CHAPTER XXVIII
AGREEABLE JAUNTS
Mary Russell Mitford visited Southampton in the year 1812, and although only one of her letters written at that time has been preserved it gives us a vivid picture of her impressions of the place. The letter is dated September 3rd.
“I have just returned from Southampton,” she writes to Sir William Elford. “Have you ever been at that lovely spot, which combines all that is enchanting in wood and land and water with all that is ‘buxom, blythe and debonair’ in society—that charming town, which is not a watering-place only because it is something better?... Southampton has, in my eyes, an attraction independent even of its scenery in the total absence of the vulgar hurry of business or the chilly apathy of fashion. It is indeed all life, all gaiety; but it has an airiness, an animation which might become the capital of Fairyland. The very motion of its playful waters, uncontaminated by commerce or by war, seems in unison with the graceful yachts that sail upon their bosom.”
[Illustration: THE WEST GATE, SOUTHAMPTON]
She admired the ruins of Netley Abbey, and writes in one of her poems:—
“Methinks that e’en from Netley’s gloom To look upon the tide Seems gazing from the shadowy tomb On life and all its pride.”
At a much later date Miss Mitford visited Bath.
“Bath is a very elegant and classical-looking city,” she writes, “standing upon a steep hillside, its regular white buildings rising terrace above terrace, crescent above crescent, glittering in the sun, and charmingly varied by the green trees of its park and gardens.... Very pleasant is Bath to look at. But when contrasted with its old reputation as the favourite resort of the noble and the fair ... it is impossible not to feel that the spirit has departed; that it is a city of memories, the very Pompeii of watering-places.”
[Illustration: PULTENEY BRIDGE]
Again she writes: “A place full of associations is Bath. When we had fairly done with the real people there were great fictions to fall back upon, and I am not sure ... that those who never lived except in the writings of other people—the heroes and heroines of Miss Austen, for example—are not the more real of the two. Her exquisite story of _Persuasion_ absolutely haunted me. Whenever it rained I thought of Anne Elliott meeting Captain Wentworth, when driven by a shower to take refuge in a shoe-shop. Whenever I got out of breath in climbing uphill I thought of that same charming Anne Elliott, and of that ascent from the lower town to the upper, during which all her tribulations ceased. And when at last by dint of trotting up one street and down another I incurred the unromantic calamity of a blister on the heel, even that grievance became classical by the recollection of the similar catastrophe which, in consequence of her peregrinations with the Admiral, had befallen dear Mrs. Croft.”
Miss Mitford writes in one of her letters of a “most agreeable jaunt to Richmond.”
“God made the country and man made the town!” “I wonder,” she says, “in which of the two divisions Cowper would place Richmond. Every Londoner would laugh at the rustic who should call it town, and with foreigners it passes pretty generally for a sample (the only one they see) of the rural villages of England; and yet it is no more like the country, the real untrimmed genuine country, than a garden is like a field. Richmond is Nature in a court dress, but still Nature—aye, and very lovely nature too, gay and happy and elegant as one of Charles the Second’s beauties, and with as little to remind one of the penalty of labour, or poverty, or grief, or crime. To the casual visitor (at least) Richmond appears as a sort of fairyland, a piece of old Arcadia, a holiday spot for ladies and gentlemen, where they had a happy out-of-door life, like the gay folks in Watteau’s pictures, and have nothing to do with the workaday world....
“Here is Richmond Park, where Jeanie Deans and the Duke of Argyle met Queen Caroline; it has been improved, unluckily, and the walk where the interview took place no longer exists. To make some amends, however, for this disappointment, [we are told that] in removing some furniture from an old house in the town three portraits were discovered in the wainscot, George the Second, a staring likeness, between Lady Suffolk and Queen Caroline. The paintings were the worst of that bad era, but the position of the three and the recollection of Jeanie Deans was irresistible; those pictures ought never to be separated.”
“The principal charm of this smiling landscape,” she continues, “is the river, the beautiful river. Brimming to its very banks of meadow or of garden; clear, pure and calm as the bright sky which is reflected in clearer brightness from its bosom.” As her boat glides along its smooth surface amid scenes of ever-changing beauty and interest, Miss Mitford’s thoughts turn to Sir Joshua Reynolds. “His villa is here,” she exclaims, “rich in remembrances of Johnson and Boswell and Goldsmith and Burke; here again the elegant house of Owen Cambridge; close by the celebrated villa of Pope, where one seems to see again Swift and Gay, St. John and Arbuthnot. A stone’s-throw off the still more celebrated Gothic toy-shop, Strawberry Hill, which we all know so well from the minute and vivid descriptions of its master, the most amusing of letter-writers, the most fashionable of antiquaries, the most learned of _petit-maîtres_, the cynical, finical, delightful Horace Walpole.”
Then Miss Mitford tells us of “the landing at Hampton Court, the palace of the cartoons and of the ‘Rape of the Lock,’ and lastly of her coming home with her mind full of the divine Raphael ... strangely chequered and intersected by vivid images of the fair Belinda, and of that inimitable game at ombre which will live longer than any painting, and can only die with the language.”
Here we would venture to give some passages from the “Rape of the Lock” for the benefit of those who may not as yet have made the acquaintance of the “fair Belinda.” This poem, so full of wit and fairy fancy, was written by Pope to commemorate an event which had actually occurred. It happened when a party of noble friends had met together in a stately room in Hampton Court Palace and were gathered around a table prepared for a game at ombre.
The heroine Belinda (whose real name was Arabella Fermor), famous for her beauty and for her “sprightly mind,” was wooed by a certain young Lord Petre, who ardently desired to possess one of “the shining ringlets” that decked “her smooth ivory neck.” Meanwhile invisible sylphs and sprites, aware that some “dire disaster” threatens to befall the unconscious Belinda, hover protectingly about her. Even the very cards take part in the drama, giving omens alternately of good or of evil. At last Belinda wins the game and rejoices, but all too soon it seems in her triumph.
The cards removed
“the board with cups and spoons is crowned, The berries crackle and the mill turns round,
but coffee alas!
Sent up in vapours to the Baron’s brain, New stratagems, the radiant Lock to gain. ... Just then Clarissa drew, with tempting grace, A two-edged weapon from her shining case. He takes the gift with reverence and extends The little engine on his fingers’ ends; This just behind Belinda’s neck he spread As o’er the fragrant steams she bends her head. Swift to the Lock a thousand sprites repair, A thousand wings by turns blow back the hair;
The peer now spreads the glittering forfex wide To enclose the Lock; now joins it to divide. ... The meeting points the sacred hair dissever From the fair head, for ever and for ever!
* * * * *
The Lock, obtained with guilt and kept with pain, In every place is sought, but sought in vain: With such a prize no mortal must be blest, So Heaven decrees: with Heaven who can contest? ... Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy ravished hair Which adds new glory to the shining sphere! Not all the tresses that fair heads can boast Shall draw such envy as the Lock you lost. For after all the murders of your eye, When after millions slain, yourself shall die. ... This Lock the Muse shall consecrate to fame, And ‘midst the stars inscribe Belinda’s name.”
[Illustration]