“Little Henry” is one of the few survivors of those who knew Miss Mitford intimately, and he has many tender memories of the kindly woman who, as time went on, made him her constant companion when she walked in the lanes and meadows in and about the neighbourhood. Woodcock Lane, of which we have already made mention, was among her favourite haunts, and thither she would take her way, with little Henry and the dogs, and while she sat with her writing-pad on her knee, would watch the eager child gathering his posies of wild flowers. “Do not gather them all, Henry,” was one of her regular injunctions on these occasions, “because some one who has not so many pretty flowers at home as we have may come this way and would like to gather some”; and sometimes she would add, “remember not to take all the flowers from one root, for the plant loves its flowers, and delights to feed and nourish them”—a pretty fancy which the child-mind could understand and appreciate. “Never repeat anything you hear which may cause pain or unhappiness to others” was a precept which often fell from her lips when speaking to the child and it was a lesson which he says he has never forgotten and has always striven to live up to in a long and somewhat arduous life spent here and abroad. Miss Mitford had a great and deep-seated objection to Mrs. Beecher Stowe. It arose principally from disapproval of certain derogatory statements about Lord Byron and his matrimonial relations which Mrs. Stowe had expressed to friends of Miss Mitford’s and which, after Miss Mitford’s death, were published in the work entitled Lady Byron Vindicated. The reason for this attitude of mind on Miss Mitford’s part is not difficult to understand when we remember that her great friend, William Harness, was among the earliest and dearest of Lord Byron’s friends. Thus, when Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in this country, Miss Mitford refused to give any credence to the revelations it contained, and in this connection it is interesting to record that it was among the few books which she counselled the boy not to read.
The “House of Seven Gables,” a view on the road to Swallowfield.
For the children in the village she had ever a kind word and smile, inquiring why they did this or that when playing their games, and nothing delighted her more than to come upon a game of cricket being played by the youngsters, for then she would watch the game through, applauding vigorously and calling out encouraging remarks to the players, all of whom referred to her as the “kind lady.”
During the year 1844 Queen Victoria paid an unofficial visit to the Duke of Wellington at Strathfieldsaye, and Miss Mitford conceived the idea that it would please the Queen to be greeted on the roadside by the village children. With the co-operation of the farmers, who lent their wagons, some two hundred and ninety children were carried to a point near Swallowfield—some few miles from Three Mile Cross along the Basingstoke Road—each carrying a flag provided at Miss Mitford’s expense and by the industry of her maid, Jane, who was very skilful at such work. The wagons were decked out with laurels and bunting and made a very brave show when the Queen, escorted by the Duke, passed by them. “We all returned—carriages, wagons, bodyguard and all—to my house, where the gentlefolk had sandwiches and cake and wine, and where the children had each a bun as large as a soup-plate, made doubly nice as well as doubly large, a glass of wine, and a mug of ale”—rather advanced drinks for children, but probably thin enough to do no harm. “Never was such harmless jollity! Not an accident! not a squabble! not a misword! It did one’s very heart good.... To be sure it was a good deal of trouble, and Jane is done up. Indeed, the night before last we none of us went to bed. But it was quite worth it.”
All this sounds very delightful and light-hearted and truly the years seemed now to be passing very gently and kindly with the warmhearted woman who had, hitherto, suffered so much.
There were, of course, the usual ailments due to advancing age, which had to be endured, but, with short trips to town and a long holiday at Taplow, these ailments had no serious, immediate effect on Miss Mitford’s general health.
In 1846 the dear friend, Miss Barrett, was married to Robert Browning, an incident which proved—so Miss Mitford recorded—that “Love really is the wizard the poets have called him”. There is no mention of a wedding-present being despatched from Three Mile Cross—it will be remembered that the marriage was a somewhat hurried and secret affair, due to Mr. Barrett’s opposition to the whole idea—but we do know that when the happy couple left for Italy via Paris they took with them Flush, the dog, which Miss Mitford had sent as a gift to her friend some years before. Flush was a character, and figures very much in the Barrett-Browning correspondence from 1842 to 1848; he died much loved and lamented, and now lies buried in the Casa Guidi vaults.
All the world knows what a wonderful marriage that was—two hearts beating as one—and how remarkable and romantic was the courtship, the story of which, from Mrs. Browning’s own pen, is so exquisitely told in Sonnets from the Portuguese—the “finest sonnets written in any language since Shakespeare’s,” was Robert Browning’s delighted comment—“the very notes and chronicle of her betrothal,” as Mr. Edmund Gosse writes of them, when he relates how prettily and playfully they were first shown to the husband for whom they had been expressly written. But—and this is why we make mention of them here—before ever they were shown to the husband they had been despatched to Miss Mitford for her approval and criticism, and she urged that they be published in one of the Annuals of the day. To this suggestion Mrs. Browning would not accede, but consented at last to allow them to be privately printed, for which purpose they were again sent to Miss Mitford, who arranged for their printing in Reading—probably through her friend, Mr. Lovejoy—under the simple title of Sonnets: by E. B. B., and on the title-page were the additional words:—“Reading: Not for Publication: 1847.”
Miss Mitford often made complaint of the number of visitors who thronged her cottage, but now that she had none but herself to consider she seems to have found her chief delight in receiving and entertaining, in quiet fashion, the many literary folk who made pilgrimages to her, visits which were always followed by a correspondence which must have fully occupied her time. This year, 1847, brought Ruskin to the cottage through the introduction of Mrs. Cockburn (the Mary Duff of Lord Byron). “John Ruskin, the Oxford Undergraduate, is a very elegant and distinguished-looking young man, tall, fair, and slender—too slender, for there is a consumptive look, and I fear a consumptive tendency.... He must be, I suppose, twenty-six or twenty-seven, but he looks much younger, and has a gentle playfulness—a sort of pretty waywardness, that is quite charming. And now we write to each other, and I hope love each other as you and I do”—Miss Mitford’s note on the visit, written to another friend, Mr. Charles Boner, in America.