and she closes the Sonnet with—
“A spot it is for far-off music made,
Stillness and rest—a smaller Windermere.”
During this period she was also busily occupied in transcribing the manuscripts of her old friend and governess, Fanny Rowden, and was most anxious for the success of that lady’s recently-published poem entitled The Pleasures of Friendship. With an excess of zeal which ever characterized her labours for those she loved, she was continually urging her father to try and interest any of his friends who might be useful, and to this end suggested that the poem be shown to Thomas Campbell and to Samuel Rogers. Of Samuel Rogers she confesses that she can find no merit in his work, except “polished diction and mellifluous versification,” but at the same time records her own and her mother’s opinion that Miss Rowden’s poem is a “happy mixture of the polish of Rogers and the animation of Campbell,” with whose works it must rank in time.
With the exception of a short period during the year 1808 the Doctor was still to be found in London. This exception was caused by the Reading Races at which the Doctor was a regular attendant. On this particular occasion young William Harness, son of Mrs. Mitford’s trustee and then a boy at Harrow, was of the party. He went in fulfilment of an old promise, but the pleasure of his visit was considerably lessened by the fact that he noticed how greatly altered was the Mitford’s mode of living. It is recorded in his Life that “a change was visible in the household; the magnificent butler had disappeared; and the young Harrow boy by no means admired the Shabby Equipage in which they were to exhibit themselves on the race-course.”
No hint of this state of things is to be found in the letters of the period, nor can we trace even the vestige of a murmur in them from the mother and daughter who must have been torn with anxiety. Here and there, however, there is a suspicion of disappointment at the long absence of the Doctor and his failure to fulfil promises of certain return. Nearly every letter contains some phrase indicative of this, such as: “I hope Mr. Ogle will not long detain you from us”; “Heaven bless you, my beloved! We long for your return, and are ever most fondly,” etc.; or,—“I have myself urged a request to be favoured with the second canto [of Miss Rowden’s poem] by your worship’s return; which felicity, as you say nothing to the contrary, we may, I presume, hope for on Thursday”; to which was added, by way of reminder of their many disappointed attempts to meet him in Reading, “but you must expect, like all deceivers, not to be so punctually attended to this time as before.”
Miss Mitford was never the one to sit about the house, crying and moping over wreckage, the naturally corollary to which would have been an upbraiding of the wrecker, and from such an outrageous action—she would have so considered it—she ever refrained. Rather she preferred to apply herself more strenuously to her literary work wherein she might not only absorb herself but be laying the foundation of a career which, in time, she trusted might resuscitate their diminished fortunes and ensure a regular competence.
Her most ambitious effort, at this period, was, as she described it when submitting it to her father in London, “a faint attempt to embalm the memory of the hero of Corunna.” This, we are given to understand, was written under “mamma’s persuasions,” although the writer considered it far above her powers. “I fancy I am more than usually dissatisfied,” she goes on to write, “from the comparison I cannot avoid making between these and the exquisitely beautiful performance I have lately been engaged in examining,” a kindly reference of course to Miss Rowden’s work.
The poem is dated February 7, 1809, is entitled “To the Memory of Sir John Moore,” and is signed “M. R. M.” It consists of thirty-four lines, too long to quote here, but we cannot refrain from giving the concluding stanzas because, in view of subsequent events, they have a peculiar literary significance:—
“No tawdry, ’scutcheons hang around thy tomb,