CHAPTER XV

PLAYS AND POETRY

Mary Russel Mitford had from early youth been fond of writing verses upon subjects which had taken her fancy. “No less than three octavo volumes,” she writes, “had I perpetrated in two years. They had all the faults incident to a young lady’s verses, and one of them had been deservedly castigated by the _Quarterly_.” Here she adds in later years the following footnote: “This article was fortunate for the writer at a far more important moment. Mr. Gifford himself, as I have been given to understand, came to feel that however well deserved the strictures might be, an attack by his great review upon a girl’s first book was something like breaking a butterfly upon the wheel. He made amends by a criticism in a very different spirit on the first series of _Our Village_, which was of much service to the work.”

The first volume of poems was published in the year 1810 and again with additions in 1811. Two more volumes followed soon afterwards.

In spite of some adverse criticism the poems “had had their praises,” writes Miss Mitford, “as what young lady’s verses have not? Large impressions had gone rapidly off; we had run into a second edition. They had been published in America—always so kind to me! Two or three of the shorter pieces had been thought good enough to be stolen, and Mr. Coleridge had prophesied of the larger one that the authoress of ‘Blanche’ would write a tragedy.”

Among the shorter poems was one upon the death of Sir John Moore, written on February 7th, 1809, eight years before the appearance of Wolfe’s well-known poem. It does not equal that poem in merit; but the following lines, which close the dirge, seem to us to bear the true ring of poetry:—

“No tawdry ‘scutcheons hang around thy tomb, No hired mourners wave the sabled plume, No statues rise to mark the sacred spot, No pealing organ swells the solemn note. A hurried grave thy soldiers’ hands prepare— Thy soldiers’ hands the mournful burthen bear; The vaulted sky to earth’s extremest verge Thy canopy; the cannon’s roar thy dirge.”

Mary was only twenty-one years of age when she wrote these lines, and there is another poem belonging to the same period that is worthy of quotation entitled “Westminster Abbey.” When viewing the tombs in Poets’ Corner she writes:—

“The brightest union Genius wrought Was Garrick’s voice and Shakespeare’s thought.”

About this same time Miss Mitford wrote a narrative poem entitled “Christina” which had good success, especially in America, where it passed through several editions.

Coleridge’s prophecy that the author of “Blanche” would write a tragedy was fulfilled eventually, but in the meantime her taste for the drama, stimulated when a school-girl by Molière’s inimitable plays, was now being further developed.

“Every third year,” writes Mary, “a noble form of tragedy, one with which women are seldom brought in contact, fell in my way. Dr. Valpy, the master of Reading School ... had wisely substituted the representation of one of the stern Greek plays [given in the original language] for the speeches and recitations formerly delivered before the heads of certain colleges of Oxford at their triennial visitations.”[5]

[Footnote 5: Dr. Valpy was thus the pioneer of an important movement to be adopted in later years by our great Universities.]

“Many of the old pupils will remember the effect of these performances, complete in scenery, dresses and decorations, and remarkable for the effect produced, not only on the actors, but on an audience, of which a considerable portion was new alike to the language and the subject. It is no offence to impute such ignorance to the mayor and aldermen of that day who in their furred gowns formed part of the official visitors, or to the mammas and sisters of the performers, who might plead the privilege of sex for their want of learning.”

[Illustration: DR. VALPY’S SCHOOL]

“For myself, as ignorant of Latin or of Greek as the smuggest alderman or slimmest damsel present, I had my own share in the pageant. In spite of all remonstrance the dear Doctor would insist on my writing the authorised account of the play—the grand official critique which filled I know not how many columns of _The Reading Mercury_, and was sent east, west, north and south wherever mammas and grand-mammas were found. Of course it was necessary to mention everybody and to commit all the injustice which belongs to a forced equality by praising some too little and some too much. The too little was more frequent than the too much, for the boys, as a body, did act marvellously, especially those who filled the female parts, making one understand how the ungentle sex might have rendered the Desdemonas and the Imogens in James’s day.... One circumstance only a little injured the perfect grouping of the scene. The visitation occurred in October, not long after the conclusion of the summer holidays, and between cricket and boating and the impossibility of wearing gloves ... our Helens and Antigones exhibited an assortment of sunburnt fists that might have become a tribe of Red Indians.... Sophocles is Sophocles nevertheless; and seldom can his power have been more thoroughly felt than in these performances at Reading School.”

“The good Doctor,” she continues, “full of kindness, and far too learned for pedantry, rewarded my compliance with his wishes in the way I liked best, by helping me to enter into the spirit of the mighty masters who dealt forth these stern Tragedies of Destiny. He put into my hands le Père Brumoy’s ‘Théâtre des Grecs,’ and other translations in homely French prose, where the form and letter were set forth, untroubled by vexatious attempts at English verse—grand outlines for imagination to colour and fill up.”

In the month of May, 1809, Mary was staying in Hans Place with her friend Miss Rowden, who had become the Head of the school on the retirement of Monsieur and Madame St. Quintin; these latter, however, still continued to live in Hans Place although in a different house. Mary went much into society with her kind friends, and greatly enjoyed frequent visits to the theatre.

She writes on June 4th to her mother: “I had not time to tell you [yesterday] how very much I was gratified at the Opera House on Friday evening. I dined at the St. Quintins’, and we proceeded to take possession of our very excellent situation, a pit-box near the stage. The house was crammed to suffocation. Young is an admirable actor; I greatly prefer him to Kemble, whom I had before seen in the same character (Zanga in _The Revenge_).... Billington, Braham, Bianchi, Noldi, Bellamy and Siboni sang after the play, and the amateurs were highly gratified. But my delight was yet to come. The dancing of Vestris is indeed perfection. The ‘poetry of motion’ is exemplified in every movement, and his Apollo-like form excels any idea I had ever formed of manly grace.”

This grand performance, it seems, was for Kelly’s benefit. Kelly was a popular singer of his day, and was also a composer of music. He happened in addition to be a wine merchant, and Sheridan called him “a composer of wine and importer of music.”

Besides visits to the Opera House and theatres Mary describes expeditions to the Royal Academy, then at Somerset House, to the Exhibition of Water Colours in Spring Gardens, and to the Panorama, where she saw “a most admirable representation of Grand Cairo, taken from drawings by Lord Valentia.” She also gives full particulars of a grand ball given in a mansion where five splendid rooms opened into each other; and there were upwards of three hundred people. “The chalked floors and Grecian lamps,” she says, “gave it the appearance of a fairy scene, which was still further heightened by the beautiful exotics which almost lined these superb apartments.”

It is curious to note that in those days Bedlam was looked upon as one of the sights of London, to which both foreigners and provincial visitors were taken as a matter of course. In her last letter from town Mary says: “To-morrow we go first to Bedlam, then to St. James’s Street to see the Court people, and then I think I shall have had more than enough of sights and dissipation.”