Mary Russell Mitford

by William James Roberts

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Writing in 1818 to her friend, Mrs. Hofland, she jokingly refers to an American—“a sort of lover of mine some seven or eight years ago—and who, by the way, had the good luck to be drowned instead of married”; but in this she is scarcely to be taken seriously.

CHAPTER X
A YEAR OF ANXIETY

While her first book was passing through the press, Miss Mitford paid a series of hurried visits to London, and it was during the course of one of these visits that she was introduced to a gentleman of wide sympathy and of great culture and ability. This was Sir William Elford, one of her father’s friends, although the friendship was not of that character which would blind the one to the other’s faults and failings. He was a Fellow of the Royal and Linnæan Societies, an exhibitor in the Royal Academy, and Recorder of Plymouth, for which borough he was representative in Parliament for a number of years. At the time of this introduction he was well over sixty, a man of an age therefore with whom Miss Mitford was not so likely to be reserved as with one of fewer years. As a result of this meeting a correspondence was started which continued for many years, during which time Sir William encouraged his young friend to write freely to him on any and every topic which interested her. It is a remarkable and interesting correspondence, as the occasional extracts we propose to give will prove, although, when he came to bear his share in editing these letters, the Rev. William Harness spoke of them as possessing “hardly any merit but high, cold polish, all freshness of thought being lost in care about the expression”; and again, “I like all the letters to Sir W. Elford, which (except when she forgets whom she is writing to and is herself again) are in conventional English and almost vulgar in their endeavour to be something particularly good.” Nevertheless, he confessed later “the letters improve as I go on. Even those to Sir W. Elford get easier and better, as she became less upon punctilio and more familiar with him; in fact, as—with all her asserted deference—she felt herself more and more his superior in intellect and information.”

The first letter was dated London, May 26, 1810, and was addressed to Sir William Elford, Bart., Bickham, Plymouth.

“My dear Sir,—

“Your most kind but too flattering letter followed me here two days ago, and I gladly avail myself of your permission to express my heartfelt gratitude for the indulgence with which you have received the trifling volume I had the honour to send you.

“For the distinguished favour you mean to confer on me”

“Will you not think me an encroacher if, even while acknowledging one favour, I sue for another? Much as I have heard of your charming poetical talent, I have never seen any of your verses, and, if it be not too much to ask, I would implore you to send me at least a specimen. Forgive this request if you do not comply with it, and believe me, dear Sir, with great respect,

“Your obliged and grateful
“Mary Russell Mitford.”

This was not a bad beginning, although the “high, cold polish” is unmistakable. Her request was at once complied with, and emboldened by her success Miss Mitford plunged forthwith into a series of literary discussions which ran, more or less steadily, throughout the whole of this lengthy correspondence. The second letter—a characteristic one—is particularly interesting because it touches on her taste and predilection for country sights and sounds and which found the fullest expression in the one notable work by which she is remembered.

“You are quite right in believing my fondness for rural scenery to be sincere; and yet one is apt to fall into the prevailing cant upon those subjects. And I am generally so happy everywhere, that I was never quite sure of it myself, till, during the latter part of my stay in town, the sight of a rose, the fragrance of a honeysuckle, and even the trees in Kensington Gardens excited nothing but fruitless wishes for our own flowers and our own peaceful woodlands. Having ascertained the fact, I am unwilling to examine the motives; for I fear that indolence of mind and body would find a conspicuous place amongst them. There is no trouble or exertion in admiring a beautiful view, listening to a murmuring stream, or reading poetry under the shade of an old oak; and I am afraid that is why I love them so well.

“It is impossible to mention poetry without thinking of Walter Scott. It would be equally presumptuous in me either to praise or blame The Lady of the Lake; but I should like to have your opinion of that splendid and interesting production. Have you read a poem which is said to have excited the jealousy of our great modern minstrel, The Fight of Falkirk?” [by Miss Holford.] “I was delighted with the fire and genius which it displays, and was the more readily charmed, perhaps, as the author is a lady; which is, I hear, what most displeases Mr. Scott.

