“I have lately heard a curious anecdote of Mr. Coleridge,” she writes, “which, at the risk—at the certainty—of spoiling it in the telling, I cannot forbear sending you. He had for some time relinquished his English mode of intoxication by brandy and water for the Turkish fashion of intoxication by opium; but at length the earnest remonstrance of his friends, aided by his own sense of right, prevailed on him to attempt to conquer this destructive habit. He put himself under watch and ward; went to lodge at an apothecary’s at Highgate, whom he cautioned to lock up his opiates; gave his money to a friend to keep; and desired his druggist not to trust him. For some days all went on well. Our poet was ready to hang himself; could not write, could not eat, could not—incredible as it may seem—could not talk. The stimulus was wanting, and the apothecary contented. Suddenly, however, he began to mend; he wrote, he read, he talked, he harangued; Coleridge was himself again! And the apothecary began to watch within doors and without. The next day the culprit was detected; for the next day came a second supply of laudanum from Murray’s, well wrapped up in proof sheets of the Quarterly Review.”
As a foil to this she tells, in the next letter, a story of Haydon the painter—poor, embittered disappointed Haydon, who, later, killed himself—which she had just heard from Mrs. Hofland. “He was engaged to spend the day at Hampstead, one Sunday, with some of the cleverest unbelievers of the age ... and being reproached with coming so late, said with his usual simplicity, ‘I could not come sooner—I have been to church.’ You may imagine the torrent of ridicule that was raised upon him. When it had subsided, ‘I’ll tell ye what, gentlemen,’ said he, ‘I knew when I came amongst ye—and knowing this it is not, perhaps, much to my credit that I came—that I was the only Christian of the party; but I think you know that I will not bear insult, and I now tell you all that I shall look upon it as a personal affront if ever this subject be mentioned by you in my hearing; and now to literature, or what you will!’”
During 1818 Miss Mitford paid another short visit to the Perrys at Tavistock House in Tavistock Square, evidently arranged with the idea of keeping their young friend well before the public. “The party to-day consists of the Duke of Sussex, Lord Erskine, and some more. I don’t want to dine with them and most sincerely hope we shall not, for there is no one of literary note; but I am afraid we shall not be able to get off.” They did not get off, and Miss Mitford “had the honour of being handed into the dining-room by that royal porpoise, the Duke of Sussex, who complained much of want of appetite, but partook of nearly every dish on the table.” Concerning this lack of appetite, she subsequently wrote to Sir William Elford: “Never surely did man eat, drink, or swear so much, or talk such bad English. He is a fine exemplification of the difference between speaking and talking; for his speeches, except that they are mouthy and wordy and commonplace, and entirely without ideas, are really not much amiss.” While on this visit she must have heard from some candid friend of Mr. Perry’s the following story of Hazlitt’s revenge and, later, detailed it with great delight—for she dearly loved a joke, even at the expense of her friends.
Hazlitt had been contributing a series of articles, on the English Stage, to various newspapers, particularly to the Morning Chronicle, of which, it will be remembered, Perry was the Editor. Unfortunately Hazlitt’s “copy” came pouring in at the very height of the advertisement season, much to Perry’s disgust, who used “to execrate the d—d fellow’s d—d stuff.” But it was good “copy,” although the Editor had no idea that its writer was a man of genius, and having “hired him as you’d hire your footman, turned him off with as little or less ceremony than you would use in discharging the aforesaid worthy personage,” because he wrote a masterly but damaging critique on Sir Thomas Lawrence, one of Perry’s friends. “Last winter, when his Characters of Shakespeare and his lectures had brought him into fashion, Mr. Perry remembered him as an old acquaintance and asked him to dinner, and a large party to meet him, to hear him talk, and show him off as the lion of the day. The lion came—smiled and bowed—handed Miss Bentley to the dining-room—asked Miss Perry to take wine—said once ‘Yes’ and twice ‘No’—and never uttered another word the whole evening. The most provoking part of this scene was, that he was gracious and polite past all expression—a perfect pattern of mute elegance—a silent Lord Chesterfield; and his unlucky host had the misfortune to be very thoroughly enraged without anything to complain of.”
Reading was a place of great excitement during the year 1818, the resignation of the Member, Sir John Simeon, necessitating a general election. This brought Dr. Mitford back from Town post-haste, for he counted electioneering among his special delights, as we have previously noted. The occasion furnishes us with one of the few recorded instances of Mrs. Mitford shaking herself free from the cares of the household in order to be with and carefully watch her haphazard spouse. “Papa is going to stay in Reading the whole election, and mamma is going to take care of him. Very good in her, isn’t it? But papa does not seem to me at all grateful for this kind resolution, and mutters—when she is quite out of hearing—something about ‘petticoat government.’”
The candidate was Fyshe Palmer, who not only won the election but continued in the representation of Reading for eighteen years. “He is,” wrote Miss Mitford, “vastly like a mop-stick, or rather, a tall hop-pole, or an extremely long fishing-rod, or anything that is all length and no substance; three or four yards of brown thread would be as like him as anything, if one could contrive to make it stand upright. He and papa were riding through the town together, and one of the voters cried out, ‘Fish and Flesh for ever!’ Wit is privileged just now.”
Mr. Palmer’s wife was the Lady Madelina, a daughter of the Duke of Gordon, and she and Miss Mitford became very good friends. Miss Mitford’s anxiety for Palmer’s success was due not so much because of his politics as for the promise he had given her of following in the footsteps of his predecessor and keeping her well supplied with “franks,” if elected. His promise he, doubtless, intended to keep, but as Miss Mitford despairingly wrote: “he has the worst fault a franker can have: he is un-come-at-able. One never knows where to catch him. I don’t believe he is ever two days in a place—always jiggeting about from one great house to another. And such strides as he takes, too! Oh! for the good days of poor Sir John Simeon! He was the franker for me! Stationary as Southampton Buildings, solid as the doorpost, and legible as the letters on the brass-plate! I shall never see his fellow.”
Some time after the election, when, indeed, it was a thing forgotten, Dr. Valpy, the head-master of the Grammar School, decided to have a Greek play performed by the boys, and to this function the Mitfords were invited. The play was the Hercules Furens of Euripides and, of course, Miss Mitford made fun of the whole performance, especially of the last scene when, to slow music, the curtain dropped on “Theseus and Hercules in the midst of a hug which assuredly no Greek poet, painter or sculptor ever dreamt of. That hug was purely Readingtonian—conceived, born and bred in the Forbury.” However, the play was well received and became an annual fixture, with Miss Mitford as the official reporter or, as she put it, the “official puffer for the Reading paper.”
The year was also notable for the arrival in Reading of Henry Hart Milman as Vicar of St. Mary’s, and of the Duke of Wellington, who came in order to look over Strathfieldsaye, Lord Rivers’ estate, some distance beyond that of the Mitfords along the Basingstoke Road, which the Nation proposed he should accept as a tribute of its gratitude. “His Grace comes to look at it sometimes,” wrote Miss Mitford, “and whirls back the same day. He is a terrible horse-killer.”
Towards the close of the year 1819 the Chancery suit came to an end. Mr. Elliott—the Doctor’s opponent and a Bond Street upholsterer—visited Bertram House, saw Dr. Mitford, had a straight talk with him and, as Miss Mitford recorded, “this long affair of eight years was settled in eight minutes.”