LOVE FOR CHILDREN AND LAST DAYS AT THREE MILE CROSS
Love of little children was one of the noticeable characteristics of
Dr. Mitford’s life, and it was one in which his daughter shared. That
she entered most fully into the games and pursuits of the village
youngsters is evidenced in _Our Village_, where we obtain delightful
little portraits of Joe Kirby, Jack Rapley, Jem and Lizzie, which
sufficiently indicate the author’s knowledge of the child-mind, to
say nothing of those breezy, hilarious descriptions of the slide and
the cricket-match.
Shortly after Dr. Mitford’s death there came into her life a little
boy named Henry Taylor—frequently alluded to as “K——’s little boy”
in her letters, and as “little Henry” in the _Recollections_, but not
to be confounded with the “little Henry” of _Our Village_, who was a
lad sometimes hired by the Doctor for the performance of odd jobs.
Henry Taylor was born in Reading—the child of K——, Miss Mitford’s
companion and hemmer of flounces—and at the mistress’s own request
the boy was brought to live at her cottage when he was just upon
two years old. He came as a new and welcome interest into her life
and, while she petted and spoiled him, gave him wise and tender
counsel. “A little boy, called Henry,” she wrote of him in her
_Recollections_, “the child of the house (son, by the way, to the
hemmer of flounces), has watched my ways, and ministered unbidden
to my wants and fancies. Long before he could open the outer door,
before, indeed, he was half the height of the wand in question” [her
favourite walking-stick], “there he would stand, the stick in one
hand, and if it were summer time, a flower in the other, waiting for
my going out, the pretty Saxon boy, with his upright figure, his
golden hair, his eyes like two stars, and his bright, intelligent
smile! We were so used to see him there, silent and graceful as a
Queen’s page, that when he returned to school after the holidays, and
somebody else presented the stick and the rose, I hardly cared to
take them. It seemed as if something was wrong, I missed him so! Most
punctual of petted children!”
Whilst the child was at boarding-school in Reading, a rather
serious outbreak of smallpox in the town, and particularly in a
house adjoining the School, necessitated his being sent home to the
cottage without delay, though not, unfortunately, in time to prevent
his being infected. He was extremely ill and his life, at times,
despaired of, the mother and Miss Mitford taking it by turns to
watch over and nurse him. In the _Recollections_ there is a most
touching reference to this incident, which proves how strong was
Miss Mitford’s affection for the child, how much a mother’s heart
was hers. Quoting from Leigh Hunt’s poetry, she says:—“There is
yet another poem for which I must make room. Every mother knows
these pathetic stanzas. I shall never forget attempting to read
them to my faithful maid, whose fair-haired boy, her pet and mine,
was then recovering from a dangerous illness. I attempted to read
these verses, and did read as many as I could for the rising in
the throat—the _hysterica passio_ of poor Lear—and as many as my
auditor could hear for her own sobs.” And then she quotes those
beautiful verses:—“To T. L. H., six years old, during a sickness.”
“Sleep breathes at last from out thee,
My little patient boy;
And balmy rest about thee—
Smooths off the day’s annoy.
I sit me down and think
Of all thy winning ways;
Yet almost wish with sudden shrink
That I had less to praise.
* * * * *
To say he has departed,
His voice, his face is gone!
To feel impatient-hearted
Yet feel we must bear on!
Ah, I could not endure
To whisper of such woe,
Unless I felt this sleep ensure
That it will not be so.”
“Little Henry” is one of the few survivors of those who knew Miss
Mitford intimately, and he has many tender memories of the kindly
woman who, as time went on, made him her constant companion when
she walked in the lanes and meadows in and about the neighbourhood.
Woodcock Lane, of which we have already made mention, was among her
favourite haunts, and thither she would take her way, with little
Henry and the dogs, and while she sat with her writing-pad on her
knee, would watch the eager child gathering his posies of wild
flowers. “Do not gather them all, Henry,” was one of her regular
injunctions on these occasions, “because some one who has not so
many pretty flowers at home as we have may come this way and would
like to gather some”; and sometimes she would add, “remember not to
take all the flowers from one root, for the plant loves its flowers,
and delights to feed and nourish them”—a pretty fancy which the
child-mind could understand and appreciate. “Never repeat anything
you hear which may cause pain or unhappiness to others” was a precept
which often fell from her lips when speaking to the child and it
was a lesson which he says he has never forgotten and has always
striven to live up to in a long and somewhat arduous life spent
here and abroad. Miss Mitford had a great and deep-seated objection
to Mrs. Beecher Stowe. It arose principally from disapproval of
certain derogatory statements about Lord Byron and his matrimonial
relations which Mrs. Stowe had expressed to friends of Miss Mitford’s
and which, after Miss Mitford’s death, were published in the work
entitled _Lady Byron Vindicated_. The reason for this attitude of
mind on Miss Mitford’s part is not difficult to understand when
we remember that her great friend, William Harness, was among the
earliest and dearest of Lord Byron’s friends. Thus, when _Uncle Tom’s
Cabin_ was published in this country, Miss Mitford refused to give
any credence to the revelations it contained, and in this connection
it is interesting to record that it was among the few books which she
counselled the boy not to read.
