"In that very lane," she continues, "am I writing on this sultry June day, luxuriating in the shade—the verdure, the fragrance of hay-field and bean-field, and the absence of all noise, except the song of birds, and that strange mingling of many sounds, the whir of a thousand forms of insect life, so often heard among the general hush of a summer noon....
"Occasional passengers there are, however, gentle and simple. My friend, Mr B., for instance, has just cantered past on his blood-horse, with a nod and a smile, saying nothing, but apparently a good deal amused with my arrangements. And here comes a procession of cows going to milking, with an old attendant, still called the cow-boy, who, although they have seen me often enough, one should think, sitting underneath a tree writing, with my little maid close by hemming flounces, and my dog, Fanchon, nestled at my feet—still will start as if they had never seen a woman before in their lives. Back they start, and then they rush forward, and then the old drover emits certain sounds, which it is to be presumed the cows understand; sounds so horribly discordant that little Fanchon—although to her too they ought to be familiar, if not comprehensible—starts up in a fright on her feet, deranging all the economy of my extempore desk, and wellnigh upsetting the inkstand. Very much frightened is my pretty pet, the arrantest coward that ever walked upon four legs! And so she avenges herself, as cowards are wont to do, by following the cows at safe distance, as soon as they are fairly past, and beginning to bark amain when they axe nearly out of sight. Then follows a motley group of the same nature—colts, yearlings, calves, heifers, with a shouting boy, and his poor shabby mongrel cur, for driver. The poor cur wants to play with Fanchon, but Fanchon, besides being a coward, is also a beauty, and holds her state; although I think, if he could but stay long enough, that the good-humour of the poor merry creature would prove infectious, and beguile the little lady into a game of romps. Lastly appears the most solemn troop of all, a grave company of geese and goslings, with the gander at their head, marching with the decorum and dignity proper to the birds who saved Rome. Fanchon, who once had an affair with a gander, in which she was notably worsted, retreats out of sight, and ensconces herself between me and the tree.
"Such are our passers-by. Sometimes we have what I was about to call settled inhabitants, in the shape of a camp of gipsies."
After describing this camp of gipsies, and how the men carry on a sort of "trade in forest ponies," and how the women make and sell baskets "at about double the price at which they might be bought at the dearest shop in the good town of Belford Regis," she proceeds to tell us how, notwithstanding her perfect knowledge of this fact, she is induced to become a purchaser.
"Last Saturday I happened to be sitting on a fallen tree somewhat weary, my little damsel working as usual at the other end, and Fanchon balancing himself on the trunk between us; the curls of her brown coat—she is entirely brown—turning into gold as the sunshine played upon them through the leaves.
"In this manner were we disposed, when a gipsy, with a pair of light baskets in her hand, came and offered them for sale. She was a middle-aged woman, who, in spite of her wandering life—perhaps because of that hardy out-of-door life—had retained much of her early beauty: the flashing eyes, the pearly teeth, the ruddy cheeks, the fine erect figure. It happened that, not wanting them, my companion had rejected these identical baskets when brought to our door in the morning. She told me so, and I quietly declined them. My friend the gipsy apparently gave the matter up, and, claiming me as an old acquaintance, began to inquire after my health, and fell into the pleasantest strain of conversation possible; spoke of my father, who, she said, had been kind to her and to her tribe, (no doubt she said truly; he was kind to everybody, and had a liking for the wandering race,) spoke of her children at the gipsy school in Dorsetshire; of the excellent Mr Crabbe, the friend of her people, at Southampton; then she began stroking Fanchon, (who actually, to my astonishment, permitted the liberty; in general she suffers no one to touch her that is not gentleman or lady;) Fanchon she stroked, and of Flush, the dear old dog, now lying buried under the rose-tree, she talked; then, to leave no one unpropitiated, she threw out a word of pleasant augury, a sort of gratuitous fortune-telling, to the hemmer of flounces; then she attacked me again with old recollections, trusting, with singular knowledge of human nature, to the power of the future upon the young, and of the past upon the old—to me she spoke of happy memories, to my companion of happiness to come; and so—how could I help it?—I bought the baskets."
