With the publication of Belford Regis there came slight periods of rest—rest, that is, from the strenuous and wearing labour of writing against time in the fulfilment of contracts. During these temporary lulls in output Miss Mitford wandered about in her small garden, watching and tending her flowers as would a mother her children. Her especial delight was in the raising of seedlings, always a source of keen pleasure to an enthusiastic gardener. To print a catalogue of all her flowers would fill a large chapter, they were so many and varied, for scarcely a letter went to any of her flower-loving friends but it contained some request for a slip of this, or a cutting from that plant, or else a word of thanks for a floral gift just received. The popularity of the author of Our Village was so universal and extended to so many classes of the community that, to quote one evidence alone, it was no rare thing to find a new rose or a new dahlia figuring in contemporary florists’ lists as the “Miss Mitford” or the “Our Village,” a pretty proof, as the author herself said, “of the way in which gardeners estimate my love of flowers, that they are constantly calling plants after me, and sending me one of the first cuttings as presents. There is a dahlia now selling at ten guineas a root under my name; I have not seen the flower, but have just had one sent me (a cutting) which will of course blow in the autumn.” A delightful fancy, this, and one which obtains to this day, as witness any of the modern horticulturists’ lists.
It was to the culture of geraniums, however, that she principally devoted herself, “and,” said she, “it is lucky that I do, since they are comparatively easy to rear and manage, and do not lay one under any tremendous obligation to receive, for I never buy any.” She was writing to her friend, Miss Emily Jephson, in Ireland, with whom she was in fairly regular correspondence, although Miss Jephson had to share with Sir William Elford the long periods of silence which betokened their mutual friend’s slavery with the pen at the little cottage. Referring to these beloved geraniums, Miss Mitford wrote:—“All my varieties (amounting to at least three hundred different sorts) have been either presents, or exchanges, or my own seedlings—chiefly exchanges; for when once one has a good collection, that becomes an easy mode of enlarging it; and it is one pleasant to all parties, for it is a very great pleasure to have a flower in a friend’s garden. You, my own Emily, gave me my first plants of the potentilla, and very often as I look at them, I think of you.” One especially fine seedling geranium she named the “Ion,” a floral tribute to Serjeant Talfourd’s play, upon which he was then working.
A portrait of Miss Mitford in 1837.
(From Chorley’s Authors of England.)
What a wonderful garden it was!—a veritable garden of friendship wherein, as the quaint little figure in her calico sun-bonnet pottered about, picking off dead leaves and stained petals, she actually communed with her friends whose representatives they were. This was a pleasure her father could not take from her, indeed, to his credit be it recorded, it was a pleasure in which he shared.
Talfourd’s play, of which mention was made just now, was a work upon which he devoted odd moments of leisure snatched from his busy life of professional duties as one of the leading men of his day at the Bar. Pope’s lines: “I left no calling for this idle trade, no duty broke,” is the fitting motto with which he headed his Preface when the play was published in book form, for, as he said, it was composed for the most part on journeys while on Circuit, and afterwards committed to paper, a process of composition which, it may be readily conceived, extended over a lengthy period. When published it was dedicated to his old schoolmaster, the Rev. Richard Valpy, D.D., as “a slender token of gratitude for benefits which cannot be expressed in words,” and in the course of the Preface there were felicitous references to “the delightful artist,” Mr. Macready, and to the “power and beauty” of, among others, “the play of Rienzi.”
In Macready’s Diary, under date March 15, 1835, is the entry:—“Forster told me of Talfourd having completed a tragedy called Ion. What an extraordinary, what an indefatigable man!” He was greatly pleased by the kind mention of himself in the Preface, and on May 7 made this significant entry in his Diary:—“Read Talfourd’s tragedy of Ion; pleased with the opening scenes and, as I proceeded, arrested and held by the interest of the story and the characters, as well as by the very beautiful thoughts, and the very noble ones, with which the play is interspersed. How delightful to read his dedication to his master and benefactor, Dr. Valpy, and the gentle outpourings of his affectionate heart towards his friends and associates; if one did not love, one would envy such a use of one’s abilities.”
The play was produced on May 26, 1836, and was a great success, Macready admitting that he had done better in the performance than he had been able to attain for some time. May 26 was, curiously enough, Talfourd’s birthday, and Miss Mitford was among the great host of friends, invited to do honour to the play and its writer. She went to town some days previous to the event and was the guest of the Talfourds at their house at 56, Russell Square. Her letters home to her father, whom she had left there, are full of the delights of her visit—the dinners and the diners, among whom were the poets Wordsworth, Rogers and Robert Browning (the last then but a young and comparatively unknown man), Stanfield the artist, Landor, Lucas and William Harness.
After the performance the principal actors repaired to Talfourd’s house, there to partake of a sumptuous repast to which over fifty people—leading lights in Art, Letters and the Sciences—sat down. It was a great function, marked by many complimentary speeches, as the occasion demanded. Macready, of course, shared the honours with Talfourd, and, in a moment of exaltation, turned to Miss Mitford and asked her whether the present occasion did not stimulate her to write a play. It was an ill-chosen remark, for she was then at the very height of popularity as the author of the successful Rienzi, but she quickly replied, “Will you act it?” Macready did not answer, and Harness, who was close by, chaffingly remarked to Miss Mitford, “Aye, hold him to that.” “When I heard that that was Harness, the man who, I believe, inflicted such a deep and assassin-like wound upon me—through Blackwood’s Magazine—I could not repress the expression of indignant contempt which found its way to my face, and over-gloomed the happy feeling that had before been there.” This was Macready’s written comment on the incident, but how he had misjudged Harness throughout this unpleasant affair has been dealt with by us in a previous chapter.
Miss Mitford knew nothing of the bitterness which her innocent reply had engendered and fully enjoyed the round of festivities to which she was invited. On the day following the first performance of Ion, her friend Mr. Kenyon called to take her to see the giraffes—they were then being exhibited for the first time in this country at the Zoological Gardens—and on the way suggested they should call at Gloucester Place for a young friend of his, “a sweet young woman—a Miss Barrett—who reads Greek as I do French, and has published some translations from Æschylus and some most striking poems. She is a delightful young creature; shy, and timid and modest. Nothing but her desire to see me got her out at all, but now she is coming to us to-morrow night also.”