“The good town of Belford,” she later remarks, “swarmed of course with single ladies ... and was the paradise of ill-jointured widows and portionless old maids. They met on the tableland of gentility, passing their mornings in calls at each other’s houses, and their evenings in small tea-parties, seasoned with a rubber or a pool, and garnished with the little quiet gossiping (call it not scandal, gentle reader!) which their habits required.... The part of the town in which they chiefly congregated, the lady’s quartier, was one hilly corner of the parish of St. Nicholas, a sort of highland district, all made up of short rows, and pigmy places, and half-finished crescents, entirely uncontaminated by the vulgarity of shops,” chosen, it is suggested, “perhaps because it was cheap, perhaps because it was genteel—perhaps from a mixture of both causes.” A kindly satire this, and interesting because it points so conclusively to a certain backwater near the Forbury, and under the shadow of the church of St. Laurence, which will be easily recognized by many who remember how it retained its character as a settlement for prim old ladies, of the kind described by Miss Mitford, until within quite recent times.

“Of the public amusements of the town, as I remember it at bonny fifteen,” she continues, “these were sober enough. Ten years before, clubs had flourished; and the heads of houses had met once a week at the King’s Arms for the purpose of whist-playing; whilst the ladies, thus deserted by their liege lords, had established a meeting at each other’s mansions on club-nights, from which, by way of retaliation, the whole male sex was banished,” save one. “At the time, however, of which I speak, these clubs had passed away; and the public diversions were limited to an annual visit from a respectable company of actors, the theatre being, as is usual in country places, very well conducted and exceedingly ill attended; to biennial concerts, equally good in their kind, and rather better patronised; and to almost weekly incursions from itinerant lecturers on all the arts and sciences, and from prodigies of every kind, whether three-year-old fiddlers or learned dogs. There were also balls in their spacious and commodious townhall, which seemed as much built for the purposes of dancing as that of trying criminals. Public balls there were in abundance; but at the time of which I speak they were of less advantage to the good town of Belford than any one, looking at the number of good houses and of pretty young women, could well have thought possible.”

These few extracts—space forbids a larger selection—are sufficient, we think, to prove how keen was the observing eye and how critical was the mind of Miss Mitford at this time when,—to use her own phrase—“I was a very young girl and, what is more to the purpose, a very shy one, so that I mixed in none of the gaieties,” a statement which seems to lend support to the current saying that “the onlooker sees most of the game.”

So far we have dealt with the Reading life as dating from 1797, but it is important to note that Miss Mitford speaks of a short residence in the town when she was but four years of age, and this would give us the year 1791. Unfortunately no proof for or against this is available, so far as we know, and we should scarcely have thought it worthy of mention but for another statement which she makes in her Recollections the authenticity of which it would be well to at least, attempt to clear up.

The statement has reference to the interest which Samuel Taylor Coleridge evinced in one of her earliest literary efforts, Christina; or, The Maid of the South Seas, when it was being prepared for press at about the year 1811. This interest she ascribes to “Mr. Coleridge’s kind recognition of my father’s exertions” in his behalf and relates to that romantic period of the poet’s life when, in the December of 1793, he suddenly enlisted as a common soldier in the 15th Light Dragoons under the nom de guerre of “Silas Tomkyn Cumberbatch.” We have it on good authority that on December 4, 1793, he was sent, with other raw recruits, to be drilled with his regiment, then garrisoned at Reading, from which date until his discharge on April 10, 1794, he clearly proved his unfitness for the calling of a man-at-arms.

The story of his discharge has been variously related, but all are agreed that his identity was revealed by his being overheard by certain of his officers reciting Greek lines, to say nothing of the polish which, scholar as he was, he could not disguise. The circumstance was sufficiently unique in those days—the gentleman ranker was a growth of later date—to occasion inquiries, and these resulted in communications with his friends, who came, identified, and bought him out. One of these officers was Captain Ogle, eldest son of that Dean of Winchester to whom, as we have noted in the earliest chapter of this book, Dr. Mitford was on the visit which resulted in his introduction to Miss Russell.

Miss Mitford’s account of the event is somewhat circumstantial, for she relates that as Dr. Ogle was on a short visit to the Mitfords, the opportunity of calling upon his father was gladly embraced by the son, who, in the course of conversation, recorded the unusual incident of the learned recruit, with the result that “one of the servants waiting at table” was “induced to enlist in his place,” and the “arrangement for his [Coleridge’s] discharge took place at my father’s house at Reading.”

The dates relative to Coleridge’s enlistment and discharge are incontrovertible, therefore in view of the lack of evidence to support the idea of the Mitfords being in Reading in 1794, we are inclined to doubt—as others have doubted—the authenticity of Miss Mitford’s narrative, suggesting rather, that having heard this romantic story, many years after—possibly from the lips of Captain Ogle himself—she readily assumed, with the licence of literary folk in general, that the incident took place as she recorded it.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] He represented Reading in Parliament, 1802-1820.