[Illustration: The “House of Seven Gables,” a view on the road to
Swallowfield.]
For the children in the village she had ever a kind word and smile,
inquiring why they did this or that when playing their games, and
nothing delighted her more than to come upon a game of cricket being
played by the youngsters, for then she would watch the game through,
applauding vigorously and calling out encouraging remarks to the
players, all of whom referred to her as the “kind lady.”
During the year 1844 Queen Victoria paid an unofficial visit to the
Duke of Wellington at Strathfieldsaye, and Miss Mitford conceived the
idea that it would please the Queen to be greeted on the roadside by
the village children. With the co-operation of the farmers, who lent
their wagons, some two hundred and ninety children were carried to a
point near Swallowfield—some few miles from Three Mile Cross along
the Basingstoke Road—each carrying a flag provided at Miss Mitford’s
expense and by the industry of her maid, Jane, who was very skilful
at such work. The wagons were decked out with laurels and bunting and
made a very brave show when the Queen, escorted by the Duke, passed
by them. “We all returned—carriages, wagons, bodyguard and all—to
my house, where the gentlefolk had sandwiches and cake and wine, and
where the children had each a bun as large as a soup-plate, made
doubly nice as well as doubly large, a glass of wine, and a mug of
ale”—rather advanced drinks for children, but probably thin enough
to do no harm. “Never was such harmless jollity! Not an accident! not
a squabble! not a misword! It did one’s very heart good.... To be
sure it was a good deal of trouble, and Jane is done up. Indeed, the
night before last we none of us went to bed. But it was quite worth
it.”
All this sounds very delightful and light-hearted and truly the years
seemed now to be passing very gently and kindly with the warmhearted
woman who had, hitherto, suffered so much.
There were, of course, the usual ailments due to advancing age, which
had to be endured, but, with short trips to town and a long holiday
at Taplow, these ailments had no serious, immediate effect on Miss
Mitford’s general health.
In 1846 the dear friend, Miss Barrett, was married to Robert
Browning, an incident which proved—so Miss Mitford recorded—that
“Love really is the wizard the poets have called him”. There is
no mention of a wedding-present being despatched from Three Mile
Cross—it will be remembered that the marriage was a somewhat hurried
and secret affair, due to Mr. Barrett’s opposition to the whole
idea—but we do know that when the happy couple left for Italy _via_
Paris they took with them Flush, the dog, which Miss Mitford had sent
as a gift to her friend some years before. Flush was a character, and
figures very much in the Barrett-Browning correspondence from 1842
to 1848; he died much loved and lamented, and now lies buried in the
Casa Guidi vaults.
All the world knows what a wonderful marriage that was—two hearts
beating as one—and how remarkable and romantic was the courtship,
the story of which, from Mrs. Browning’s own pen, is so exquisitely
told in _Sonnets from the Portuguese_—the “finest sonnets written in
any language since Shakespeare’s,” was Robert Browning’s delighted
comment—“the very notes and chronicle of her betrothal,” as Mr.
Edmund Gosse writes of them, when he relates how prettily and
playfully they were first shown to the husband for whom they had
been expressly written. But—and this is why we make mention of them
here—before ever they were shown to the husband they had been
despatched to Miss Mitford for her approval and criticism, and she
urged that they be published in one of the Annuals of the day. To
this suggestion Mrs. Browning would not accede, but consented at
last to allow them to be privately printed, for which purpose they
were again sent to Miss Mitford, who arranged for their printing in
Reading—probably through her friend, Mr. Lovejoy—under the simple
title of _Sonnets: by E. B. B._, and on the title-page were the
additional words:—“Reading: Not for Publication: 1847.”
Miss Mitford often made complaint of the number of visitors who
thronged her cottage, but now that she had none but herself to
consider she seems to have found her chief delight in receiving
and entertaining, in quiet fashion, the many literary folk who
made pilgrimages to her, visits which were always followed by a
correspondence which must have fully occupied her time. This year,
1847, brought Ruskin to the cottage through the introduction of Mrs.
Cockburn (the Mary Duff of Lord Byron). “John Ruskin, the Oxford
Undergraduate, is a very elegant and distinguished-looking young man,
tall, fair, and slender—too slender, for there is a consumptive
look, and I fear a consumptive tendency.... He must be, I suppose,
twenty-six or twenty-seven, but he looks much younger, and has a
gentle playfulness—a sort of pretty waywardness, that is quite
charming. And now we write to each other, and I hope love each
other as you and I do”—Miss Mitford’s note on the visit, written to
another friend, Mr. Charles Boner, in America.
