A new volume—the fourth—of Our Village was now almost ready for publication, for which Whittaker agreed to give £150, and during the month an agent from a publisher had called at Three Mile Cross with a view to arranging for a work to be entitled Stories of American Life by American Writers, which were to be selected and edited, with prefaces by Miss Mitford. The suggested publisher was Colburn. This, of course, necessitated a great deal of labour, in the midst of which the negotiations for the American book nearly fell through by reason of a quarrel between the publisher and his agent.
It was a most trying period, for Dr. Mitford grew more exacting day by day, demanding more and more attention from his daughter, whom he expected—nay, forced—to play cribbage with him until he fell asleep, when, being released, she read and worked far into the night. Then, to make matters worse, the Doctor began to imbibe more wine than was good for him—it will be noticed that his creature comforts did not diminish—and, whilst returning alone from a dinner-party in the neighbourhood, was thrown out of the chaise and the horse and vehicle arrived empty at the cottage in the dead of night. His daughter, who had been waiting for him, made the discovery that he was missing and, rousing the man and servants, they all set off along the road to Shinfield, finding him lying stunned by the roadside a mile away, “Only think,” wrote his daughter, “what an agony of suspense it was! Thank Heaven, however, he escaped uninjured, except being stiff from the jar; and I am recovering my nervousness better than I could have expected.”
Very truly yours
M. R. Mitford
THE AUTHOR OF OUR VILLAGE
Miss Mitford “attended by a printer’s devil to whom she is delivering ‘copy.’” (From a sketch in Fraser’s Magazine, May, 1831.)
The success of Rienzi in America, and the previous re-publication in that country of a small volume of the Narrative Poems on the Female Character, had brought Miss Mitford’s name prominently before the American people, and towards the end of 1830 she was gratified by the receipt of a long letter of congratulation from Miss Catharine Maria Sedgwick,[26] an American author of some repute in her day, who had, that year, published a novel entitled Hope Leslie. The letter mentioned the despatch of an author’s copy of one of the writer’s books and asked for particulars of the village and home-life of Miss Mitford, whose volumes on Our Village were being read with avidity across the Atlantic. It drew a long and characteristic reply.
“I rejoice,” wrote Miss Mitford, “to find that your book is not merely reprinted but published in England, and will contribute, together with the splendid novels of Mr. Cooper, to make the literature and manners of a country so nearly connected with us in language and ways of thinking, known and valued here. I think that every day contributes to that great end. Cooper is certainly, next to Scott, the most popular novel writer of the age. Washington Irving enjoys a high and fast reputation; the eloquence of Dr. Channing, if less widely, is perhaps more deeply felt; and a lady, whom I need not name, takes her place amongst these great men, as Miss Edgeworth does among our Scotts and Chalmerses. I have contributed, or rather, am about to contribute, my mite to this most desirable interchange of mind with mind, having selected and edited three volumes of tales, taken from the great mass of your periodical literature, and called Stories of American Life by American Authors. They are not yet published, but have been printed some time; and I shall desire Mr. Colburn to send you a copy, to which, indeed, you have every way a right, since I owe to you some of the best stories in the collection.” Then followed a short description of the events which led up to the removal from Bertram House to the cottage at Three Mile Cross. “There was, however, no loss of character amongst our other losses; and it is to the credit of human nature to say, that our change of circumstances has been attended with no other change amongst our neighbours and friends than that of increased attentions and kindness. Indeed I can never be sufficiently thankful for the very great goodness which I have experienced all through life, from almost every one with whom I have been connected. My dear mother I had the misfortune to lose last winter. My dear father still lives, a beautiful and cheerful old man, whom I should of all things like you to know, and if ever you do come to our little England, you must come and see us. We should never forgive you if you did not. Our family losses made me an authoress ... and I should have abstained from all literary offence for the future had not poverty driven me against my will to writing tragic verse and comic prose; thrice happy to have been able, by so doing, to be of some use to my dear family.”
In response to the invitation contained in this letter Miss Sedgwick did call at the cottage when, some years later, she paid a visit to this country. It was a visit ostensibly undertaken to see the sights and meet the lions—particularly the literary lions. The record of the trip was embodied in two small volumes published in 1841 by Moxon, in London, and entitled Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home. Miss Sedgwick possessed a telling style, picturesque to a degree, and there can be no shadow of doubt that her “kindred at home” were delighted to have her spicy epistles, but they shocked Miss Mitford. “If you have a mind,” the latter wrote to a friend, “to read the coarsest Americanism ever put forth, read the Literary Gazette of this last week. I remember, my dear love, how much and how justly you were shocked at Miss Sedgwick’s way of speaking of poor Miss Landon’s death; but when you remember that her brother and nephew had spent twice ten days at our poor cottage—that she had been received as their kinswoman, and therefore as a friend, you may judge how unexpected this coarse detail has been. The Athenæum will give you no notion of the original passage nor the book itself—for John Kenyon, meeting with it at Moxon’s, cancelled the passage—but too late for the journals, except the Athenæum. Of course its chief annoyance to me is the finding the aunt of a dear friend so excessively vulgar. Do get the Literary Gazette—for really it must be seen to be believed.”
We quote the extract from the Literary Gazette of July 10, 1841.
“Our coachman (who, after telling him we were Americans, had complimented us on our speaking English, ‘and very good English, too’) professed an acquaintance of some twenty years standing with Miss M., and assured us that she was one of the ‘cleverest women in England,’ and ‘the Doctor’ (her father) ‘an ’earty old boy.’ And when he reined his horses up to her door, and she appeared to receive us, he said, ‘Now you would not take that little body there for the great author, would you?’ and certainly we should have taken her for nothing but a kindly gentlewoman, who had never gone beyond the narrow sphere of the most refined social life.... Miss M. is truly ‘a little body,’ and dressed a little quaintly, and as unlike as possible to the faces we have seen of her in the magazines, which all have a broad humour, bordering on coarseness. She has a pale grey, soul-lit eye, and hair as white as snow; a wintry sign that has come prematurely upon her, as like signs come upon us, while the year is yet fresh and undecayed. Her voice has a sweet, low tone, and her manner a naturalness, frankness, and affectionateness, that we have been so long familiar with in their other modes of manifestation, that it would have been indeed a disappointment not to have found them.... The garden is filled, matted with flowering shrubs and vines; the trees are wreathed with honeysuckles and roses. Oh! that I could give some of my countrywomen a vision of this little paradise of flowers, that they might learn how taste and industry and an earnest love and study of the art of garden-culture, might triumph over small space and small means. In this very humble home she receives on equal terms the best in the land. Her literary reputation might have gained for her this elevation, but she started on vantage-ground, being allied by blood to the Duke of Bedford’s family.”
Speaking for ourselves, we are inclined to disagree with Miss Mitford’s strictures. The article is breezy, certainly, and short of the reference to the ’earty old boy and to herself as “the little body,” we confess to finding it little short of a very kindly tribute. As to the concluding sentence of the article, that was, perhaps, a case of “drawing the long bow,” but then both Miss Mitford and her mother frequently alluded to the distant connection of the latter with the Bedford’s, and the fact must have been mentioned by Miss Mitford in her visitor’s hearing.