Mary Russell Mitford

CHAPTER XI

LITERARY CRITICISM AND AN UNPRECEDENTED COMPLIMENT

“As soon as I have finished Blanch to please myself, I have undertaken to write a tragedy to please Mr. Coleridge, whilst my poem goes to him, and to Southey and to Campbell. When it returns from them I shall, if he will permit me, again trouble my best and kindest critic to look over it. This will probably not be for some months, as I have yet two thousand lines to write, and I expect Mr. Coleridge to keep it six weeks at least before he looks at it.” This extract is from one of Miss Mitford’s letters to Sir William Elford, dated August 29, 1811, and it was not until exactly two months later that she was able to forward the finished poem for Sir William’s criticism.

It was a production of which her father thought little at first, declaring that the title alone gave him the vapours. Her mother and the maid Lucy were half-blinded with tears when it was read to them, but then, as Miss Mitford remarked: “they are so tender-hearted that I am afraid it is not a complete trial of my pathetic powers.” In this case Sir William was the first to scan the lines, an arrangement due possibly to the stress of work then being engaged in by Coleridge and Campbell—the former with lectures on Poetry and the latter in the writing of his famous biographical prefaces to his collection of the poets. Eventually the book was produced in the December of 1812, news of which, apart from any other source, we glean from a letter of its author in which she says: “ Blanch is out—out, and I have not sent her to you! The truth is, my dear Sir William, that there are situations in which it is a duty to give up all expensive luxuries, even the luxury of offering the little tribute of gratitude and friendship; and I had no means of restraining papa from scattering my worthless book all about to friends and foes, but by tying up my own hands from presenting any, except to two or three very near relations. I have told you all this because I am not ashamed of being poor, and because perfect frankness is in all cases the most pleasant as well as the most honourable to both parties.”

It was fortunate that Blanch was finished, for just as it was on the point of completion, Miss Mitford was greatly excited over the prospect of collaborating with Fanny Rowden in the translation of a poem which would have given both a nice sum in return for their labours. Unfortunately the project came to naught and the work was entrusted to a man.

From now, on to the close of the year 1815, there is no record of any work of Miss Mitford’s, unless we except one or two odes and sonnets of which she said the first were “above her flight, requiring an eagle’s wing,” while of the latter she “held them in utter abhorrence.” Her time really seems to have been taken up with an occasional visit to London and into Hampshire (where she inspected her old birthplace, Alresford); with short excursions into Oxfordshire (within an easy drive out and back from home), and largely with a voluminous correspondence, chiefly on literary topics, with Sir William Elford. Fortunately this correspondence was not wasted labour as she was able to embody a very large proportion of it in the Recollections of a Literary Life. Indeed, had she not specifically suggested the plan of that work many years later, we should feel justified in believing that, from the very outset, it was to such an end that her correspondence and literary criticism were directed.

Now that a century has passed since the letters were written, it is interesting to peruse her comments on such writers as Byron, Scott, Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, all of whom were publishing at that period. “I dislike Childe Harold,” she wrote. “Not but that there are very many fine stanzas and powerful descriptions; but the sentiment is so strange, so gloomy, so heartless, that it is impossible not to feel a mixture of pity and disgust, which all our admiration of the author’s talents cannot overcome. I would rather be the poorest Greek whose fate he commiserates, than Lord Byron, if this poem be a true transcript of his feelings. Out of charity we must hope that his taste only is in fault, and that the young lordling imagines that there is something interesting in misery and misanthropy. I the readier believe this, as I am intimate with one of his lordship’s most attached friends, and he gives him an excellent character.” The “intimate friend” alluded to was William Harness who, from the Harrow schooldays onwards, was chief among Byron’s friends; indeed, Byron expressly desired to dedicate Childe Harold to Harness, and only refrained “for fear it should injure him in his profession,” Harness being then in Holy Orders while Byron’s name was associated with orgies of dissipation, to be followed later by calumnious charges which Harness nobly did his best to refute.