“I enclose you Robert Jeffery’s Lament, altered according to your suggestions.... This little poem is not inscribed to you, because I am presumptuous enough to hope that at some future period you will allow me to usher a book into the world under your auspices. A long poem is to me so formidable a task that I fear it will scarcely be completed by next year (it is now indeed hardly begun)—but when finished, I shall make a new demand upon your kindness, by submitting it to your criticism and correction. I am quite ashamed of this letter. A lady’s pen, like her tongue, runs at a terrible rate when once set a-going.”

Having inveigled Sir William into a discussion of Scott versus Miss Holford, the attack was renewed in a subsequent letter wherein the “extraordinary circumstance” is noted that “the dénouement of Marmion and that of The Lay of the Last Minstrel both turn on the same discovery, a repetition which is wonderful in a man of so much genius, and the more so as the incident is, in itself, so stale, so like the foolish trick of a pantomime, that to have used it once was too often.”

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the correspondents found themselves agreed as to the respective merits of Miss Edgeworth, Miss Baillie and Mrs. Opie, “three such women as have seldom adorned one age and one country” ... although with regard to Miss Edgeworth “perhaps you will think that I betray a strange want of taste when I confess that, much as I admire the polished satire and nice discrimination of character in the Tales of Fashionable Life, I prefer the homely pathos and plain morality of her Popular Tales to any part of her last publication.”

At her father’s suggestion Miss Mitford was now—the beginning of the year 1811—devoting herself to the production of the long poem which she mentioned in her second letter to Sir William Elford. Its subject was the incidents on Pitcairn Island following the Mutiny of the Bounty, which had been revealed in 1808 by Captain Folger. During the progress of its composition the Dedication to Sir William Elford was submitted to that gentleman for his approval, drawing from him the very kind and flattering request that it should be couched in less formal language; “he says that he perfectly comprehends the honour I have done him by my description; but that he wishes the insertion of some words to show that we are friends; for to be considered the friend of the writer of that poem appears to him a higher honour than any he could derive from the superiority of station implied in my mode of dedication.” The matter was eventually settled to the satisfaction of all. Meanwhile as each canto of the work was completed it was submitted first to Sir William and then to Coleridge, both of whom took great pains in giving it a final touch of polish, especially the latter, who prepared it for the press.

The Doctor, still in London and now at 17, Great Russell Street, Covent Garden, concerned himself with arranging for a publisher. He had decided that Longmans should have the first refusal of the honour, but Miss Mitford rather favoured Mr. Murray because “he is reckoned a very liberal man, and a more respectable publisher we cannot have. I do not think Longman will purchase it; so, even if you have taken it there, it is probable Murray may buy it at last.” Messrs. Rivington produced it eventually under the title of Christina: or the Maid of the South Seas, but not before there had been an angry outburst at Coleridge for deleting an Invocation to Walter Scott. Mrs. Mitford was particularly angry and attributed the action to “a mean, pitiful spirit of resentment to Mr. Scott” on Coleridge’s part. “Were the poem mine,” she continued with a vehemence quite unusual with her, “I would have braved any censure as to what he terms ‘bad lines,’ being convinced he would have thought them beautiful had they not contained a compliment to Walter Scott. If our treasure follows my advice, whenever she prints another poem she will suffer no one to correct the press but herself: it will save you infinite trouble, and be eventually of great advantage to her works. It is certainly a most extraordinary liberty Mr. C. has taken, and will, I hope, be the last he will attempt.” Miss Mitford did not share her mother’s indignation, although, as she wrote in a postscript to the above letter, “mamma has played her part well. I did not think it had been in her. We seem to have changed characters: she abuses Mr. Coleridge, I defend him, though I must acknowledge I do not think he would have found so many bad lines in the Invocation had not the compliment to Walter Scott grated upon his mind. My only reason for lamenting the omission is that it makes the poem look like a pig with one ear; but it does not at all signify,” which was quite true, for Christina enjoyed a considerable popularity both here and in America, where a call was made for several editions.

