PEACEFUL CLOSING YEARS

The winter of 1852-3 was unusually cold, and Miss Mitford suffered much from rheumatism supervening upon the effects of her accident. For many months she was entirely confined to her room. She writes to her friend Mr. Fields in March: “Here I am at Easter still a close prisoner from the consequences of the accident that took place before Christmas.... But when fine weather—warm, genial, sunny weather—comes I will get down in some way or other, and trust myself to that which never hurts anyone, the honest open air. Spring, and even the approach of spring, has upon me something the effect that England has upon you. It sets me dreaming—I see leafy hedges in my dreams and flowery banks, and then I long to make the vision a reality.”

She writes again to Mr. Fields in the month of June: “I am in somewhat better trim, although the getting out of doors and into the pony-chaise, from which Mr. May hoped such great things, has hardly answered his expectations.... I am still unable to stand or walk unless supported by Sam’s strong hands. However I am in as good spirits as ever, and just at this moment most comfortably seated under the acacia tree at the corner of my house—the beautiful acacia, literally loaded with snowy chains—the flowering trees this summer—lilacs, laburnums, rhododendrons, azalias—have been one mass of blossoms, and none as graceful as this waving acacia.... On one side a syringa ... a jar of roses on the table before me—fresh-gathered roses, the pride of Sam’s heart; and little Fanchon at my feet, too idle to eat the biscuits with which I am trying to tempt her—biscuits from Boston, sent to me by Mrs. Sparks, whose kindness is really indefatigable, and which Fanchon ought to like upon that principle if upon no other, but you know her laziness of old. Well, that is a picture of Swallowfield Cottage at this moment.”

Among the many gifts from admiring readers of the Recollections of a Literary Life that arrived at Swallowfield were choice plants for the garden. No less than twelve climbing roses for the front of her house appeared from the Hertfordshire nurseries, also two seedlings called in honour of her the “Miss Mitford” and the “Swallowfield.”

Mary Mitford writes to Mr. Fields:—

“Never, my dear friend, did I expect to like so well a man who came in your place as I do like Mr. Ticknor.... It is delightful to hear him talk of you, and to feel that sort of elder brotherhood which a senior partner must exercise is in such hands. He was very kind to little Harry, and Harry likes him next to you. He came here on Saturday with the dear Bennocks, and the Kingsleys met him. Mr. Hawthorne was to have come but could not leave Liverpool so soon, so that is a pleasure to come.

“Mr. Ticknor will tell you that all is arranged for printing with Colburn’s successors, Hurst and Blackett, two separate works, the plays and dramatic scenes forming one, the stories to be headed by a long tale, of which I have always had the idea in my head to form almost a novel. God grant me strength to do myself and my publishers justice in that story!”

The title of the new book was Atherton and other Stories. They are as fresh and bright in style as if the author were in perfect health, and yet it was, as she writes to Mr. Fields, “in the midst of the terrible cough, which did not allow me to lie down in bed, and a weakness difficult to describe, that I finished Atherton.”

In her short Preface Miss Mitford mentions the adverse circumstances under which the composition had been carried on, and expresses her thankfulness to the merciful Providence for “enabling me still to live by the mind, and not only to enjoy the never-wearying delight of reading the thoughts of others, but even to light up a sick chamber and brighten a wintry sky by recalling the sweet and sunny valley which formed one of the most cherished haunts of my happier years.” And then she closes this, her last work, with the words: “And now, gentle reader, health and farewell.

M. R. Mitford.

Swallowfield,
March, 1854.”

Atherton was dedicated to her valued friend Lady Russell, and was published in three volumes during the month of April. It was also published shortly afterwards in America. She writes to Mr. Fields on May 2nd: “Long before this time you will, I hope, have received the sheets of Atherton. It has met with an enthusiastic reception from the English press, and certainly the friends who have written to me on the subject seem to prefer the tale which fills the first volume to anything that I have done. I hope you will like it. I am sure you will not detect in it the gloom of a sick chamber.”

And writing to an English friend also in May she says: “Thank you for your kindness in liking Atherton. It has been a great comfort to me to find it so indulgently, so very warmly, received. Mr. Mudie told Mr. Hurst that the demand was so great that he was obliged to have four hundred copies in circulation.”