It is a tribute to Miss Mitford’s critical faculty that she found little difficulty in probing the mystery as to the authorship of Waverley, that “half French, half English, half Scotch, half Gaelic, half Latin, half Italian—that hotch-potch of languages—that movable Babel called Waverley!” as she termed it. “Have you read Walter Scott’s Waverley?” she writes. “I have ventured to say ‘Walter Scott’s,’ though I hear he denies it, just as a young girl denies the imputation of a lover; but if there be any belief in internal evidence, it must be his. It is his by a thousand indications—by all the faults and by all the beauties—by the unspeakable and unrecollectable names—by the hanging the clever hero, and marrying the stupid one—by the praise (well deserved, certainly, for when had Scotland such a friend! but thrust in by the head and shoulders) of the late Lord Melville—by the sweet lyric poetry—by the perfect costume—by the excellent keeping of the picture—by the liveliness and gaiety of the dialogues—and last, not least, by the entire and admirable individuality of every character in the book, high as well as low—the life and soul which animates them all with a distinct existence, and brings them before our eyes like the portraits of Fielding and Cervantes.”

She was, however, at fault over Guy Mannering, being thrown clear off the scent by Scott’s cleverness in quoting a motto from his own Lay of the Last Minstrel, an act of which Miss Mitford evidently thought no author would be guilty: “he never could write Guy Mannering, I am sure—it is morally impossible!”

Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility she joined with others in ascribing to any but their real author, but when she learned that they were Miss Austen’s she let her pen go with a vengeance.

“A propos to novels, I have discovered that our great favourite, Miss Austen, is my countrywoman; that mamma knew all her family very intimately; and that she herself is an old maid (I beg her pardon—I mean a young lady) with whom mamma before her marriage was acquainted. Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers; and a friend of mine, who visits her now, says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of ‘single blessedness’ that ever existed, and that, till Pride and Prejudice showed what a precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin or upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very different now; she is still a poker—but a poker of whom every one is afraid.” Fortunately this description was qualified: “After all, I do not know that I can quite vouch for this account,” especially as the consensus of opinion regarding Miss Austen is entirely opposed to the above description.

Miss Edgeworth she found too cold and calculating as a writer: “I never can read Miss Edgeworth’s works without finding the wonderful predominance of the head over the heart; all her personages are men and women; ay, and many of them very charming men and women; but they are all of them men and women of the world. There is too much knowledge of life, too much hardness of character—too great a proneness to find bad motives for good actions, too great a contempt for that virtuous enthusiasm, which is the loveliest rose in the chaplet of youth; and, to say all in one word, I never take up her volumes myself without regretting that they were not written by a man; nor do I ever see a young girl reading them without lamenting that she will be let into the trick of life before her time.”

Early in the year 1813 a letter was received from Mr. and Mrs. Perry, inviting Miss Mitford to stay with them at their house in Tavistock Square. Mr. Perry was then Editor of the Morning Chronicle, and the invitation was gladly accepted, not only because Perry was a friend of her father’s, but because the latter had assured her that Tavistock House was the rendezvous for many of the leaders in the political and literary worlds. During this visit she met Mrs. Opie—“thinner, paler, and much older, but very kind and pleasant”—and Thomas Moore,—“that abridgement of all that is pleasant in man,”—with whom she had the “felicity” of dining frequently. “I am quite enchanted with him,” she wrote. “He has got a little wife (whom I did not see) and two little children, and they are just gone into Wales,[17] where he intends to finish a great poem [ Lalla Rookh] on which he is occupied. It is a Persian tale, and he says it will be his fault if it is not a fine work, for the images, the scenery, the subject, are poetry itself. How his imagination will revel among the roses, and the nightingales, and the light-footed Almé!” Mr. Moore did not forget his little friend and, a year later, gave her the added pleasure of reading over a part of his manuscript, “and I hope in a few days to see the whole in print. He has sold it for three thousand pounds. The little I have seen is beyond all praise and price,” she wrote enthusiastically. These visits to town were undoubtedly something more than mere pleasure jaunts, for it is quite apparent that they were undertaken with a view to keeping the name and person of Mary Russell Mitford well in the public mind and eye. Making her headquarters at 33, Hans Place, the residence of Fanny Rowden’s mother, she spent a whirling fortnight during the summer of 1814, meanwhile keeping Mrs. Mitford well-informed on all details, however slight. Under date, June 16, 1814, she writes: “Yesterday, my own dearest Granny, was, I think, the most fatiguing morning I ever underwent. Stuffed into a conspicuous place, stared at, talked to, or talked at, by everybody, dying with heat, worn out with flattery, I really should have wished myself in heaven or somewhere worse, if I had not been comforted by William Harness, who sat behind me, laughing at everybody, and more playful and agreeable than any one I ever remember.” The occasion was the Midsummer Breaking-up performance at her old school, during which an ode she had composed for another function was recited.

