A wonderful fortnight this, with its introductions to all the notables—“Jane Porter, Joanna Baillie, and I know not how many other females of eminence, to say nothing of all the artists, poets, prosers, talkers and actors of the day.”
“And now I am come home to work hard, if the people will let me; for the swarms of visitors, and the countless packets of notes and letters which I receive surpass belief.”
With the introduction to Miss Barrett a new correspondent was added to the already large list with whom Miss Mitford kept in touch, and from the middle of the year 1836 the letters between the two friends were frequent and voluminous. The early ones from Three Mile Cross display an amusing motherliness on the part of their writer, containing frequent references to the necessity of cultivating style and clearness of expression, all of which Miss Barrett took in good part and promised to bear in mind. But in this matter of letter-writing Miss Mitford was really expending herself too much—it was a weakness which she could never overcome—and the consequence was that she either neglected her work or performed it when the household was asleep. Then, still further obstacles to a steady output arrived in the person of the painter Lucas, who wanted to paint another portrait of his friend, and was only put off by being allowed to paint the Doctor, the sittings for which were given at Bertram House, then in the occupation of Captain Gore, a genial friend of the Mitfords. The portrait was a great success, every one praising it. “It is as like as the looking-glass,” wrote the delighted daughter to Miss Jephson. “Beautiful old man that he is! and is the pleasantest likeness, the finest combination of power, and beauty, and sweetness, and spirit, that ever you saw. Such a piece of colour, too! The painter used all his carmine the first day, and was forced to go into Reading for a fresh supply. He says that my father’s complexion is exactly like the sunny side of a peach, and so is his picture. Imagine how grateful I am! He has come all the way from London to paint this picture as a present to me.”
Following Lucas, came Edmund Havell, a young and rising artist from Reading, a lithographer of great ability. He came to paint Dash—Landseer being unable to fulfil his promise because of an accident. “Dash makes an excellent sitter—very grave and dignified, and a little conscious—peeping stealthily at the portrait, as if afraid of being thought vain if he looked at it too long.”
These were the diversions which Miss Mitford permitted herself, and when they were over and the approach of winter caused a natural cessation of the hosts of visitors who thronged the cottage during the fine weather, she devoted herself with energy to a new book, to be entitled Country Stories, for which Messrs. Saunders & Otley were in negotiation.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] He was alleged to have instigated the riotous demonstration against Macready in Boston, U.S.A., twelve years later.
CHAPTER XXV
THE STATE PENSION
Earlier in this book we told how Byron had abstained from dedicating Childe Harold to his friend William Harness for fear it might injure the latter’s reputation. It was a scruple which Miss Mitford shared with the great poet, otherwise it would have given her the keenest pleasure thus publicly to associate her old friend and companion with one of her dramatic works. Being now assured that her prose was worthy as an offering, she proposed that her new book, the Country Stories, should go forth with William Harness’s name on the Dedication page. She wrote him on the subject:—
“My dear William,—