A week went by but still the Doctor did not arrive, with the result that Miss Mitford wrote to her mother suggesting that one of the maids be sent off at once to bear her company in the coach to London. The letter plainly indicates that she was not only growing desperate but low-spirited. “Do you know, my dear mamma, that in spite of my little boy having so entirely forsaken and forgotten me (for I have never received even a note from him since his departure), I could not leave the country without seeing his native place, which Lady Charles assures me has no other recommendation than that, as it is perhaps the ugliest town in England. My cousin is so good as to promise to take me there to-morrow if it is a fine day.
“I hope you, my dear mamma, gave him a good scolding for coming without me, for every one else seems to have forgotten me. I think I might slip out of the world now very quietly, without being regretted even by my dog or any one but my darling mamma. Luckily I have no mind to try the experiment.”
The promised visit to Hexham took place the next day.
“We dined at a very wretched inn, for I must confess, in spite of the prepossession I felt in favour of my dear Ittey’s native town, that Hexham is a shocking gloomy place. After dinner I had the pleasure of visiting the house where my darling was born. It has been an extremely good one, and still retains a very respectable appearance; but it is now divided, and on one side of the street door, which still remains, is a collar maker’s shop, and on the other a milliner’s. We entered the latter and purchased three pairs of Hexham gloves, one for papa, one for my dearest mamma, and one for Ammy. I thought that, both as a memorial of the town and of the house, you would like that better than any other trifle I could procure. Our return was very tedious and disagreeable; but I was gratified on my arrival by finding a letter from papa, directed to Morpeth, in which he promises to be there as to-day. I cannot think, my darling, why you did not send him off on Wednesday, for the eating and drinking, and bawling at the Election will do him more harm than twenty journeys. Gog, he says, is very ill. God forgive me, but I do not pity him. He deserves some punishment for endeavouring to play such a trick upon papa and me.”
Gog was the Mitfords’ nick-name for Mr. Shaw Lefevre, on whom in her anxiety to find an excuse for her father’s inexplicable conduct, Miss Mitford strove to fasten the blame for the whole incident. Her complaint was that, in a letter which arrived after her father’s departure, he had “pretended with great quietness and a profusion of thanks to decline papa’s kind offer of coming to his assistance at the time he must have known that his agent had sent for him, and that he would already be in Reading when his letter arrived here: and to fancy any one would be deceived by so flimsy a trick is not a little degrading to our understandings.”
Dr. Mitford returned on November 2, after an absence of exactly twelve days, and just in time to throw himself, with his accustomed abandon, into the turmoil of the Morpeth and Newcastle elections, which closely followed each other during the month. At the end of November, he and his daughter, and Mr. Ogle, with whom he had made his peace, travelled to London together, and so home.
Thus ended the first and only visit Miss Mitford ever paid to the North. In reality it was little short of a triumphal tour for her, made memorable by the excessive kindness which every one seemed determined to lavish upon her. Apart from the period she spent at school, it ranks as the outstanding event of her life and would have been entirely free from any shadow whatsoever but for the incident in which her father was the central and culpable figure.
With a readiness to overlook and condone all his faults—and they were many—she seems to have both forgiven and forgotten the episode, content to dwell only on the brighter memories with which the holiday abounded.
“Years, many and changeful, have gone by since I trod those northern braes; they at whose side I stood, lie under the green sod; yet still, as I read of the Tyne or of the Wansbeck, the bright rivers sparkle before me, as if I had walked beside them but yesterday. I still seem to stand with my dear father under the grey walls of that grand old abbey church at Hexham, whilst he points to the haunts of his boyhood. Bright river Wansbeck! How many pleasant memories I owe to thy mere name!”
It is one of her old-age memories of those wonderful two months in the fall of 1806, and although, as we know, her father was not by her side as she describes, the picture may well stand as a fitting close to the chapter.