“We had no exercises,” she continued, “nothing but music and recitations, which lasted nearly four hours, and did them great credit. The March of Mind was well repeated, and received, of course, as verses commonly are in the presence of the authoress. I was to have presented the prizes; but to my great comfort Lady Caroline Lamb arrived, and I insisted on giving her my post.” Then follow particulars of a carefully-planned programme of sight-seeing, finishing with:—“How little people in the country know of fashions! I see nothing but cottage bonnets trimmed with a double plaiting, and sometimes two double plaitings, and broad satin ribbon round the edge. Gowns with half a dozen breadths in them, up to the knees before, and scarcely decent behind, with triple flounces, and sleeves like a carter’s frock, sometimes drawn, at about two inches distant, and sometimes not, which makes the arms look as big as Miss Taylor’s body. I like none of this but the flouncing, which is very pretty, and I shall bring three or four yards of striped muslin to flounce my gowns and yours. Tell Mrs. Haw, with my love, to prepare for plenty of hemming and whipping, and not to steal my needles.... I have been to see Haydon’s picture, and I am enchanted.... I saw, too, in a print-shop, the beautiful print of ‘Napoleon le Grand,’ of which you know there were but three in England, and those not to be sold. Oh, that any good Christian would give me that picture!”

Napoleon Bonaparte was one of her heroes, and she could never bring herself to adopt the general view of him held by the populace in this country. Her friend M. St. Quintin wanted her to translate some epigrams which he had composed against the late Emperor: “Let Mr. St. Quintin know that he has brought his pigs to the wrong market,” was her reply to her father, who had offered her the commission. “I am none of those who kick the dead lion. Let him take them to Lord Byron, or the editor of The Times, or the Poet Laureate, or the bellman, or any other official character.... I hate all these insults to a fallen foe.”

Later, when the Bellerophon with Napoleon on board—then on his way to exile—put into Plymouth, Miss Mitford wrote to Sir William Elford: “Goodness! if I were in your place, I would see him! I would storm the Bellerophon rather than not get a sight of him, ay, and a talk with him too. You and I have agreed to differ respecting the Emperor, and so we do now in our thoughts and our reasonings, though not, I believe, much in our feelings; for your relenting is pretty much the same as my—(what shall I venture to call it?)—my partiality.... But though I cannot tell you exactly what I would do with the great Napoleon, I can and will tell you what I would not do to him. I would not un-Emperor him—I would not separate him from his faithful followers—I would not ransack his baggage, as one would do by a thief suspected of carrying off stolen goods—I would not limit him to allowances of pocket-money to buy cakes and fruit like a great schoolboy—I would not send him to ‘a rock in the middle of the sea,’ like St. Helena.”

But this is a digression. We left Miss Mitford in London describing the Hans Place celebrations. The next morning she was taken to the Freemasons’ Tavern, in Great Queen Street, to attend the meeting of the Friends against the Slave Trade, where she heard such notables as Lords Grey and Holland, together with William Wilberforce and Lord Brougham.

“Lord Grey had all the Ogle hesitation, and my noble patron” [Holland, to whom her first book was dedicated] “has my habit of hackering so completely that he scarcely speaks three words without two stops; but when we can get at his meaning, it is better than any one’s. My expectations were most disappointed in Brougham, and most surpassed in Wilberforce. I no longer wonder at the influence he holds over so large a portion of the ‘religionists,’ as he calls them; he is a most interesting and persuasive speaker.”

