Throughout the letters of this period it is rather pathetic to notice the forced optimism of the writer, especially in those addressed to her father. Sandwiched between reports of progress with Blanch are the most insignificant details of home, of Marmion’s prowess with a rabbit; of the ci-devant dairymaid Harriet, who, at the request of her admirer, William, had consented to leave her place at Michaelmas to share his fate and Mrs. Adams’s cottage; of Mia’s puppies, and of the pretty glow-worms which she would so love to show the errant one had she the felicity to have him by her side.
More than this, it is astounding to gather from her letters to Sir William Elford that she was keeping up her reading, expressing herself most decisively regarding Scott’s new poems, the preference for which in Edinburgh she deems unlikely to extend southward; and then falling-to at Anna Seward’s letters—The Swan of Lichfield—just published in six volumes and which she finds “affected, sentimental, and lackadaisical to the highest degree; and her taste is even worse than her execution.... According to my theory, letters should assimilate to the higher style of conversation, without the snip-snap of fashionable dialogue, and with more of the simple transcripts of natural feeling than the usage of good society would authorize. Playfulness is preferable to wit, and grace infinitely more desirable than precision. A little egotism, too, must be admitted; without it, a letter would stiffen into a treatise, and a billet assume the ‘form and pressure’ of an essay. I have often thought a fictitious correspondence (not a novel, observe) between two ladies or gentlemen, consisting of a little character, a little description, a little narrative, a little criticism, a very little sentiment and a great deal of playfulness, would be a very pleasing and attractive work: ‘A very good article, sir’ (to use the booksellers’ language); ‘one that would go off rapidly—pretty, light summer reading for the watering-places and the circulating libraries.’ If I had the slightest idea that I could induce you to undertake such a work by coaxing, by teasing, or by scolding, you should have no quarter from me till you had promised or produced it.”
How light-hearted! And, moreover, how strangely prophetic was this promised success for the book written on the lines suggested, when we remember the unqualified welcome given to a delightful novel, a few seasons ago, which surely might have been made up from this very prescription. Had Mr. E. V. Lucas been delving in Mitfordiana, we wonder, or was Listeners’ Lure but another instance of great minds thinking the same thoughts?
CHAPTER XI
LITERARY CRITICISM AND AN UNPRECEDENTED COMPLIMENT
“As soon as I have finished Blanch to please myself, I have undertaken to write a tragedy to please Mr. Coleridge, whilst my poem goes to him, and to Southey and to Campbell. When it returns from them I shall, if he will permit me, again trouble my best and kindest critic to look over it. This will probably not be for some months, as I have yet two thousand lines to write, and I expect Mr. Coleridge to keep it six weeks at least before he looks at it.” This extract is from one of Miss Mitford’s letters to Sir William Elford, dated August 29, 1811, and it was not until exactly two months later that she was able to forward the finished poem for Sir William’s criticism.
It was a production of which her father thought little at first, declaring that the title alone gave him the vapours. Her mother and the maid Lucy were half-blinded with tears when it was read to them, but then, as Miss Mitford remarked: “they are so tender-hearted that I am afraid it is not a complete trial of my pathetic powers.” In this case Sir William was the first to scan the lines, an arrangement due possibly to the stress of work then being engaged in by Coleridge and Campbell—the former with lectures on Poetry and the latter in the writing of his famous biographical prefaces to his collection of the poets. Eventually the book was produced in the December of 1812, news of which, apart from any other source, we glean from a letter of its author in which she says: “ Blanch is out—out, and I have not sent her to you! The truth is, my dear Sir William, that there are situations in which it is a duty to give up all expensive luxuries, even the luxury of offering the little tribute of gratitude and friendship; and I had no means of restraining papa from scattering my worthless book all about to friends and foes, but by tying up my own hands from presenting any, except to two or three very near relations. I have told you all this because I am not ashamed of being poor, and because perfect frankness is in all cases the most pleasant as well as the most honourable to both parties.”
It was fortunate that Blanch was finished, for just as it was on the point of completion, Miss Mitford was greatly excited over the prospect of collaborating with Fanny Rowden in the translation of a poem which would have given both a nice sum in return for their labours. Unfortunately the project came to naught and the work was entrusted to a man.
From now, on to the close of the year 1815, there is no record of any work of Miss Mitford’s, unless we except one or two odes and sonnets of which she said the first were “above her flight, requiring an eagle’s wing,” while of the latter she “held them in utter abhorrence.” Her time really seems to have been taken up with an occasional visit to London and into Hampshire (where she inspected her old birthplace, Alresford); with short excursions into Oxfordshire (within an easy drive out and back from home), and largely with a voluminous correspondence, chiefly on literary topics, with Sir William Elford. Fortunately this correspondence was not wasted labour as she was able to embody a very large proportion of it in the Recollections of a Literary Life. Indeed, had she not specifically suggested the plan of that work many years later, we should feel justified in believing that, from the very outset, it was to such an end that her correspondence and literary criticism were directed.
Now that a century has passed since the letters were written, it is interesting to peruse her comments on such writers as Byron, Scott, Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, all of whom were publishing at that period. “I dislike Childe Harold,” she wrote. “Not but that there are very many fine stanzas and powerful descriptions; but the sentiment is so strange, so gloomy, so heartless, that it is impossible not to feel a mixture of pity and disgust, which all our admiration of the author’s talents cannot overcome. I would rather be the poorest Greek whose fate he commiserates, than Lord Byron, if this poem be a true transcript of his feelings. Out of charity we must hope that his taste only is in fault, and that the young lordling imagines that there is something interesting in misery and misanthropy. I the readier believe this, as I am intimate with one of his lordship’s most attached friends, and he gives him an excellent character.” The “intimate friend” alluded to was William Harness who, from the Harrow schooldays onwards, was chief among Byron’s friends; indeed, Byron expressly desired to dedicate Childe Harold to Harness, and only refrained “for fear it should injure him in his profession,” Harness being then in Holy Orders while Byron’s name was associated with orgies of dissipation, to be followed later by calumnious charges which Harness nobly did his best to refute.
It is a tribute to Miss Mitford’s critical faculty that she found little difficulty in probing the mystery as to the authorship of Waverley, that “half French, half English, half Scotch, half Gaelic, half Latin, half Italian—that hotch-potch of languages—that movable Babel called Waverley!” as she termed it. “Have you read Walter Scott’s Waverley?” she writes. “I have ventured to say ‘Walter Scott’s,’ though I hear he denies it, just as a young girl denies the imputation of a lover; but if there be any belief in internal evidence, it must be his. It is his by a thousand indications—by all the faults and by all the beauties—by the unspeakable and unrecollectable names—by the hanging the clever hero, and marrying the stupid one—by the praise (well deserved, certainly, for when had Scotland such a friend! but thrust in by the head and shoulders) of the late Lord Melville—by the sweet lyric poetry—by the perfect costume—by the excellent keeping of the picture—by the liveliness and gaiety of the dialogues—and last, not least, by the entire and admirable individuality of every character in the book, high as well as low—the life and soul which animates them all with a distinct existence, and brings them before our eyes like the portraits of Fielding and Cervantes.”