CHAPTER XVI

A CHOSEN CORRESPONDENT

Among the many names of well-known people that occur in Miss Mitford’s letters of this period is that of Cobbett, to whom she had addressed one of her early odes. He was an intimate friend of her father’s, and we are told that some of his letters to the Doctor “are written enigmatically and evidently with a view to secrecy, whilst others, on the contrary, express his sentiments as openly as did the ‘Porcupine.’” In these latter the violent denunciations of the King and the Government, and indeed of all persons in authority, comically recall to the mind of the reader the admirable skit upon Cobbett in the _Rejected Addresses_. His letters to the Doctor usually conclude with the words, “God bless you, and d—— the ministers!”

Miss Mitford describes Cobbett as “a tall, stout man, fair and sunburnt, with a bright smile and an air compounded of the soldier and the farmer, to which his habit of wearing an eternal red waistcoat contributed not a little.” Mary’s attitude towards politics throughout her life was naturally influenced by her surroundings; but her admiration for Cobbett was caused specially by his love of animals and love of rural scenery, in which she so warmly sympathised.

After a while an estrangement arose between the two families through some misunderstanding, but Mary continued to admire Cobbett’s stirling qualities. Writing of him some years later she remarks: “He was a sad tyrant, as my friends the democrats sometimes are. Servants and labourers fled before him. And yet with all his faults he was a man one could not help liking.... The coarseness and violence of his political writings and conversations almost entirely disappeared in his family circle, and were replaced by a kindness, a good humour and an enjoyment in seeing and promoting the happiness of others.... He was always what Johnson would have called ‘a very pretty hater’; but since his release from Newgate he has been hatred itself.... [May] milder thoughts attend him,” she adds: “he has my good wishes and so have his family.”

Another political name occurring in Miss Mitford’s correspondence is that of Sir Francis Burdett, the well-known leader of reform and exposer of abuses. Mary writes on March 28th, 1810: “If the House of Commons send Sir Francis to the Tower I should not much like anyone that I loved to be a party in it, for the populace will not tamely submit to have their idol torn from them, and especially for defending the rights and liberties of the subject. As to Sir Francis himself, I don’t think either he or Cobbett would much mind it. They would proclaim themselves martyrs in the cause of liberty, and the ‘Register’ would sell better than ever.”

It was in the spring of this same year when visiting London that Mary was first introduced to Sir William Elford, a friend of her father’s, although totally opposed to him in politics. Sir William belonged to an old Devonshire family, and was Recorder for Plymouth, which borough he had represented in Parliament for many years. He was, moreover, a man of cultivated tastes and of much refinement. His interest in Miss Mitford seems to have commenced from the perusal of some of her early verses shown to him by her father.

Describing their first acquaintance in later years to a friend, Mary said: “Sir William had taken a fancy to me, and I became his child-correspondent. Few things contribute more to that indirect after-education, which is worth all the formal lessons of the schoolroom a thousand times told, than such good-humoured condescension from a clever man of the world to a girl almost young enough to be his grand-daughter. I owe much to that correspondence.... Sir William’s own letters were most charming—full of old-fashioned courtesy, of quaint humour, and of pleasant and genial criticism on literature and on art.”[6]

[Footnote 6: See _Yesterdays with Authors_, by James T. Fields.]

Sometimes he would send Mary a few verses he had written upon some congenial subject. Amongst these occur the following lines, composed after witnessing a performance of Mrs. Siddons in the Plymouth theatre:—

“Her looks, her voice, her features so agree, Uniting all in such fine harmony, That from her _voice_ the blind her looks declare, And in her sparkling _eyes_ the deaf may hear.”

In one of his early letters to Mary he remarks: “Pray never refrain from writing much because you want time and inclination to read over what you have written. I would a thousand times rather see what falls from your pen naturally and spontaneously than the most polished and beautiful composition that ever went to the press, and so would you I doubt not from your correspondents.... Pope’s maxim (if it is his) that ‘easy writing is not easily written’ is certainly true with respect to what is intended for the world ... but is utterly false as applied to familiar writing, of which his own letters—pretended to be warm from the brain, but in reality polished and revised on publication—are a striking proof. Write away then, my dear, as fast as you can drive your quill, and abuse Miss Seward as much as you please.”