This success must have been very gratifying, although any pecuniary advantage it brought was immediately swallowed up in trying to discharge the family’s obligations and to provide for present dire needs. The situation was indeed pitiful, especially for the two women, who were forced to appear before their friends with a smile at a time when their hearts were heavy and desolation and ruin seemed inevitable. A number of letters from Bertram House to Dr. Mitford in London, during the year 1811, give sufficient indication of the suffering they were enduring, and this at a time when Miss Mitford was exercising her mind in the production of a work the failure of which would have been a disaster. Under date January 21, 1811, she wrote: “Mr. Clissold and Thompson Martin came here yesterday, my own darling, and both of them declared that you had allowed Thompson Martin to choose what he would of the pictures, excepting about a dozen which you had named to them; and I really believe they were right, though I did not tell them so. Nothing on earth could be more perfectly civil than they were; and Martin, to my great pleasure and astonishment, but to the great consternation of Clissold, fixed upon the landscape in the corner of the drawing-room, with a great tree and an ass, painted by Corbould, 1803. It had taken his fancy, he said; and, though less valuable than some of those you offered to him, yet, as he did not mean to sell it, he should prefer it to any other. I told him I would write you word what he said, and lauded the gods for the man’s foolishness. I have heard you say fifty times that the piece was of no consequence; and, indeed, as it is by a living artist of no great repute, it is impossible that it should be of much value. Of course you will let him have it; and I wish you would write to inquire how it should be sent.”

These pictures were being taken in liquidation of debts, an incident sufficient of itself to wound the pride of a woman like Mrs. Mitford. But, in addition to this, she found herself faced with the problem of dismissing servants and no money wherewith to settle up their arrears of wages. It was one of the few occasions on which her too gentle spirit rose in revolt. Accompanying her daughter’s letter she sent a note to her husband stating: “I shall depend on a little supply of cash to-morrow, to settle with Frank and Henry, as the few shillings I have left will not more than suffice for letters, and such trifles. As to the cause of our present difficulties, it avails not how they originated. The only question is, how they can be most speedily and effectually put an end to. I ask for no details, which you do not voluntarily choose to make. A forced confidence my whole soul would revolt at; and the pain it would give you to offer it would be far short of what I should suffer in receiving it.” A dignified, yet tender rebuke, showing a remarkable forbearance in a woman so greatly wronged.

Still worse was to follow, for at the beginning of March Dr. Mitford was imprisoned for debt and only secured his release by means of the proceeds of a hastily-arranged sale in town of more of his pictures, augmented by a loan from St. Quintin. At the same time he was involved with Nathaniel Ogle, “more hurt at your silence than at your non-payment,” and was experiencing difficulties in regard to certain land adjoining Bertram House for which he had long been negotiating—having paid a deposit—but a transaction which Lord Shrewsbury, the owner, hesitated to complete in view of the Doctor’s unreliable position.

At length the anxiety became greater than Mrs. Mitford could bear, and for a time she was prostrated.

“I am happy,” wrote Miss Mitford, “that the speedy disposal of the pictures will enable you, as I hope it will, to settle this unpleasant affair. Once out of debt and settled in some quiet cottage, we shall all be well and happy again. But it must not be long delayed; for my dear mother must be spared a repetition of such shocks.”

Even so, the Doctor gave the waiting women no information regarding the sale of the pictures or the condition of affairs until Mrs. Mitford reproved him for his neglect; but the reproof was softened in her next letter, for she says: “I know you were disappointed in the sale of the pictures. But, my love, if we have less wealth than we hoped, we shall not have the less affection; these clouds may blow over more happily than we have expected. We must not look for an exemption from all the ills incident to humanity, and we have many blessings still left us, the greatest of which is that darling child to whom our fondest hopes are directed.”

