There is something of Madame de Sevigne in her vivid realisation of natural things.
She nursed her father through a long and trying illness, and when he died found herself alone in the world with impaired health and very little besides her pension from the Civil List to live upon. Dr. Mitford left 1000 pounds worth of debts, which this honourable woman then and there set to work to try and pay. So much courage and devotion touched the hearts of her many friends and readers, and this sum was actually subscribed by them. Queens, archbishops, dukes, and marquises subscribe to the testimonial, so do the literary ladies, Mesdames Bailey, Edgeworth, Trollope; Mrs. Opie is determined to collect twenty pounds at least, although she justly says she wishes it were for anything but to pay the Doctor's debts.
In 1844 it is delightful to read of a little ease at last in this harassed life; of a school-feast with buns and flags organised by the kind lady, the children riding in waggons decked with laurel, Miss Mitford leading the way, followed by eight or ten neighbouring carriages, and the whole party waiting in Swallowfield Lane to see the Queen and Prince Albert returning from their visit to the Duke of Wellington. 'Our Duke went to no great expense,' says Miss Mitford. (Dr. Mitford would have certainly disapproved had he been still alive.) One strip of carpet the Duke did buy, the rest of the furniture he hired in Reading for the week. The ringers, after being hard at work for four hours, sent a can to the house to ask for some beer, and the can was sent back empty.
It was towards the end of her life that Miss Mitford left Three Mile Cross and came to Swallowfield to stay altogether. 'The poor cottage was tumbling around us, and if we had stayed much longer we should have been buried in the ruins,' she says; 'there I had toiled and striven and tasted as bitterly of bitter anxiety, of fear and hope, as often falls to the lot of women.' Then comes a charming description of the three miles of straight and dusty road. 'I walked from one cottage to the other on an autumn evening when the vagrant birds, whose habit of assembling there for their annual departure, gives, I suppose, its name of Swallowfield to the village, were circling over my head, and I repeated to myself the pathetic lines of Hayley as he saw those same birds gathering upon his roof during his last illness:—
'"Ye gentle birds, that perch aloof,
And smooth your pinions on my roof...
'"Prepare for your 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 men 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....
It is from Swallowfield that she writes: 'I have fell this blessing of being able to respond to new friendships very strongly lately, for I have lost many old and valued connections during this trying spring. I thank God far more earnestly for such blessings than for my daily bread, for friendship is the bread of the heart.'
It was late in life to make such warm new ties as those which followed her removal from Three Mile Cross; but some of the most cordial friendships of her life date from this time. Mr. James Payn and Mr. Fields she loved with some real motherly feeling, and Lady Russell who lived at the Hall became her tender and devoted friend.
VI.
We went down to Reading the other day, as so many of Miss Mitford's friends have done before, to look at 'our village' with our own eyes, and at the cottage in which she lived for so long. A phaeton with a fast-stepping horse met us at the station and whirled us through the busy town and along the straight dusty road beyond it. As we drove along in the soft clouded sunshine I looked over the hedges on either side, and I could see fields and hedgerows and red roofs clustering here and there, while the low background of blue hills spread towards the horizon. It was an unpretentious homely prospect intercepted each minute by the detestable advertisement hoardings recommending this or that rival pill. 'Tongues in trees' indeed, in a very different sense from the exiled duke's experience! Then we come within sight of the running brook, uncontaminated as yet; the river flowing cool and swift, without quack medicines stamped upon its waters: we reach Whitley presently, with its pretty gabled hostel (Mrs. Mitford used to drive to Whitley and back for her airing), the dust rises on the fresh keen wind, the scent of the ripe corn is in the air, the cows stoop under the elm trees, looking exactly as they do in Mr. Thomson's pretty pictures, dappled and brown, with delicate legs and horns. We pass very few people, a baby lugged along in its cart, and accompanied by its brothers and sisters; a fox-terrier comes barking at our wheels; at last the phaeton stops abruptly between two or three roadside houses, and the coachman, pointing with his whip, says, 'That is "The Mitford," ma'am.—That's where Miss Mitford used to live!'