The great day, however, was Friday, June 24, 1814, when the members of the British and Foreign School Society dined together, at the Freemasons’ Tavern, on the occasion of their anniversary meeting. The Marquis of Lansdowne was in the chair, supported by the Dukes of Kent and Sussex, the Earls of Darnley and Eardley, and several other eminent persons. Miss Mitford and a party of friends were in the gallery “to hear splendid speeches and superlative poetry, and to see—but, alas! not to share—super-excellent eating.” Miss Mitford was always a great believer in, and supporter of all efforts which were made to facilitate the education of the people, and on this occasion her ode on The March of Mind, which she had specially composed for this event, was set to music and sung. “I did not believe my own ears when Lord Lansdowne, with his usual graceful eloquence, gave my health. I did not even believe it, when my old friend, the Duke of Kent, observing that Lord Lansdowne’s voice was not always strong enough to penetrate the depths of that immense assembly, reiterated it with stentorian lungs. Still less did I believe my ears when it was drunk with ‘three times three,’ a flourish of drums and trumpets from the Duke of Kent’s band, and the unanimous thundering and continued plaudits of five hundred people.... Everybody tells me such a compliment to a young untitled woman is absolutely unprecedented; and I am congratulated and be-praised by every soul who sees me.”

This London visit, in Miss Mitford’s twenty-seventh year, was an excellent piece of stage-management, and if it was due to the exertions of her father—and we may properly suppose it was—it stands as one achievement, at least, to his credit.

Home from these festivities, with the plaudits of the crowd and the congratulations of her friends still ringing in her ears, she had once again to face the problem of depleted coffers and how to set about the task of filling them. Each succeeding year there was trouble about the payment of taxes. “I do hope, my own dear love,” runs one of the letters, “that you returned to London yesterday, and that you have been actively employed to-day in getting money for the taxes. If not, you must set about it immediately, or the things will certainly be sold Monday or Tuesday. There is nothing but resolution and activity can make amends for the time that has been wasted at Bocking.” This last sentence alludes to the Doctor’s absence in Northumberland attending to the complicated money matters of a relative. Just previous to this Mrs. Mitford had written: “After sending off our letter to you, yesterday, Farmer Smith came to tell me what a piece of work the parish made with him about our unpaid rates. They have badgered him most unmercifully about sending a summons and compelling payment, but he is most unwilling to take any step that might be productive of uneasiness to you.... You will be astonished to hear that there is none of the farmers more outrageously violent than Mr. Taylor, who blusters and swears he will not pay his rates if they do not exact the immediate payment of yours.” The rates due at this time were for two years—£46 8s. in all, for which the Doctor had paid £10 on account.

Later on there is a promise of other, though similar trouble, in a letter to the Doctor addressed in great haste to him, and to three different localities, as they were not sure of his whereabouts. “I am sorry to tell you, my dearest father, that Mr. Riley’s clerk has just been here with a law-paper, utterly incomprehensible; but of which the intention is to inform you that, if the mortgage and interest be not paid before next Monday, a foreclosure and ejectment will immediately take place; indeed I am not sure whether this paper of jargon is not a sort of ejectment. We should have sent it to you but for the unfortunate circumstance of not knowing where you are. The clerk says you ought to write to Mr. Riley, and negotiate with him, and that if the interest had been paid, no trouble would have been given. Whether the interest will satisfy them now I cannot tell. No time must be lost in doing something, as next Monday some one will be put into possession.”

What a sorry plight the mother and daughter must have been in! No wonder that we read the daughter’s request for “a bottle of Russia Oil, to cure my grey locks.” And to make matters worse, there was pending a Chancery Suit in connection with the sale of Bertram House, which so soured the Doctor that he would have nothing done to the garden or grounds. The gravel was covered with moss, the turf lengthened into pasture, and the shrubberies into tangled thickets—a picture of desolation which only emphasized the misery of the financial outlook.