Moved at last to desperate action, Dr. Mitford made an endeavour to sell Bertram House, with the intention of removing to some less pretentious dwelling, possibly in London. The property, described as an “Elegant Freehold Mansion and 42 Acres of Rich Land (with possession),” was put up for sale by auction at Messrs. Robins’, The Piazza, Covent Garden, on June 22, 1811, but apparently the reserve was not reached, and no sale was effected. Miss Mitford did her best to straighten out matters, and indeed showed uncommon aptitude for business in one whose whole education had been classical. To her father, then staying at “New Slaughter’s Coffee House,” she wrote on July 5, “The distressing intelligence conveyed in your letter, my best-beloved darling, was not totally unexpected. From the unpleasant reports respecting your affairs, I was prepared to fear it. When did a ruined man (and the belief is as bad as the reality) ever get half the value of the property which he is obliged to sell? Would that Monck” real property. If the thousand pounds of Lord Bolton, the six hundred of Lord Shrewsbury, the three hundred at Overton, and the sale of stocks, books, crops and furniture will clear all the other debts, this may still be done. If not, we must take what we can get and confine ourselves to still humbler hopes and expectations. This scheme is the result of my deliberations. Tell me if you approve of it, and tell me, I implore you, my most beloved father, the full extent of your embarrassments. This is no time for false delicacy on either side. I dread no evil but suspense. I hope you know me well enough to be assured that, if I cannot relieve your sufferings, both pecuniary and mental, I will at least never add to them. Whatever those embarrassments may be, of one thing I am certain, that the world does not contain so proud, so happy, or so fond a daughter. I would not exchange my father, even though we toiled together for our daily bread, for any man on earth, though he could pour all the gold of Peru into my lap. Whilst we are together, we never can be wretched; and when all our debts are paid, we shall be happy. God bless you, my dearest and most beloved father. Pray take care of yourself, and do not give way to depression. I wish I had you here to comfort you.”

The advertisement in the Reading papers, announcing the sale of Bertram House, was, of course, something in the nature of a surprise to the County folk, although, doubtless, some of them were sufficiently well-informed to know that the Mitfords were in trouble. “There is no news in this neighbourhood,” wrote Miss Mitford to Sir William Elford, “excepting what we make ourselves by our intended removal; and truly I think our kind friends and acquaintances ought to be infinitely obliged to us for affording them a topic of such inexhaustible fertility. Deaths and marriages are nothing to it. There is, where they go? and why they go? and when they go? and how they go? and who will come? and when? and how? and what are they like? and how many in family? and more questions and answers, and conjectures, than could be uttered in an hour by three female tongues, or than I (though a very quick scribbler) could write in a week.”

There was a very practical side to Miss Mitford’s nature and, for a woman, a somewhat uncommon disregard for the conventions, a disregard which developed with her years. Consequently, what people thought or said affected her very little, and she devoted her mind rather to solving difficulties than to wringing her hands over them. That indolence of mind and body, of which she was self-accused, she conquered, and though domestic troubles were heaped about her, she set to work on a new poem which was to be entitled Blanch of Castile.

To her father she wrote: “I wish to heaven anybody would give me some money! If I get none for Blanch, I shall give up the trade in despair. I must write Blanch—at least, begin to write it, soon. I wish you could beg, borrow, or steal (anything but buy) Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid, and bring it down for me.”... A week or so later she wrote: “I have now seven hundred lines written; can you sound any of the booksellers respecting it? I can promise that it shall be a far superior poem to Christina, and I think I can finish it by November. We ought to get something by it. It will have the advantage of a very interesting story, and a much greater variety of incident and character. I only hope it may be productive.”

Throughout the letters of this period it is rather pathetic to notice the forced optimism of the writer, especially in those addressed to her father. Sandwiched between reports of progress with Blanch are the most insignificant details of home, of Marmion’s prowess with a rabbit; of the ci-devant dairymaid Harriet, who, at the request of her admirer, William, had consented to leave her place at Michaelmas to share his fate and Mrs. Adams’s cottage; of Mia’s puppies, and of the pretty glow-worms which she would so love to show the errant one had she the felicity to have him by her side.

More than this, it is astounding to gather from her letters to Sir William Elford that she was keeping up her reading, expressing herself most decisively regarding Scott’s new poems, the preference for which in Edinburgh she deems unlikely to extend southward; and then falling-to at Anna Seward’s letters—The Swan of Lichfield—just published in six volumes and which she finds “affected, sentimental, and lackadaisical to the highest degree; and her taste is even worse than her execution.... According to my theory, letters should assimilate to the higher style of conversation, without the snip-snap of fashionable dialogue, and with more of the simple transcripts of natural feeling than the usage of good society would authorize. Playfulness is preferable to wit, and grace infinitely more desirable than precision. A little egotism, too, must be admitted; without it, a letter would stiffen into a treatise, and a billet assume the ‘form and pressure’ of an essay. I have often thought a fictitious correspondence (not a novel, observe) between two ladies or gentlemen, consisting of a little character, a little description, a little narrative, a little criticism, a very little sentiment and a great deal of playfulness, would be a very pleasing and attractive work: ‘A very good article, sir’ (to use the booksellers’ language); ‘one that would go off rapidly—pretty, light summer reading for the watering-places and the circulating libraries.’ If I had the slightest idea that I could induce you to undertake such a work by coaxing, by teasing, or by scolding, you should have no quarter from me till you had promised or produced it.”

