previous letter to Sir William—with whom, by the way, she was
now on such intimate terms that personal matters of this sort were
freely discussed—she had informed him of the “deplorable increase
of my beautiful person. Papa talks of taking down the doors, and
widening the chairs, and new hanging the five-barred gates, and
plagues me so, that any one but myself would get thin with fretting.
But I can’t fret; I only laugh, and that makes it worse. I beg you
will get a recipe for _diminishing people_, and I will follow it;
provided always it be not to get up early, or to ride on horseback,
or to dance all night, or to drink vinegar, or to cry, or to be
‘_lady-like_ and melancholy,’ or not to eat, or laugh, or sit, or
do what I like; because all these prescriptions have already been
delivered by divers old women of both sexes, and constantly rejected
by their contumacious patient.” And this she supplemented by likening
herself to “a dumpling of a person tumbling about like a cricket ball
on uneven ground, or a bowl rolling among nine-pins.”
Of her prose, we shall find that her earliest descriptive pieces were
contained in the letters sent to Sir William and, although they may
lack the grace of the later finished work written for publication,
they do, at least, prove their author’s possession of “the seeing
eye.”
“I am just returned from one of those field rambles which in the
first balmy days of spring are so enchanting. And yet the meadows,
in which I have been walking, are nothing less than picturesque. To
a painter they would offer no attraction—to a poet they would want
none. Read and judge for yourself in both capacities. It is a meadow,
or rather a long string of meadows, irregularly divided by a shallow,
winding stream, swollen by the late rains to unusual beauty, and
bounded on the one side by a ragged copse, of which the outline is
perpetually broken by sheep walks and more beaten paths, which here
and there admit a glimpse of low white cottages, and on the other by
tall hedgerows, abounding in timber, and strewn like a carpet with
white violets, primroses, and oxlips. Except that occasionally over
the simple gates you catch a view of the soft and woody valleys, the
village churches and the fine seats which distinguish this part of
Berkshire, excepting this short and unfrequent peep at the world, you
seem quite shut into these smiling meads.
“Oh, how beautiful they were to-day, with all their train of callow
goslings and frisking lambs, and laughing children chasing the
butterflies that floated like animated flowers in the air, or hunting
for birds’ nests among the golden-blossomed furze! How full of
fragrance and of melody! It is when walking in such scenes, listening
to the mingled notes of a thousand birds, and inhaling the mingled
perfume of a thousand flowers, that I feel the real joy of existence.
To live; to share with the birds and the insects the delights of
this beautiful world; to have the mere consciousness of _being_, is
happiness.”
That was her picture of Spring. She improved as the year rolled
on, and the next January gave play for her pen in a description of
hoar-frost.
“A world formed of something much whiter than ivory—as white, indeed,
as snow—but carved with a delicacy, a lightness, a precision to
which the massy, ungraceful, tottering snow could never pretend.
Rime was the architect; every tree, every shrub, every blade of
grass was clothed with its pure incrustations; but so thinly, so
delicately clothed, that every twig, every fibre, every ramification
remained perfect; alike indeed in colour, but displaying in form
to the fullest extent the endless, infinite variety of nature.
This diversity of form never appeared so striking as when all the
difference of colour was at an end—never so lovely as when breaking
with its soft yet well-defined outline on a sky rather grey than
blue. It was a scene which really defies description.”
It was during this period, notably in 1812, that Miss Mitford must,
metaphorically speaking, have begun “to feel her feet” in literary
matters. The adulation of her father’s friends in London, backed up
by the reviews, which were, generally, favourable to her work, were
sufficient proof that she had a public and that, in time, she might
hope to secure something like a regular and even handsome income from
her pen. In this she was encouraged by Sir William Elford, who did
all that was possible to impress upon her the necessity for studied
and polished work. To this end he informed her that he was carefully
saving her letters, playfully hinting that they might prove valuable
some day. This may account for the “high, cold, polish” which William
Harness deprecated. The hint was not lost on her and drew from her
an amusing and, as events have proved, prophetic reply: “I am highly
flattered, my dear Sir William, to find that you think my letters
worth preserving. I keep yours as choice as the monks were wont to
keep the relics of their saints; and about sixty years hence your
grandson or great grandson will discover in the family archives some
notice of such a collection, and will send to the grandson of my
dear cousin Mary (for as I intend to die an old maid, I shall make
her heiress to all my property, i.e. my MSS.) for these inestimable
remains of his venerable ancestor. And then, you know, my letters
will be rummaged out, and the whole correspondence be sorted and
transcribed, and sent to the press, adorned with portraits, and
_facsimiles_, and illustrated by lives of the authors, beginning with
the register of their birth, and ending with their epitaphs. Then it
will come forth into the world, and set all the men a-crowing and
talking over their old nonsense (with more show of reason, however,
than ordinary) about the superiority of the sex. What a fine job
the transcriber of my letters will have! I hope the booksellers of
those days will be liberal and allow the poor man a good price for
his trouble; no one but an unraveller of state cyphers can possibly
accomplish it,”—this in allusion to the occasional illegibility of
her handwriting which elsewhere she described as “hieroglyphics,
which the most expert expounders of manuscripts fail to decipher.”
Reference to her manuscripts recalls the trouble some of them
entailed on young Valpy, the printer—really a long-suffering and
estimable young man—and his staff. For a writer so fully aware
of her shortcomings in this matter, as was Miss Mitford, she was
extraordinarily impatient and exacting. Poor Valpy did his best
according to his lights—and these were not inconsiderable—and was
more than usually anxious in the setting-up of Miss Mitford’s work,
seeing that, as she remarked in one of her letters, he had “dandled
me as an infant, romped with me as a child, and danced with me as
a young woman,” but by reason of which, she unkindly concluded, he
“finds it quite impossible to treat me or my works with the respect
due to authorship.”
