“Do not forget that, if the tax money be not paid early this week, you will be reported as a defaulter; and your friends the ministers would take great delight in popping you up.” This was contained in a letter of March 17, 1810. A week later a letter addressed to the Doctor at the Mount Coffee House, states:—“A letter came from Thompson Martin this morning which, knowing the hand, mamma opened. It was to request you would let him take the choice of your pictures [in payment of taxes]. I wrote a note to say, generally, that you had been in town for the last two months, and were still there; but that you would probably return next week to attend the Grand Jury, and would undoubtedly take an early opportunity of calling upon him. Was not this right? You will collect from this that we have received a summons from the under-sheriff, which was given over the pale to William this morning.” There is also, in a letter of May 10, 1810, a suggestion of further trouble of a pecuniary nature, although it is difficult to say to what it refers. “And now let me give you a little serious advice, my dear son and heir. If those people do not give you a secure indemnity, stir not a finger in this business. Let them ‘go to the devil and shake themselves,’ for I would not trust one of them with a basket of biscuits to feed my dogs. They have no more honour between them all than you ‘might put on the point of a knife, and not choke a daw withal,’ so comfort yourself accordingly; treat them as you would lawyers or the king’s ministers, or any other fraternity of known rogues and robbers.”
No matter how optimistic Miss Mitford may have been, we cannot bring ourselves to believe that she was not harassed by the importunate creditors, or that her work did not suffer in consequence. One effect of it all was, of course, to make her re-double her efforts to write something which would bring money into the family coffers.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Writing in 1818 to her friend, Mrs. Hofland, she jokingly refers to an American—“a sort of lover of mine some seven or eight years ago—and who, by the way, had the good luck to be drowned instead of married”; but in this she is scarcely to be taken seriously.
CHAPTER X
A YEAR OF ANXIETY
While her first book was passing through the press, Miss Mitford paid a series of hurried visits to London, and it was during the course of one of these visits that she was introduced to a gentleman of wide sympathy and of great culture and ability. This was Sir William Elford, one of her father’s friends, although the friendship was not of that character which would blind the one to the other’s faults and failings. He was a Fellow of the Royal and Linnæan Societies, an exhibitor in the Royal Academy, and Recorder of Plymouth, for which borough he was representative in Parliament for a number of years. At the time of this introduction he was well over sixty, a man of an age therefore with whom Miss Mitford was not so likely to be reserved as with one of fewer years. As a result of this meeting a correspondence was started which continued for many years, during which time Sir William encouraged his young friend to write freely to him on any and every topic which interested her. It is a remarkable and interesting correspondence, as the occasional extracts we propose to give will prove, although, when he came to bear his share in editing these letters, the Rev. William Harness spoke of them as possessing “hardly any merit but high, cold polish, all freshness of thought being lost in care about the expression”; and again, “I like all the letters to Sir W. Elford, which (except when she forgets whom she is writing to and is herself again) are in conventional English and almost vulgar in their endeavour to be something particularly good.” Nevertheless, he confessed later “the letters improve as I go on. Even those to Sir W. Elford get easier and better, as she became less upon punctilio and more familiar with him; in fact, as—with all her asserted deference—she felt herself more and more his superior in intellect and information.”
The first letter was dated London, May 26, 1810, and was addressed to Sir William Elford, Bart., Bickham, Plymouth.
“My dear Sir,—
“Your most kind but too flattering letter followed me here two days ago, and I gladly avail myself of your permission to express my heartfelt gratitude for the indulgence with which you have received the trifling volume I had the honour to send you.