How light-hearted! And, moreover, how strangely prophetic was this promised success for the book written on the lines suggested, when we remember the unqualified welcome given to a delightful novel, a few seasons ago, which surely might have been made up from this very prescription. Had Mr. E. V. Lucas been delving in Mitfordiana, we wonder, or was Listeners’ Lure but another instance of great minds thinking the same thoughts?

CHAPTER XI
LITERARY CRITICISM AND AN UNPRECEDENTED COMPLIMENT

“As soon as I have finished Blanch to please myself, I have undertaken to write a tragedy to please Mr. Coleridge, whilst my poem goes to him, and to Southey and to Campbell. When it returns from them I shall, if he will permit me, again trouble my best and kindest critic to look over it. This will probably not be for some months, as I have yet two thousand lines to write, and I expect Mr. Coleridge to keep it six weeks at least before he looks at it.” This extract is from one of Miss Mitford’s letters to Sir William Elford, dated August 29, 1811, and it was not until exactly two months later that she was able to forward the finished poem for Sir William’s criticism.

It was a production of which her father thought little at first, declaring that the title alone gave him the vapours. Her mother and the maid Lucy were half-blinded with tears when it was read to them, but then, as Miss Mitford remarked: “they are so tender-hearted that I am afraid it is not a complete trial of my pathetic powers.” In this case Sir William was the first to scan the lines, an arrangement due possibly to the stress of work then being engaged in by Coleridge and Campbell—the former with lectures on Poetry and the latter in the writing of his famous biographical prefaces to his collection of the poets. Eventually the book was produced in the December of 1812, news of which, apart from any other source, we glean from a letter of its author in which she says: “ Blanch is out—out, and I have not sent her to you! The truth is, my dear Sir William, that there are situations in which it is a duty to give up all expensive luxuries, even the luxury of offering the little tribute of gratitude and friendship; and I had no means of restraining papa from scattering my worthless book all about to friends and foes, but by tying up my own hands from presenting any, except to two or three very near relations. I have told you all this because I am not ashamed of being poor, and because perfect frankness is in all cases the most pleasant as well as the most honourable to both parties.”

It was fortunate that Blanch was finished, for just as it was on the point of completion, Miss Mitford was greatly excited over the prospect of collaborating with Fanny Rowden in the translation of a poem which would have given both a nice sum in return for their labours. Unfortunately the project came to naught and the work was entrusted to a man.

From now, on to the close of the year 1815, there is no record of any work of Miss Mitford’s, unless we except one or two odes and sonnets of which she said the first were “above her flight, requiring an eagle’s wing,” while of the latter she “held them in utter abhorrence.” Her time really seems to have been taken up with an occasional visit to London and into Hampshire (where she inspected her old birthplace, Alresford); with short excursions into Oxfordshire (within an easy drive out and back from home), and largely with a voluminous correspondence, chiefly on literary topics, with Sir William Elford. Fortunately this correspondence was not wasted labour as she was able to embody a very large proportion of it in the Recollections of a Literary Life. Indeed, had she not specifically suggested the plan of that work many years later, we should feel justified in believing that, from the very outset, it was to such an end that her correspondence and literary criticism were directed.

Now that a century has passed since the letters were written, it is interesting to peruse her comments on such writers as Byron, Scott, Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, all of whom were publishing at that period. “I dislike Childe Harold,” she wrote. “Not but that there are very many fine stanzas and powerful descriptions; but the sentiment is so strange, so gloomy, so heartless, that it is impossible not to feel a mixture of pity and disgust, which all our admiration of the author’s talents cannot overcome. I would rather be the poorest Greek whose fate he commiserates, than Lord Byron, if this poem be a true transcript of his feelings. Out of charity we must hope that his taste only is in fault, and that the young lordling imagines that there is something interesting in misery and misanthropy. I the readier believe this, as I am intimate with one of his lordship’s most attached friends, and he gives him an excellent character.” The “intimate friend” alluded to was William Harness who, from the Harrow schooldays onwards, was chief among Byron’s friends; indeed, Byron expressly desired to dedicate Childe Harold to Harness, and only refrained “for fear it should injure him in his profession,” Harness being then in Holy Orders while Byron’s name was associated with orgies of dissipation, to be followed later by calumnious charges which Harness nobly did his best to refute.