In this same letter she says: “I am sitting now at my open window, not high enough to see out, but inhaling the soft summer breezes, with an exquisite jar of roses on the window-sill and a huge sheaf of fresh-gathered meadow-sweet giving its almondy fragrance from outside; looking on blue sky and green waving trees, with a bit of road and some cottages in the distance, and [hearing] K——‘s little girl’s merry voice calling Fanchon in the court.... An avalanche of kindness has come from America, where, as in Paris, my book has been reprinted. Letters to me or for me addressed through my friend Mr. Fields have arrived, I think, from almost every man of note in the States—Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, etc. etc. And one lady, Mrs. Sparkes, wife of Jared Sparks, President of Harvard University, Cambridge, gravely invites me, with man-servant and maid-servant, pony and Fanchon, to go and take up my abode with them for two or three years, an unlimited hospitality which seems to English ears astounding. Cambridge is close to Boston, where most of the literary men of America live, and if I were not such a helpless creature really one would be tempted to go and thank all these warm-hearted people for their extraordinary kindness.”

And writing in August she says: “I do not think there is an authoress of name who has not sent me messages full of the kindest interest. It is one of the highest mercies by which this visitation has been softened that I can still give my thoughts and time and love and sympathy, not merely to dear friends, but to books and flowers and the common doings of this workaday world.”

A lady friend on one occasion had remonstrated with Mary Mitford for what she considered a misplaced enthusiasm. “Ah, my dear friend!” she responds, “do not lecture me for loving and admiring! It is the last green branch in the old tree, the lingering touch of life and youth.”

À propos of a tendency of hers to extoll at times some modern poem that had taken her fancy as being superior to the great poems of old, Mr. Fields quotes a saying of Pascal’s that “the heart has reasons that reason does not know.” “Miss Mitford,” he says, “was a charming exemplification of this wise saying.”

During the autumn of 1854 Mary’s condition had been rapidly growing worse, though her letters show that her bright spirit was not broken by her continued sufferings and increased weakness, nor her mind in any way clouded. Her last letter to Mr. Fields was written on December 23rd, 1854, only eighteen days before she died. In it she says: “God bless you, my dear friend! May He send to both of you health and happiness and length of days and so much of this world’s goods as is needful to prevent anxiety and insure comfort. I have known many rich people in my time, and the result has convinced me that with great wealth some deep black shadow is as sure to walk as it is to follow the bright sunshine. So I never pray for more than the blessed enough for those whom I love best.”

On January 1st, 1855, nine days only before her death, she wrote the following letter to a friend: “It has pleased Providence to preserve to me my calmness of mind and clearness of intellect, and also my powers of reading by day and by night, and which is still more my love of poetry and literature, my cheerfulness and my enjoyment of little things. This very day not only my common pensioners the dear robins, but a saucy troop of sparrows and a little shining bird of passage whose name I forget, have all been pecking at once at their tray of bread-crumbs outside the window. Poor, pretty things! How much delight there is in these common objects if people would learn to enjoy them; and I really think that the feeling for these simple pleasures is increasing with the increase of education.”

The end came on January 10th and was in accordance with her sweet life. As she lay with her hand in that of her dear friend Lady Russell she expired so quietly that the actual moment of her departure was not realized. “The features of her face in death,” we are told, “undisturbed by any trace of the cares and trials she had endured, were overspread by an expression of intense repose and peace and charity such as no living face had ever known.”

In the introduction to her Dramatic Works Miss Mitford remarks that she “hopes the plays will be as mercifully dealt with as if they were published by her executor, and that the hand that wrote them were laid in peaceful rest where the sun glances through the great elms in the beautiful churchyard of Swallowfield.” And there she lies in the heart of the country she so dearly loved and amidst the sights and sounds that she most cherished.

We would close this book with the words of a friend and contemporary author who knew Miss Mitford well.

“Pleasant is the memory because happy was the life, kindly the nature and genial the heart of Mary Russell Mitford. She had her trials and she bore them well; trusting and ever faithful to the Nature she loved; sending forth from her poor cottage at Three Mile Cross—from its leaden casement and narrow door—floods of light and sunshine that have cheered and brightened the uttermost parts of the earth.”