Of thine own spirit, gleams of thought and sense
Shoot o’er the careworn forehead, and illume
The heavy eye, and break the leaden gloom:
Even as the sunbeams on the rudest ground
Fling their illusive glories wide around,
And make the dullest scene of Nature bright
By the reflexion of their own pure light.”
During the year Dr. Mitford developed a most curious and inexplicable dislike to his daughter’s friends and acquaintances. Possibly he was growing tired of the congratulatory callers, but even so, he must surely have recognized that this sort of thing was the penalty exacted of popularity. “My father,” she wrote to William Harness, “very kind to me in many respects, very attentive if I’m ill, very solicitous that my garden should be nicely kept, that I should go out with him, and be amused—is yet, so far as art, literature, and the drama are concerned, of a temper infinitely difficult to deal with. He hates and despises them, and all their professors—looks on them with hatred and with scorn; and is constantly taunting me with my ‘friends’ and my ‘people’ (as he calls them), reproaching me if I hold the slightest intercourse with author, editor, artist, or actor, and treating with frank contempt every one not of a station in the county. I am entirely convinced that he would consider Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Walter Scott, and Mrs. Siddons as his inferiors. Always this is very painful—strangely painful.
“Since I have known Mr. Cathcart I can say with truth that he has never spoken to me or looked at me without ill-humour; sometimes taunting and scornful—sometimes more harsh than you could fancy. Now, he ought to remember that it is not for my own pleasure, but from a sense of duty, that I have been thrown in the way of these persons; and he should allow for the natural sympathy of similar pursuits and the natural wish to do the little that one so powerless and poor can do to bring merit (and that of a very high order) into notice. It is one of the few alleviations of a destiny that is wearing down my health and mind and spirits and strength—a life spent in efforts above my powers, and which will end in the workhouse, or in a Bedlam, as the body or the mind shall sink first. He ought to feel this; but he does not. I beg your pardon for vexing you with this detail. I do not often indulge in such repining.”
It is difficult to read such a letter without experiencing a feeling of intensest indignation against the almost inhuman selfishness of Dr. Mitford, who, content to batten on the fruits of his daughter’s industry, would yet make her path more difficult by his unreasonable and capricious jealousy. The incident can only be likened to that of a brute creature biting the hand that feeds him. And what, after all, was the cause of this cruel conduct? Nothing other than that his daughter was interesting herself in a young actor whose welfare she hoped to promote.