It is a tribute to Miss Mitford’s critical faculty that she found little difficulty in probing the mystery as to the authorship of Waverley, that “half French, half English, half Scotch, half Gaelic, half Latin, half Italian—that hotch-potch of languages—that movable Babel called Waverley!” as she termed it. “Have you read Walter Scott’s Waverley?” she writes. “I have ventured to say ‘Walter Scott’s,’ though I hear he denies it, just as a young girl denies the imputation of a lover; but if there be any belief in internal evidence, it must be his. It is his by a thousand indications—by all the faults and by all the beauties—by the unspeakable and unrecollectable names—by the hanging the clever hero, and marrying the stupid one—by the praise (well deserved, certainly, for when had Scotland such a friend! but thrust in by the head and shoulders) of the late Lord Melville—by the sweet lyric poetry—by the perfect costume—by the excellent keeping of the picture—by the liveliness and gaiety of the dialogues—and last, not least, by the entire and admirable individuality of every character in the book, high as well as low—the life and soul which animates them all with a distinct existence, and brings them before our eyes like the portraits of Fielding and Cervantes.”

She was, however, at fault over Guy Mannering, being thrown clear off the scent by Scott’s cleverness in quoting a motto from his own Lay of the Last Minstrel, an act of which Miss Mitford evidently thought no author would be guilty: “he never could write Guy Mannering, I am sure—it is morally impossible!”

Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility she joined with others in ascribing to any but their real author, but when she learned that they were Miss Austen’s she let her pen go with a vengeance.

“A propos to novels, I have discovered that our great favourite, Miss Austen, is my countrywoman; that mamma knew all her family very intimately; and that she herself is an old maid (I beg her pardon—I mean a young lady) with whom mamma before her marriage was acquainted. Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers; and a friend of mine, who visits her now, says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of ‘single blessedness’ that ever existed, and that, till Pride and Prejudice showed what a precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin or upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very different now; she is still a poker—but a poker of whom every one is afraid.” Fortunately this description was qualified: “After all, I do not know that I can quite vouch for this account,” especially as the consensus of opinion regarding Miss Austen is entirely opposed to the above description.

Miss Edgeworth she found too cold and calculating as a writer: “I never can read Miss Edgeworth’s works without finding the wonderful predominance of the head over the heart; all her personages are men and women; ay, and many of them very charming men and women; but they are all of them men and women of the world. There is too much knowledge of life, too much hardness of character—too great a proneness to find bad motives for good actions, too great a contempt for that virtuous enthusiasm, which is the loveliest rose in the chaplet of youth; and, to say all in one word, I never take up her volumes myself without regretting that they were not written by a man; nor do I ever see a young girl reading them without lamenting that she will be let into the trick of life before her time.”

