CHAPTER XXIV

A COUNTRY-SIDE ROMANCE

The framework of these stories—that is all that concerns Miss Mitford herself, who figures not only as the narrator but as an actor in the scenes described—is, for the most part, she tells us, strictly true. Thus in giving quotations from her charming tales we are giving also passages from her own daily life, and so we seem to see her walking about the country lanes visiting the cottages or farm-houses, and even to hear her conversing with the villagers.

[Illustration: OLD BERKSHIRE FARM]

In a story entitled _Patty’s New Hat_, Mary Mitford writes:—

“Wandering about the meadows one morning last May absorbed in the pastoral beauty of the season and the scenery, I was overtaken by a heavy shower, just as I passed old Mrs. Matthew’s great farm-house and forced to run for shelter to her hospitable porch. A pleasant shelter in good truth I found there. The green pastures dotted with fine old trees stretching all around; the clear brook winding about them, turning and returning on its course, as if loath to depart ... the village spire rising amongst a cluster of cottages, all but the roofs and chimneys concealed by a grove of oaks; the woody background and the blue hills in the distance, all so flowery and bowery in the pleasant month of May. The porch, around which a honeysuckle in full bloom was wreathing its sweet flowers ... was alive and musical with bees. It is hard to say which enjoyed the sweet breath of the shower and the honeysuckle most, the bees or I; but the rain began to drive so fast that at the end of five minutes I was not sorry to be discovered by a little girl belonging to the family, and ushered into the spacious kitchen, with its ample dresser glittering with crockery ware, and then finally conducted by Mrs. Matthews herself into her own comfortable parlour.

“On my begging that I might cause no interruption she resumed her labours at a little table [where she was] mending a fustian jacket belonging to one of her sons. On the other side of the little table sat her pretty grand-daughter Patty, a black-eyed young woman, with a bright complexion, a neat, trim figure, and a general air of gentility considerably above her station. She was trimming a very smart straw hat with pink ribands, trimming and untrimming, for the bows were tied and untied, taken off and put on, and taken off again, with a look of impatience and discontent, not common to a damsel of seventeen when contemplating a new piece of finery. The poor little lass was evidently out of sorts. She sighed and quirked and fidgeted and seemed ready to cry, whilst her grandmother just glanced at her face under her spectacles, pursed up her mouth, and contrived with some difficulty not to laugh. At last Patty spoke.

“‘Now, grandmother, you will let me go to Chapel Row revel this afternoon, won’t you?’

“‘Humph,’ said Mrs. Matthews.

“‘It hardly rains at all, grandmother!’

“‘Humph!’ again said Mrs. Matthews, opening the prodigious scissors with which she was amputating, so to say, a button, and directing the rounded end significantly to my wet shawl, whilst the sharp point was reverted towards the dripping honeysuckle. ‘Humph!’

“‘There’s no dirt to signify!’

“Another ‘Humph!’ and another point to the draggled tail of my white gown.

“‘At all events it’s going to clear.’

“Two ‘Humphs!’ and two points, one to the clouds and one to the barometer.

“‘It’s only seven miles,’ said Patty; ‘and if the horses are wanted, I can walk.’

“‘Humph!’ quoth Mrs. Matthews.

“‘My Aunt Ellis will be there, and my cousin Mary.’

“‘Humph!’ again said Mrs. Matthews.

“‘My cousin Mary will be so disappointed.’

“‘Humph!’

“‘And I half promised my cousin William—poor William!’

“‘Humph!’ again.

“‘Poor William! Oh, grandmother, do let me go! And I’ve got my new hat and all—just such a hat as William likes! Poor William! You will let me go, grandmother?’

“And receiving no answer but a very unequivocal ‘Humph!’ poor Patty threw down her hat, fetched a deep sigh, and sat in a most disconsolate attitude, snipping her pink riband to pieces. Mrs. Matthews went on manfully with her ‘stitchery,’ and for ten minutes there was a dead pause. It was at last broken by my little friend and introducer, Susan, who was standing at the window, and exclaimed: ‘Who is this riding up the meadow all through the rain? Look!—see!—I do think—no, it can’t be—yes it is—it is certainly my cousin William Ellis! Look, grandmother!’

“‘Humph!’ said Mrs. Matthews.

“‘What can cousin William be coming for?’ continued Susan.

“‘Humph!’ quoth Mrs. Matthews.