[Illustration: Miss Milford’s Cottage at Swallowfield.
(From a contemporary engraving.)]
Hearing that William Chambers, the Edinburgh publisher, was that year
in London, an invitation was sent to him to call at the cottage,
and while there he, his hostess and Mr. Lovejoy discussed a project
which had long been occupying the minds of Miss Mitford and her
bookseller-friend, on the subject of “Rural Libraries.”
Mr. Chambers refers to the visit in his _Autobiography_. “The
pleasantest thing about the visit was my walk with the aged lady
among the green lanes in the neighbourhood—she trotting along with a
tall cane, and speaking of rural scenes and circumstances.... I see
she refers to this visit, stating that she was at the time engaged
along with Mr. Lovejoy in a plan for establishing lending libraries
for the poor, in which, she says, I assisted her with information
and advice. What I really advised was that, following out a scheme
adopted in East Lothian, parishes should join in establishing
itinerating libraries, each composed of different books, so that,
being shifted from place to place, a degree of novelty might be
maintained for mutual advantage.”
In any case, this Mitford-Lovejoy project was well considered and,
after many delays, the two friends issued a little four-page pamphlet
(now very rare) with the front page headed “Rural Libraries,”
followed by a circular letter in which was set forth the origin of
the scheme—due to a request from the young wife of a young clergyman
in a country parish who wanted to stimulate the parishioners to the
reading of sound literature—and an invitation to interested persons
to correspond with “M. R. M., care of Mr. Lovejoy, Reading.” The rest
of the pamphlet was occupied with a list of some two hundred titles
of books recommended, among them being _Our Village_, the inclusion
of which caused Miss Mitford to tell a friend that she “noticed Mr.
Lovejoy had smuggled it in.” Whether anything definite resulted from
the distribution of this pamphlet is not certain, but the labour it
entailed is a proof of the interest which both Miss Mitford and her
coadjutor had in matters affecting the education of the people.
By the year 1850 the cottage again became so bad as to be almost
uninhabitable—“the walls seem to be mouldering from the bottom,
crumbling, as it were, like an old cheese; and whether anything can
be done to it is doubtful,” and, acting under Dr. May’s advice, it
was decided to leave the old place for good. The neighbourhood was
scoured in the endeavour to find something suitable, and at last the
very thing was found at Swallowfield, three miles further along the
Basingstoke Road. “It is about six miles from Reading along this same
road, leading up from which is a short ascending lane, terminated by
the small dwelling, with a court in front, and a garden and paddock
behind. Trees overarch it like the frame of a picture, and the
cottage itself, though not pretty, yet too unpretending to be vulgar,
and abundantly snug and comfortable, leading by different paths to
all my favourite walks, and still within distance of my most valuable
neighbours.”
The removal, “a terrible job,” involving, among other items, the
cartage and re-arranging of four tons of books, took place during the
third week of September, 1851, just in time to enable the household
to get nicely settled in before the winter.
“And yet it was grief to go,” she wrote. “There I had toiled and
striven, and tasted as deeply of bitter anxiety, of fear, and of
hope, as often falls to the lot of woman. There, in the fulness of
age, I had lost those whose love had made my home sweet and precious.
Alas! there is no hearth so humble but it has known such tales of
joy and of sorrow! Friends, many and kind, had come to that bright
garden, and that garden room. The list would fill more pages than I
have to give. There Mr. Justice Talfourd had brought the delightful
gaiety of his brilliant youth, and poor Haydon had talked more
vivid pictures than he ever painted. The illustrious of the last
century—Mrs. Opie, Jane Porter, Mr. Cary—had mingled there with
poets, still in their earliest dawn. It was a heart-tug to leave
that garden.... I walked from the one cottage to the other on an
autumn evening, when the vagrant birds, whose habit of assembling
here for their annual departure gives, I suppose, its name of
Swallowfield to the village, were circling and twittering over my
head; and repeated to myself the pathetic lines of Hayley as he saw
these same birds gathering upon his roof during his last illness:—
‘Ye gentle birds, that perch aloof,
And smooth your pinions on my roof,
Preparing for departure hence
Ere winter’s angry threats commence;
Like you, my soul would smooth her plume
For longer flights beyond the tomb.
May God, by Whom is seen and heard
Departing man and wandering bird,
In mercy mark us for His own
And guide us to the land unknown!’
Thoughts soothing and tender came with those touching lines, and
gayer images followed. Here I am in this prettiest village, in the
cosiest and snuggest of all cabins; a trim cottage garden, divided by
a hawthorn hedge from a little field guarded by grand old trees; a
cheerful glimpse of the high road in front, just to hint that there
is such a thing as the peopled world; and on either side the deep,
silent, woody lanes that form the distinctive character of English
scenery.”