Early in the year 1813 a letter was received from Mr. and Mrs. Perry, inviting Miss Mitford to stay with them at their house in Tavistock Square. Mr. Perry was then Editor of the Morning Chronicle, and the invitation was gladly accepted, not only because Perry was a friend of her father’s, but because the latter had assured her that Tavistock House was the rendezvous for many of the leaders in the political and literary worlds. During this visit she met Mrs. Opie—“thinner, paler, and much older, but very kind and pleasant”—and Thomas Moore,—“that abridgement of all that is pleasant in man,”—with whom she had the “felicity” of dining frequently. “I am quite enchanted with him,” she wrote. “He has got a little wife (whom I did not see) and two little children, and they are just gone into Wales,[17] where he intends to finish a great poem [ Lalla Rookh] on which he is occupied. It is a Persian tale, and he says it will be his fault if it is not a fine work, for the images, the scenery, the subject, are poetry itself. How his imagination will revel among the roses, and the nightingales, and the light-footed Almé!” Mr. Moore did not forget his little friend and, a year later, gave her the added pleasure of reading over a part of his manuscript, “and I hope in a few days to see the whole in print. He has sold it for three thousand pounds. The little I have seen is beyond all praise and price,” she wrote enthusiastically. These visits to town were undoubtedly something more than mere pleasure jaunts, for it is quite apparent that they were undertaken with a view to keeping the name and person of Mary Russell Mitford well in the public mind and eye. Making her headquarters at 33, Hans Place, the residence of Fanny Rowden’s mother, she spent a whirling fortnight during the summer of 1814, meanwhile keeping Mrs. Mitford well-informed on all details, however slight. Under date, June 16, 1814, she writes: “Yesterday, my own dearest Granny, was, I think, the most fatiguing morning I ever underwent. Stuffed into a conspicuous place, stared at, talked to, or talked at, by everybody, dying with heat, worn out with flattery, I really should have wished myself in heaven or somewhere worse, if I had not been comforted by William Harness, who sat behind me, laughing at everybody, and more playful and agreeable than any one I ever remember.” The occasion was the Midsummer Breaking-up performance at her old school, during which an ode she had composed for another function was recited.

“We had no exercises,” she continued, “nothing but music and recitations, which lasted nearly four hours, and did them great credit. The March of Mind was well repeated, and received, of course, as verses commonly are in the presence of the authoress. I was to have presented the prizes; but to my great comfort Lady Caroline Lamb arrived, and I insisted on giving her my post.” Then follow particulars of a carefully-planned programme of sight-seeing, finishing with:—“How little people in the country know of fashions! I see nothing but cottage bonnets trimmed with a double plaiting, and sometimes two double plaitings, and broad satin ribbon round the edge. Gowns with half a dozen breadths in them, up to the knees before, and scarcely decent behind, with triple flounces, and sleeves like a carter’s frock, sometimes drawn, at about two inches distant, and sometimes not, which makes the arms look as big as Miss Taylor’s body. I like none of this but the flouncing, which is very pretty, and I shall bring three or four yards of striped muslin to flounce my gowns and yours. Tell Mrs. Haw, with my love, to prepare for plenty of hemming and whipping, and not to steal my needles.... I have been to see Haydon’s picture, and I am enchanted.... I saw, too, in a print-shop, the beautiful print of ‘Napoleon le Grand,’ of which you know there were but three in England, and those not to be sold. Oh, that any good Christian would give me that picture!”

Napoleon Bonaparte was one of her heroes, and she could never bring herself to adopt the general view of him held by the populace in this country. Her friend M. St. Quintin wanted her to translate some epigrams which he had composed against the late Emperor: “Let Mr. St. Quintin know that he has brought his pigs to the wrong market,” was her reply to her father, who had offered her the commission. “I am none of those who kick the dead lion. Let him take them to Lord Byron, or the editor of The Times, or the Poet Laureate, or the bellman, or any other official character.... I hate all these insults to a fallen foe.”

Later, when the Bellerophon with Napoleon on board—then on his way to exile—put into Plymouth, Miss Mitford wrote to Sir William Elford: “Goodness! if I were in your place, I would see him! I would storm the Bellerophon rather than not get a sight of him, ay, and a talk with him too. You and I have agreed to differ respecting the Emperor, and so we do now in our thoughts and our reasonings, though not, I believe, much in our feelings; for your relenting is pretty much the same as my—(what shall I venture to call it?)—my partiality.... But though I cannot tell you exactly what I would do with the great Napoleon, I can and will tell you what I would not do to him. I would not un-Emperor him—I would not separate him from his faithful followers—I would not ransack his baggage, as one would do by a thief suspected of carrying off stolen goods—I would not limit him to allowances of pocket-money to buy cakes and fruit like a great schoolboy—I would not send him to ‘a rock in the middle of the sea,’ like St. Helena.”

But this is a digression. We left Miss Mitford in London describing the Hans Place celebrations. The next morning she was taken to the Freemasons’ Tavern, in Great Queen Street, to attend the meeting of the Friends against the Slave Trade, where she heard such notables as Lords Grey and Holland, together with William Wilberforce and Lord Brougham.