After this little excursion into Woodcock Lane, we are introduced to Messrs Beaumont and Fletcher. The quotations from these authors we should have no object in reproducing here. One thing we cannot help noticing. Both on this and on some other occasions we are struck by an omission, by a silence. Though she may think fit to represent these dramatists as her favourite companions, we are morally certain that it was a far greater than either of them who was generally her delight and her study in that shady solitude. Could we have looked over the page as she sate there leaning so amiably against that "rugged elm," we are sure that it would have been Shakspeare that we should have found in her hands. But why no word of Shakspeare? We think we can conjecture the cause of this omission; and, if our surmise is correct, we quite sympathise with the feeling that led to it. Miss Mitford is a sincere and ardent admirer of Shakspeare; she must be so—in common with every intelligent person who reads poetry at all. But Miss Mitford likes to keep her senses; has a shrewd, quiet intelligence; has little love for what is vague or violent in criticism any more than in poetry; and she has felt that the extravagant, rhodomontade style of panegyric now prevalent upon our greatest of poets, reduced her to silence. She could not out-Herod Herod; she could not outbid these violent declaimers who speak of Shakspeare as if he were a god, who admire all they read which bears his name—the helter-skelter entangled confusion and obscurity, the wretched conceit, the occasional bombast—admire all, and thereby prove they have no right to any admiration whatever. She was, therefore, like many others who love and reverence him most, reduced to silence. Some years hence a sensible word may be written of Shakspeare. At present, he who would praise with discrimination must apparently place himself in the rank of his detractors.
Miss Mitford's critical taste leads her to an especial preference of what is distinct and intelligible in all the departments of literature. To some it may appear that she is more capable of doing justice to poetry of the secondary than of the higher and more spiritual order. However that may be, we, for our own part, congratulated ourselves on an escape from that vague and mystical criticism which is so prevalent in our day. There are two words which a certain class of writers never pronounce without going off into frenzy or delirious raving. "Shakspeare" is one of these words; the "Infinite" is the other. They have made the discovery that this poet or that painter talks or paints the "infinite." They find in every obscurity of thought, in every violence of passion, the "infinite." There is no such thing as "sound and fury signifying nothing." They always signify the "infinite." If there is the "infinite" in criticism, they certainly have reached it. In Goldsmith's time, it was "Shakspeare and the musical glasses;" it is now "Shakspeare and the Infinite." We suspect that the musical glasses were more amusing, and are sure that they had quite as much meaning.
We go back to Woodcock Lane. We rather cruelly abridged our last extract, on purpose that we might have space for one other of the same description. We make no apology for clinging to this "personal gossip." Very few of the poetical quotations throughout the work have more of beauty and of pathos than the concluding paragraph of the next extract we shall give. Apropos of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia, she makes us participators in her country rambles; and apropos of these she introduces us to an old friend, a walking-stick—"pretty nearly as well known as ourselves in our Berkshire village." Some sixty years ago it was "a stick of quality," having belonged to a certain Duchess-Dowager of Atholl; but the circumstance that her own mother had taken to using it, during her latter days, had especially endeared it to her.
"And then," as she observes with finest tact, "everybody knows how the merest trifles which have formed part of the daily life of the loved and lost, especially those things which they have touched, are cherished, and cared for, and put aside; how we dare not look upon them for very love; and how, by some accident that nobody can explain, they come to light in the course of time, and after a momentary increase of sadness, help to familiarise and render pleasant the memory by which they are endeared."
This is very beautifully expressed, and it is the tone of right sentiment; truthful, natural, the unaffected sadness that tempers into a sweet and pleasant memory.
"So the stick," she continues, "reappeared in the hall, and, from some whim which I have never rightly understood myself, I, who had no more need of such a supporter than the youngest woman in the parish—who was, indeed, the best walker of my years for a dozen miles round, and piqued myself not a little upon so being—took a fancy to use this stick in my own proper person, and most pertinaciously carried this fancy into execution. Much was I laughed at for this crotchet, and I laughed too. Friends questioned, strangers stared; but, impassive to stare or to question, I remained constant to my supporter. Except when I went to London, (for I paid so much homage to public opinion as to avoid such a display there,) I should as soon have thought of walking out without my bonnet as without my stick. That stick was my inseparable companion."
The staff had met with its share of misadventures and accidents; "one misfortune, so to say personal, which befel it, was the loss of its own head;" but its loss from the pony-chaise, its fall from the chaise into a brook which had been passed through the day before, is the especial calamity here celebrated. By this time we learn with regret that the stick has become more than a whim—has grown into a useful and necessary friend:—