“‘Oh, I know!—I know!’ screamed Susan, clapping her hands and jumping for joy as she saw the changed expression of Patty’s countenance,—the beaming delight, succeeded by a pretty downcast shamefacedness as she turned away from her grandmother’s arch smile and archer nod. ‘I know! I know!’ shouted Susan.

“‘Humph!’ said Mrs. Matthews.

“‘For shame, Susan! Pray don’t, grandmother!’ said Patty imploringly.

“‘For shame! Why I did not say he was coming to court Patty! Did I, grandmother?’ returned Susan.

“‘And I take this good lady to witness,’ replied Mrs. Matthews, as Patty, gathering up her hat and her scraps of riband, prepared to make her escape. ‘I take you all to witness that I have said nothing of any sort. Get along with you, Patty!’ added she, ‘you have spoilt your pink trimming, but I think you are likely to want white ribands next, and if you put me in mind, I’ll buy them for you!’ And smiling in spite of herself the happy girl ran out of the room.”

In one of her tales Miss Mitford describes a fog in her village and its surrounding neighbourhood, contrasting it with a fog in London.

“A London fog,” she writes, “is a sad thing, as every inhabitant of London knows full well: dingy, dusky, dirty, damp; an atmosphere black as smoke and wet as steam, that wraps round you like a blanket; a cloud reaching from earth to heaven; ‘a palpable obscure,’ which not only turns day into night, but threatens to extinguish the lamps and lanthorns with which the poor street wanderers strive to illuminate their darkness.... Of all detestable things a London fog is the most detestable.

“Now a country fog is quite another matter.... This last lovely autumn has given us more foggy mornings, or rather more foggy days, than I ever remember to have seen in Berkshire: days beginning in a soft and vapoury mistiness, enveloping the whole country in a veil, snowy, fleecy, and light, as the smoke which one often sees circling in the distance from some cottage chimney, or as the still whiter clouds which float around the moon, and finishing in sunsets of a surprising richness and beauty when the mist is lifted up from the earth and turned into a canopy of unrivalled gorgeousness, purple, rosy and golden....

“It was in one of these days, early in November, that we set out about noon to pay a visit to a friend at some distance. The fog was yet on the earth, only some brightening in the south-west gave token that it was likely to clear away. As yet, however, the mist held complete possession. We could not see the shoemaker’s shop across the road—no! nor our chaise when it drew up before our door; were fain to guess at our own laburnum tree, and found the sign of The Rose invisible, even when we ran against the sign-post. Our little maid, a kind and careful lass, who, perceiving the dreariness of the weather, followed us across the court with extra wraps, had wellnigh tied my veil round her master’s hat and enveloped me in his bearskin, and my dog Mayflower, a white greyhound of the largest size, who had a mind to give us the undesired honour of her company, carried her point, in spite of the united efforts of half a dozen active pursuers, simply because the fog was so thick that nobody could see her. It was a complete game at bo-peep.

“A misty world it was, and a watery; and I ... began to sigh and shiver and quake, as much from dread of an overturn as from damp and chilliness, whilst my careful driver and his sagacious steed went on groping their way through the woody lanes that lead to the Loddon. Nothing but the fear of confessing my fear, that feeling which makes so many cowards brave, prevented me from begging to turn back again. On, however, we went, the fog becoming every moment heavier as we approached that beautiful and brimming river. My companion, nevertheless, continued to assure me that the day would clear—nay, that it was already clearing; and I soon found that he was right. As we left the river we seemed to leave the fog ... [and] it was curious to observe how object after object glanced out of the vapour. First of all the huge oak at the corner of Farmer Locke’s field, which juts out into the lane like a crag into the sea ... its head lost in the clouds; then Farmer Hewitt’s great barn—the house, ricks and stables still invisible; then a gate and half a cow, her head being projected over it in strong relief, whilst the hinder part of her body remained in the haze; then more and more distinctly hedgerows, cottages, trees and fields, until, as we reached the top of Barkham Hill, the glorious sun broke forth, and the lovely picture [of the valley] lay before our eyes in its soft and calm beauty.”

This account of Mary and her father’s expedition in a fog caught the fancy of two authoresses. One—Miss Sedgwick—writes to Mary from the other side of the Atlantic: “Tell me anything of your noble father (long may he live!) whom I have loved ever since you took that ride with him in a one-horse chaise of a misty morning. Do you remember?”

The other—Mrs. Hemans—writes: “I hope ... that you were not the worse for that fog, the very description of which almost took my hair out of curl whilst reading it!”