CHAPTER XXXIV

A CENTRE OF INTEREST

As Mary Russell Mitford’s fame as a writer began to spread wider and wider her cottage became a centre of interest and attraction to all those who had learnt to love her works. Her chief biographer[16]—a contemporary—writes:

[Footnote 16: Rev. A. G. L’Estrange.]

“In the summer time when she gave strawberry parties, the road leading to the cottage was crowded with the carriages of all the rank and fashion in the county. By example as well as precept she ‘brightened the path along which she dwelt.’ Her kindly nature did not exhaust itself in a girlish enthusiasm for pets and flowers, but went forth to meet her fellow-men and women whose virtues seemed to expand and whose faults to vanish at her approach.”

Her conversation had a peculiar charm, considered by some “to be even better than her books,” delivered, as it was, by a “voice beautiful as a chime of bells.”

It was in the year 1847 that Miss Mitford first made the acquaintance of Mr. James T. Fields—a distinguished American—both author and publisher—whose “bright, genial, vivacious letters” and “spirited lectures on ‘Charles Lamb,’ ‘Longfellow,’ and others” are highly spoken of by contemporaries.

Mr. Fields writes in his interesting book entitled _Yesterday with Authors_:—

“It was a fortunate hour for me when kind-hearted John Kenyon said, as I was leaving his hospitable door in London one summer midnight: ‘you must know my friend Miss Mitford. She lives directly in the line of your route to Oxford, and you must call with my card and make her acquaintance.’ The day selected for my call at her cottage door happened to be a perfect one in which to begin an acquaintance with the lady of ‘Our Village.’ She was then living at Three Mile Cross ... on the high road between Basingstoke and Reading [where] the village street contained the public-house and several small shops near-by. There was also close at hand the village pond full of ducks and geese, and I noticed several young rogues on their way to school were occupied in worrying their feathered friends. The windows of the cottage were filled with flowers, and cowslips and violets were plentifully scattered about the little garden. I remember the room into which I was shown was sanded, and a quaint old clock behind the door was marking off the hour in small but loud pieces. The cheerful lady called to me from the head of the stairs to come up into her sitting-room. I sat down by the open window to converse with her, and it was pleasant to see how the village children, as they went by, stopped to bow and curtsy. One curly-headed urchin made bold to take off his well-worn cap, and waited to be recognized as ‘little Johnny.’ ‘No great scholar,’ said the kind-hearted lady to me, ‘but a sad rogue among our flock of geese. Only yesterday the young marauder was detected by my maid with a plump gosling stuffed half-way into his pocket!’ While she was thus discoursing of Johnny’s peccadilloes, the little fellow looked up with a knowing expression, and very soon caught in his cap a ginger-bread dog which she threw to him from the window. ‘I wish he loved his book as well as he relishes sweet cakes,’ she sighed, as the boy kicked up his heels and disappeared down the lane....

“From that day our friendship continued, and during other visits to England I saw her frequently, driving about the country with her in her pony-chaise and spending many happy hours in the new cottage which she afterwards occupied at Swallowfield.

“... She was always cheerful and her talk is delightful to remember. From girlhood she had known and been intimate with most of the prominent writers of her time, and her observations and reminiscences were so shrewd and pertinent that I have scarcely known her equal.

“When she talked of Munden and Bannister and Fawcett and Emery, those delightful old actors for whom she had such an exquisite relish, she said they had made comedy to her a living art full of laughter and tears. How often have I heard her describe John Kemble, Mrs. Siddons, Miss O’Neil and Edmund Kean, as they were wont to electrify the town in her girlhood! With what gusto she reproduced Elliston, who was one of her prime favourites, and tried to make me, through her representation of him, feel what a spirit there was in the man....

“I well remember, one autumn evening, when half a dozen friends were sitting in her library after dinner, talking with her of Tom Taylor’s life of Haydon, then lately published, how graphically she described to us the eccentric painter whose genius she was among the foremost to recognize. The flavour of her discourse I cannot reproduce; but I was too much interested in what she was saying to forget the main incidents she drew for our edification during those pleasant hours now far away in the past.”

William Howett had paid a visit to the cottage at Three Mile Cross in the late summer of 1835, which he described in an article that appeared in the _Athenæum_. As he drove from Reading he says:—

“The sound of the sheep bells came pleasantly from the pastures where the eye ranged over wide level fields cleared of their corn and all the wayside was hung with such heavy and jetty clusters of blackberries as scarcely ever were seen in another place.... And now I came to the sweetest lanes branching off right and left under trees that met across them and lo! ‘Three Mile Cross!’ ‘But which is Miss Mitford’s cottage?’ That was the question I asked of two women that stood in the street. ‘Oh, sir, you’ve passed it. It is where that green bush hangs over the wall.’ I knocked and who came but Ben Kirby and no other, and who quickly presented herself but Mary Russell Mitford! The very person that every reader must suppose her to be, the sunny-spirited, cordial-hearted, frank, kind, unaffected, genuine, English lady.

“We had known each other before, though we had never seen each other, and we shook hands as old true friends should do; and in the next moment passed through that ‘nut-shell of a house’ (her own true expression) into a perfect paradise of flowers, and flowering fragrance. We passed along the garden into the conservatory, and found her father Dr. Mitford, the worthy magistrate, and two accomplished ladies her friends.

“Now, if anyone should ask me to describe more particularly this place what can I say but that it is most graphically described by the writer herself? Has she not told you that her garden is her great delight? Has she not told you that in summer she and her honoured father live principally in the conservatory (a ‘rural arcade’ as she calls it) and is it not so? And is it not a sweet summer abode with that glowing, odorous bee-haunted garden all lying before it?

