Any doubts which the cobbler opposite may have entertained as to the status of the new arrivals—if, indeed, particulars had not already filtered through from Grazeley—must have been dispersed by the Doctor’s action in at once removing the terror of the Cross. More than this, he had actually suspended the village constable—who was also the blacksmith—for appearing before him with a blood-stained head—an unwarrantable offence against the person of the Chairman of the Reading bench. Three Mile Cross was to be purged; henceforth, it must behave itself, for a real live magistrate had come to live in the midst and, until the villagers found that the Doctor’s bark was worse than his bite they might shake with apprehension—and “they” included the cobbler who stuck closer to his last and was not to be tempted to anything more than a knowing wink when the magistrate and his family came under discussion.
“Borrow a little of the only gift in which I can vie with you—the elastic spirit of Hope”—wrote Miss Mitford to Mrs. Hofland at this time, and in that sentence we catch a glimpse of this wonderful woman who point blank refused to acknowledge a shadow so long as but one streak of light were vouchsafed to her.
“This place is a mere pied à terre,” she wrote, “till we can suit ourselves better,” and her one dread was that her father would elect to live in Reading, to which town she had now taken a sudden and violent dislike. “Not that I have any quarrel with the town, which, as Gray said of Cambridge, ‘would be well enough if it were not for the people’; but those people—their gossiping—their mistiness! Oh! you can imagine nothing so bad. They are as rusty as old iron, and as jagged as flints.” By which we may quite properly infer that the affairs and dwindled fortunes of the Mitfords were being openly discussed.
As a matter of fact, they must at this time have been almost penniless, with nothing between them and actual want but what they could obtain by the exertions of the daughter with her pen.
Whatever the original intention of the Doctor may have been as to the tenure of the cottage, it has to be recorded that it lasted for thirty years, witnessing the best and most successful of Miss Mitford’s literary efforts and her short-lived triumph as a dramatist; marking the gradual decay and death of Mrs. Mitford, and the increasing selfishness of the Doctor, the results of which, when he died, were his daughter’s only inheritance.
But, lest we should be accused of painting too gloomy a picture, let us also joyfully record that it was in this humble cottage and among the flowers of its garden that there gathered, from time to time, those truest friends who came from far and near to pay homage to the brave little woman who found comfort in the simple things of life, and was happy only when she was permitted to share her happiness with others.
Despite the pigs which came through the hedge from the Swan next door and “made sad havoc among my pinks and sweet-peas”; despite, also, the pump which went dry “from force of habit,” soon after they were installed, Miss Mitford was not long before she had “taken root,” as she called it, and begun again her work and her correspondence.
Haydon, the artist, sent her a picture—his study for the head of St. Peter—a delicate compliment and, seeing that their walls were so bare, a seasonable gift. “I am almost ashamed to take a thing of so much consequence” wrote the pleased recipient; “but you are a very proud man and are determined to pay me in this magnificent manner for pleasing myself with the fancy of being in a slight degree useful to you. Well, I am quite content to be the obliged person.”
Anxious to keep down all needless expenditure we now read of the “discontinuance of my beloved Morning Chronicle” and of inability to accept invitations away because of “mamma’s old complaint in her head” and “papa’s sore throat, which he manages in the worst possible manner, alternately overdoing it and letting it quite alone; blistering it by gargling brandy one day, and going out in the rain and wind all the next; so that, to talk of going out, even to you, seems out of the question. They really can’t do without me.” On the other hand, and remembering the mistiness, the rustiness and flinty nature of the Reading folk, there was the pathetic plea to Sir William Elford that he should turn aside on his journeys to or from town, to pay the cottage and its inhabitants a visit. “We shall have both house-room and heart-room for you, and I depend on seeing you. Do pray come—you must come and help laugh at our strange shifts and the curious pieces of finery which our landlord has left for the adornment of his mansion. Did you ever see a corner cupboard? Pray come and see us or you will break my heart—and let me know when you are coming.”
Three months later she wrote:—“I have grown exceedingly fond of this little place. I love it of all things—have taken root completely—could be content to live and die here.... My method of doing nothing seldom varies. Imprimis, I take long walks and get wet through. Item, I nurse my flowers—sometimes pull up a few, taking them for weeds, and vice versâ leave the weeds, taking them for flowers. Item, I do a short job of needlework. Item, I write long letters. Item, I read all sorts of books, long and short, new and old. Have you a mind for a list of the most recent? Buckhardt’s Travels in Nubia, Bowdich’s Mission to Ashantee, Dubois’ Account of India, Morier’s Second Journey in Persia. All these are quartos of various degrees of heaviness. There is another of the same class, La Touche’s[19] Life of Sir Philip Sidney (you set me to reading that by your anecdote of Queen Elizabeth’s hair). Southey’s Life of Wesley—very good. Hogg’s Winter Evening Tales—very good indeed (I have a great affection for the Ettrick Shepherd, have not you?). Diary of an Invalid—the best account of Italy which I have met with since Forsythe—much in his manner—I think you would like it. Odeleben’s Campaign in Saxony—interesting, inasmuch as it concerns Napoleon, otherwise so-so. The Sketch Book, by Geoffrey Crayon—quite a curiosity—an American book which is worth reading. Mr. Milman’s Fall of Jerusalem—a fine poem, though not exactly so fine as the Quarterly makes out. I thought it much finer when I first read it than I do now, for it set me to reading Josephus, which I had never had the grace to open before; and the historian is, in the striking passages, much grander than the poet, particularly in the account of the portents and prophecies before the Fall. These books, together with a few Italian things—especially the Lettere di Ortes—will pretty well account for my time since I wrote last, and convince you of the perfect solitude, which gives me time to indulge so much in the delightful idleness of reading.”