These words call to mind the same kind of advice given by the good “Daddy” Crisp about forty years earlier to the young Fanny Burney: “Let this declaration serve once for all, that there is no fault in an epistolary correspondence like stiffness and study. Dash away whatever comes uppermost; the sudden sallies of imagination clap’d down on paper, just as they arise, are worth folios, and have all the warmth and merit of that sort of nonsense that is eloquent in love.”

Crisp had greater powers as a critic than Sir William Elford, but Sir William had qualities that specially suited the case in question. He supplied a channel through which Mary could express and think out her views on all kinds of topics, always secure of a kind and friendly listener, and one whose judgment she valued. Being an only child and with few intimate female friends, this was a great boon, and we owe to their correspondence a fuller knowledge of Mary’s mind in its development from youth to womanhood than we could have obtained by any other means.

The allusion to Miss Seward, the “Swan of Lichfield,” by Sir William refers to the following passage in one of Mary’s letters: “Have you seen Miss Seward’s Letters? The names of her correspondents are tempting, but alas! though addressed to all the eminent literati of the last half-century, all the epistles bear the signature of Anna Seward.... Did she not owe some of her fame, think you, to writing printed books at a time when it was quite as much as most women could do to read them?... I was always a little shocked at the sort of reputation she bore in poetry. Sometimes affected, sometimes _fade_, sometimes pedantic and sometimes tinselly, none of her works were ever simple, graceful, or natural. Her letters ... are affected, sentimental and lackadaisical to the highest degree. Who can read a page of Miss Seward’s writings on any subject without finding her out at once [as] the pedantic coquette and cold-hearted sensibility monger?”

“Anna Seward,” continues Miss Mitford, “sees nothing to admire in Cowper’s letters—in letters (the playful ones of course I mean) which would have immortalized him had the _Task_ never been written, and which (much as I admire the playful wit of the two illustrious namesakes Lady M. W. and Mrs. Montagu) are in my opinion the only perfect specimens of epistolary composition in the English language.... They have to me, at least, all the properties of grace; a charm now here, now there; a witchery rather felt in its effect than perceived in its cause.”

“The attraction of Horace Walpole’s letters,” she adds, “is very different, though almost equally strong. The charm which lurks in them is one for which we have no term, and our Gallic neighbours seem to have engrossed both the word and the quality. _Elles sont piquantes_ to the highest degree. If you read but a sentence you feel yourself spellbound till you have read the volume.”

On another occasion Mary discusses the merits of Pope. She holds the same opinion as that of Sir William respecting his letters “which,” as she says, “affect to be unaffected and work so hard to seem quite at their ease.” “Pope is,” she remarks, “even in his poetry, of a lower flight and a weaker grasp than his predecessor [Dryden].... _They_ must be born without an ear who can prefer the melodious monotony of Pope to the stateliness, the ease, the infinite variety of Dryden. I should as soon think of preferring the tinkling guitar to the full-toned organ!

“... In short, Pope is in the fullest sense of the word a mannerist. When you have said ‘The Dunciad,’ ‘The Eloise’ and ‘The Rape of the Lock’ you can say nothing more but ‘The Rape of the Lock,’ ‘The Dunciad’ and ‘The Eloise.’ I have some notion,” she adds, “that you are of a different opinion, and I am very glad of it; I love to make you quarrel with me. Nothing is so tiresome as acquiescence; I would at any time give a dozen civil Yes’s for one spirited No, especially in correspondence, which is exactly like a game of shuttle-cock, and would be at an end in an instant if both battledores struck the same way.”

In another letter, writing of her special favourites amongst Shakespeare’s plays, she remarks: “And last, not least, _Much Ado About Nothing_. The Beatrice of this play is indeed my standard of female wit and almost of female character; nothing so lively, so clever, so unaffected and so warm-hearted ever trod this workaday world. Benedick is not quite equal to her; but this, in female eyes, is no great sin. Shakespeare saw through nature, and knew which sex to make the cleverest. There’s a challenge for you! Will you take up the glove?”