While the Doctor was still in London an offer came from one of Miss Mitford’s cousins—a Mrs. Raggett—suggesting that she should give up authorship altogether and live with her and her husband, the scheme being that Miss Mitford should act as reader and secretary to Mr. Raggett, who was nearly blind, and be a companion to his wife. “The offer had great temptation,” she told William Harness, “and I have no doubt we should have been happy together, but it is clear my father’s comfort would have been destroyed by such an arrangement; the sacrifice of his old habits—his old friends—the blameless self-importance which results from his station as Chairman of the Reading Bench—and his really influential position in this county, where we are much respected in spite of our poverty, would have been far too much to ask or to permit. I refused it therefore at once.”
To her old friend, Sir William Elford—not often written to in these driving days—she wrote: “I must be obliged to get out another book this spring, although how I shall be able to write it God only knows. I am glad you like my last volume; I myself hate all my own doings, and consider the being forced to this drudgery as the greatest misery that life can afford. But it is my wretched fate and must be undergone—so long, at least, as my father is spared to me. If I should have the misfortune to lose him, I shall go quietly to the workhouse, and never write another line—a far preferable destiny.”
FOOTNOTES:
[26] She was related to the President, General Jackson.
CHAPTER XXIII
“MY OLDEST AND KINDEST FRIEND.”
“Nature has given us two ears, but only one mouth—why do not we take the hint?” was a sentence which Macready wrote in his Diary when suffering the consequences of some ill-advised, hasty utterance. If only Miss Mitford, with her impulsiveness, had seen this sentence and could have realized how wise was the advice contained in it, she would have been a happier woman in many respects. Too often her eagerness to champion the cause of one of her friends led her to embitter and estrange another. Among her neighbours was a family of the name of Merry, and one day, while Talfourd was on a visit to the Mitford Cottage, Mr. Merry called and in some way affronted the other. This vexed the hostess considerably at the time, and was referred to later, when she and the Merrys met at an afternoon function at Bearwood, the residence of Mr. Walter, of the Times. There was a heated argument, and Miss Mitford took up a resentful attitude, “certainly with too much violence,” as she afterwards explained. The occasion was ill-chosen for such an altercation, and Mr. Merry was deeply offended. Repenting at leisure, Miss Mitford wrote him an apology, which he would not accept. For six weeks he nursed his grievance, spreading the tale of Miss Mitford’s offence among mutual friends. Realizing at last how deeply she had offended, Miss Mitford sent her old friend the following letter, which we quote as an instance of her wholehearted contrition.
“I cannot suffer you to leave our neighbourhood for weeks, perhaps for months, without making one more effort to soften a displeasure too justly excited—without once more acknowledging my fault, and entreating your forgiveness. Do not again repulse me—pray do not! Life is too short, too full of calamity, for an alienation indefinitely prolonged—a pardon so long suspended. I know you better, perhaps, than you know yourself, and am sure that, were I at this moment suffering under any great affliction, you would be the first—ay, the very first—to soothe and to succour me. If my father (which may God in his mercy avert!) were dead; if I myself were on a sick bed, or in prison, or in a workhouse (and you well know that this is the destiny to which I always look forward), then you would come to me—I am sure of it. You would be as ready to fly to my assistance then as the angel of peace and mercy at your side”— “At all events, do not go without a few words of peace and of kindness. I send you the last flowers of my garden. Your flower seems to have continued in blossom on purpose to assist in the work of reconciliation. Do not scorn its sweet breath, or resist its mute pleadings, but give me in exchange one bunch of the laurustinus for which I used to ask you last winter, and let it be a token of the full and perfect reconciliation for which I am a suppliant; and then I shall cherish it—oh, I cannot tell you how much! Once again, forgive me—and farewell.” It is pleasant to record that this touching appeal had, as of course it would, the desired effect, and the old happy relationship was renewed. The year was 1833 and, like many a previous one, it was full of pecuniary worries and embarrassments. Dr. Mitford was again giving trouble, seeking to augment his income by some doubtful investment for which he had, as usual, the tip of some unscrupulous schemer, to whose class he fell an easy prey. The matter fortunately came to Miss Mitford’s knowledge, and she wrote off in great haste to William Harness “to caution you in case you should receive any authority, from any quarter, to sell out our money in the Funds, not to do so without communicating with me. I have no doubt of my father’s integrity, but I think him likely to be imposed on.”