“Lord Grey had all the Ogle hesitation, and my noble patron” [Holland, to whom her first book was dedicated] “has my habit of hackering so completely that he scarcely speaks three words without two stops; but when we can get at his meaning, it is better than any one’s. My expectations were most disappointed in Brougham, and most surpassed in Wilberforce. I no longer wonder at the influence he holds over so large a portion of the ‘religionists,’ as he calls them; he is a most interesting and persuasive speaker.”

The great day, however, was Friday, June 24, 1814, when the members of the British and Foreign School Society dined together, at the Freemasons’ Tavern, on the occasion of their anniversary meeting. The Marquis of Lansdowne was in the chair, supported by the Dukes of Kent and Sussex, the Earls of Darnley and Eardley, and several other eminent persons. Miss Mitford and a party of friends were in the gallery “to hear splendid speeches and superlative poetry, and to see—but, alas! not to share—super-excellent eating.” Miss Mitford was always a great believer in, and supporter of all efforts which were made to facilitate the education of the people, and on this occasion her ode on The March of Mind, which she had specially composed for this event, was set to music and sung. “I did not believe my own ears when Lord Lansdowne, with his usual graceful eloquence, gave my health. I did not even believe it, when my old friend, the Duke of Kent, observing that Lord Lansdowne’s voice was not always strong enough to penetrate the depths of that immense assembly, reiterated it with stentorian lungs. Still less did I believe my ears when it was drunk with ‘three times three,’ a flourish of drums and trumpets from the Duke of Kent’s band, and the unanimous thundering and continued plaudits of five hundred people.... Everybody tells me such a compliment to a young untitled woman is absolutely unprecedented; and I am congratulated and be-praised by every soul who sees me.”

This London visit, in Miss Mitford’s twenty-seventh year, was an excellent piece of stage-management, and if it was due to the exertions of her father—and we may properly suppose it was—it stands as one achievement, at least, to his credit.

Home from these festivities, with the plaudits of the crowd and the congratulations of her friends still ringing in her ears, she had once again to face the problem of depleted coffers and how to set about the task of filling them. Each succeeding year there was trouble about the payment of taxes. “I do hope, my own dear love,” runs one of the letters, “that you returned to London yesterday, and that you have been actively employed to-day in getting money for the taxes. If not, you must set about it immediately, or the things will certainly be sold Monday or Tuesday. There is nothing but resolution and activity can make amends for the time that has been wasted at Bocking.” This last sentence alludes to the Doctor’s absence in Northumberland attending to the complicated money matters of a relative. Just previous to this Mrs. Mitford had written: “After sending off our letter to you, yesterday, Farmer Smith came to tell me what a piece of work the parish made with him about our unpaid rates. They have badgered him most unmercifully about sending a summons and compelling payment, but he is most unwilling to take any step that might be productive of uneasiness to you.... You will be astonished to hear that there is none of the farmers more outrageously violent than Mr. Taylor, who blusters and swears he will not pay his rates if they do not exact the immediate payment of yours.” The rates due at this time were for two years—£46 8s. in all, for which the Doctor had paid £10 on account.

Later on there is a promise of other, though similar trouble, in a letter to the Doctor addressed in great haste to him, and to three different localities, as they were not sure of his whereabouts. “I am sorry to tell you, my dearest father, that Mr. Riley’s clerk has just been here with a law-paper, utterly incomprehensible; but of which the intention is to inform you that, if the mortgage and interest be not paid before next Monday, a foreclosure and ejectment will immediately take place; indeed I am not sure whether this paper of jargon is not a sort of ejectment. We should have sent it to you but for the unfortunate circumstance of not knowing where you are. The clerk says you ought to write to Mr. Riley, and negotiate with him, and that if the interest had been paid, no trouble would have been given. Whether the interest will satisfy them now I cannot tell. No time must be lost in doing something, as next Monday some one will be put into possession.”

What a sorry plight the mother and daughter must have been in! No wonder that we read the daughter’s request for “a bottle of Russia Oil, to cure my grey locks.” And to make matters worse, there was pending a Chancery Suit in connection with the sale of Bertram House, which so soured the Doctor that he would have nothing done to the garden or grounds. The gravel was covered with moss, the turf lengthened into pasture, and the shrubberies into tangled thickets—a picture of desolation which only emphasized the misery of the financial outlook.