Miss Milford’s Cottage at Swallowfield.
(From a contemporary engraving.)
Hearing that William Chambers, the Edinburgh publisher, was that year in London, an invitation was sent to him to call at the cottage, and while there he, his hostess and Mr. Lovejoy discussed a project which had long been occupying the minds of Miss Mitford and her bookseller-friend, on the subject of “Rural Libraries.”
Mr. Chambers refers to the visit in his Autobiography. “The pleasantest thing about the visit was my walk with the aged lady among the green lanes in the neighbourhood—she trotting along with a tall cane, and speaking of rural scenes and circumstances.... I see she refers to this visit, stating that she was at the time engaged along with Mr. Lovejoy in a plan for establishing lending libraries for the poor, in which, she says, I assisted her with information and advice. What I really advised was that, following out a scheme adopted in East Lothian, parishes should join in establishing itinerating libraries, each composed of different books, so that, being shifted from place to place, a degree of novelty might be maintained for mutual advantage.”
In any case, this Mitford-Lovejoy project was well considered and, after many delays, the two friends issued a little four-page pamphlet (now very rare) with the front page headed “Rural Libraries,” followed by a circular letter in which was set forth the origin of the scheme—due to a request from the young wife of a young clergyman in a country parish who wanted to stimulate the parishioners to the reading of sound literature—and an invitation to interested persons to correspond with “M. R. M., care of Mr. Lovejoy, Reading.” The rest of the pamphlet was occupied with a list of some two hundred titles of books recommended, among them being Our Village, the inclusion of which caused Miss Mitford to tell a friend that she “noticed Mr. Lovejoy had smuggled it in.” Whether anything definite resulted from the distribution of this pamphlet is not certain, but the labour it entailed is a proof of the interest which both Miss Mitford and her coadjutor had in matters affecting the education of the people.
By the year 1850 the cottage again became so bad as to be almost uninhabitable—“the walls seem to be mouldering from the bottom, crumbling, as it were, like an old cheese; and whether anything can be done to it is doubtful,” and, acting under Dr. May’s advice, it was decided to leave the old place for good. The neighbourhood was scoured in the endeavour to find something suitable, and at last the very thing was found at Swallowfield, three miles further along the Basingstoke Road. “It is about six miles from Reading along this same road, leading up from which is a short ascending lane, terminated by the small dwelling, with a court in front, and a garden and paddock behind. Trees overarch it like the frame of a picture, and the cottage itself, though not pretty, yet too unpretending to be vulgar, and abundantly snug and comfortable, leading by different paths to all my favourite walks, and still within distance of my most valuable neighbours.”
The removal, “a terrible job,” involving, among other items, the cartage and re-arranging of four tons of books, took place during the third week of September, 1851, just in time to enable the household to get nicely settled in before the winter.
“And yet it was grief to go,” she wrote. “There I had toiled and striven, and tasted as deeply of bitter anxiety, of fear, and of hope, as often falls to the lot of woman. There, in the fulness of age, I had lost those whose love had made my home sweet and precious. Alas! there is no hearth so humble but it has known such tales of joy and of sorrow! Friends, many and kind, had come to that bright garden, and that garden room. The list would fill more pages than I have to give. There Mr. Justice Talfourd had brought the delightful gaiety of his brilliant youth, and poor Haydon had talked more vivid pictures than he ever painted. The illustrious of the last century—Mrs. Opie, Jane Porter, Mr. Cary—had mingled there with poets, still in their earliest dawn. It was a heart-tug to leave that garden.... I walked from the one cottage to the other on an autumn evening, when the vagrant birds, whose habit of assembling here for their annual departure gives, I suppose, its name of Swallowfield to the village, were circling and twittering over my head; and repeated to myself the pathetic lines of Hayley as he saw these same birds gathering upon his roof during his last illness:—
‘Ye gentle birds, that perch aloof,
And smooth your pinions on my roof,