Judging by the hundreds of Miss Mitford’s letters which we have
handled, full of closely-written and often indecipherable characters,
we are of opinion that she was singularly fortunate in finding a
printer able and willing to ascertain their meaning. Her condolences
with her friend, Sir William, on his “press-correcting miseries”
are, though extravagant, very diverting and, in these days of
trade-unionism, throw an interesting light on the _personnel_ of
Valpy’s little establishment in Tooke’s Court. “I am well entitled
to condole with you, for I have often suffered the same calamity. It
is true that my little fop of a learned printer has in his employ
_three_ regularly-bred Oxonians, who, rather than starve as curates,
condescend to marshal commas and colons, and the little magical
signs which make the twenty-four letters, as compositors; and it
is likewise true, that the aforesaid little fop sayeth—nay, I am
not sure that he doth not swear—that he always gives my works to
his _best hands_. Now, as it is not mannerly for a lady to say ‘you
fib,’ I never contradict this assertion, but content myself with
affirming that it is morally impossible that the aforesaid hands can
have that connection with a head which is commonly found to subsist
between those useful members. Some great man or other—Erasmus, I
believe—says that ‘Composing is Heaven, preparing for publication
Purgatory, and correcting for the press’—what, must not be mentioned
to ‘ears polite.’ And truly, in my mind, the man was right. From
these disasters I have, however, gained something:—‘Sweet are the
uses of adversity’; and my misfortunes have supplied me with an
inexhaustible fund of small charity towards my unfortunate brethren,
the mal-printed authors. For, whereas I used to be a most desperate
and formidable critic on plural or singular, definite and indefinite,
commas and capitals, interrogations and apostrophes, I have now
learnt to lay all blunders to the score of the compositor, and even
carry my Christian benevolence so far that, if I meet with divers
pages of stark, staring nonsense (and really one does meet with such
sometimes), instead of crying, ‘What a fool this man must be—I’ll
read no more of his writing!’ I only say, ‘How unlucky this man has
been in a compositor! I can’t possibly read him until he changes his
printer.’” Nevertheless, and although there might be an occasional
author glad to shelter himself behind such an excuse, the fact
remains that the work which emanated from Valpy’s press is entitled
to the highest encomiums—despite his three Oxonians who, choosing the
better part, preferred to compose type rather than sermons.
There is no record that Miss Mitford published anything from the
year 1812—when _Watlington Hill_ appeared—until 1819, the interval
being occupied with various short trips to London, most of which
were, however, only undertaken at the urgent request of friends who
were keen on offering hospitality and entertainment. But for this
hospitality and the assurance that the visits would entail little
or no expense, it is evident that they could not have been indulged
in. The Chancery suit still dragged its weary length along and the
Doctor continued his lengthy jaunts to town, each trip being followed
by the infliction of fresh privation on his wife and daughter. The
large retinue of servants which had been installed when the family
took possession of Bertram House, had dwindled gradually, until at
last it was represented by one, or, at most, two. There was no lady’s
maid, and the footman had been replaced by a village lad who, when
not waiting at table, had to make himself useful in the garden or
stable—the jobs he was really only fitted for. The carriage-horses
had gone and were replaced by animals which could be commandeered for
farm-work; the result being that, as they were oftenest on the farm,
they were rarely available for use in the carriage, thus curtailing
the pleasure of the ladies, both of whom greatly enjoyed this form
of exercise. Finally, when the carriage required to be repaired and
painted, it was found that there was no money in hand, so it was sold
and never replaced.
Mrs. Mitford had the greatest difficulty in getting sufficient
housekeeping money wherewith to meet their quite modest expenses,
until at last the tradesmen refused to supply goods unless previous
accounts were settled and ready money paid for the goods then
ordered. They were really in the most desperate straits for money—the
daughter actually contemplated the opening of a shop—and in one
letter we are told that Mrs. Mitford begged her husband to send her
a one-pound note, as they were in need of bread! This represented
actual want, and yet, through it all, there was scarcely any
diminution in the kennel, the occupants of which were a source of the
greatest anxiety to Mrs. Mitford, who frequently did not know whither
to turn in order to obtain food for them.
In perusing the letters which were written to the various friends of
the family during this period, it is astonishing to find little or
no evidence of the distress under which the writer suffered. Miss
Mitford’s optimism was remarkable, whilst her belief in her father
was so strong that even when she found that their miserable condition
was due to his losses at the gaming-tables, she only commiserated him
and blamed others for cheating and wronging so admirable a man, an
attitude of mind which her mother shared!
It was towards the end of the year 1818 that she seriously thought of
turning her attention to prose, encouraged by Sir William Elford, who
had been struck by her descriptions of the neighbourhood in which she
lived. She conceived the idea of writing short sketches illustrative
of country scenes and manners, and when she had executed a few of
these to her own and mamma’s satisfaction, they were submitted
to Thomas Campbell as possible contributions to the _New Monthly
Magazine_, of which he was then the Editor. He would have nothing to
do with them, nor did he encourage the writer to try them elsewhere.
Nothing daunted, she offered them to one or two other Editors, but
still met with refusal until she tried the _Lady’s Magazine_, the
editor of which had the good sense not only to accept them but asked
for more. The result to the magazine was that its circulation went up
by leaps and bounds, and the name of Mary Russell Mitford, hitherto
known only to a limited circle, became almost a household word.