“As we drove [later] along those umbrageous lanes, and crossed the sweet pastoral Loddon, she stayed her pony phaeton [at times] to admire some goodly house, or picturesque parsonage, [and I noticed that] every rustic face we met brightened into smiles, and for every one she had a counter smile, or a kind passing word. Everything you see of her only shows how truly she has spread the vitality of her heart over her pages, and everything you see of the country with what accuracy she sketches.”

Mary was much pleased and touched by this graceful and warm-hearted account by Mr. Howett of his visit to Three Mile Cross, and she wrote to him on the subject.

In his answer, written at Nottingham, after expressing his great satisfaction at her pleasure, he goes on to say: “I shall send you a paper to-morrow containing the account of the great cricket match played here between Sussex and Nottingham.... We wished you had been there—a more animated sight of the kind you never saw....

“I could not help seeing what a wide difference twenty years has produced in the character of the English population. What a contrast in this play to bull-baiting and cock-fighting! So orderly, so manly, so generous in its character.... A sport that has no drawback of cruelty or vulgarity in it, but has every recommendation of skill, taste, health and generous rivalry. You, dear Miss Mitford,” he continues, “have done a great deal to promote this better spirit, and you could not have done more had you been haranguing Parliament, and bringing in bills for the purpose.”

There are many letters extant from Mary Howett to Miss Mitford, and we should like to give the following written in February, 1836: “This new edition of _Our Village_ I have been coveting ever since I saw the advertisement of it, and I will tell you why. It is one of those cheerful, spirited works, full of fair pictures of humanity which, especially when there are children who love reading, and being read to, becomes a household book, turned to again and again, and remembered and talked of with affection. So it is by our fireside, it is a work our little daughter has read and loves to read, and which our little son Alfred, a most indomitable young gentleman, likes especially.... He is as yet a bad reader and therefore he is read to; and his cry is ‘Read me the _Copse_!’ or ‘Read me the _Nutting_,’ or a ‘_Ramble into the Country_!’

“Such, dear Miss Mitford, being the case when I saw the new edition advertised, I began to cast in my mind whether or not we could buy it, for perhaps you know that _literary_ people, though _makers_ of books, are not exclusive _buyers_ thereof, you may think then what was my delight—and the delight of us all—when a parcel came in, the string was cut, and behold it contained no other than those long-coveted and favourite volumes! Thank you, therefore, dearest Miss Mitford; you have conferred a benefit upon our fireside which will make you even more beloved than formerly, for now we shall always have you at hand.”

Miss Mitford held communion either personally or by correspondence with several warm-hearted Americans, besides her friend Mr. James T. Fields.

George Ticknor, the celebrated author of _The History of Spanish Literature_, and a partner in Mr. Fields’ publishing firm, when on a visit to England in 1835, made a pilgrimage with his family to Three Mile Cross. He writes in his diary of this visit:—

“We found Miss Mitford living literally in a cottage neither _ornée_ nor poetical, except inasmuch as it had a small garden, crowded with the richest and most beautiful profusion of flowers. She has the simplest and kindest manners, and entertained us for two hours with the most animated conversation, and a great variety of anecdote, without any of the pretensions of an author by profession, and without any of the stiffness that generally belongs to single ladies of her age and reputation.”

Writing to her afterwards he says: “We shall none of us ever forget the truly delightful evening we spent in your cottage at ‘Our Village.’”

Daniel Webster, the orator and patriot so greatly valued in the United States, also made his appearance in Three Mile Cross, together with some members of his family, in their transit from Oxford to Windsor.

“My local position between these two points of attraction,” writes Mary, “has often procured for me the gratification of seeing my American friends when making that journey; but during _this_ visit a little circumstance occurred so characteristic, so graceful, and so gracious that I cannot resist the temptation of relating it.

“Walking in my cottage garden we talked naturally of the roses and pinks that surrounded us, and of the different indigenous flowers of our island and of the United States.... We spoke of the primrose and the cowslip immortalized by Shakespeare and by Milton; and the sweet-scented violets, both white and purple of our hedgerows and our lanes; that known as the violet [yellow] being, I suspect, the little wild pansy (viola tricolor) renowned as the love-in-idleness of Shakespeare’s famous compliment to Queen Elizabeth.... I expressed an interest in two flowers known to me only by the vivid descriptions of Miss Martineau; the scarlet lily of New York and of the Canadian woods, and the original gentian of Niagara. I observed that our illustrious guest made some remark to one of the ladies of his party; but I little expected that so soon after his return as seeds of these plants could be procured, I should receive a packet of each, signed and directed by his own hand. How much pleasure these little kindnesses give! And how many such have come to me from over the same wide ocean!”

On New Year’s Day, 1830, Mrs. Mitford died after a short illness. An affecting account of her last hours was written by her daughter, in which she says: “No human being was ever so devoted to her duties—so just, so pious, so charitable, so true, so feminine, so generous.... Never thinking of herself, the most devoted wife and the most faithful friend. She died in a good old age, universally beloved and respected.”

Mrs. Mitford was buried in Shinfield Church—the parish church of Three Mile Cross and the other surrounding villages where the Mitfords used to worship. We have visited the place, which does not seem to have changed much since Miss Mitford described it in one of her village stories.

She speaks of “the tower of the old village church fancifully ornamented with brick-work, and of the churchyard planted with broad flowering limes and funereal yew-trees, also of a short avenue of magnificent oaks leading up to the church.

“It stands,” she says, “amidst a labyrinth of green lanes running through a hilly and richly wooded country whose valleys are threaded by the silver Loddon.”

In the month of June of this same year Mary received an interesting letter from the American authoress, Miss Sedgwick, whose works, especially those for children, were much read in this country some years ago.

“You cannot,” she remarks, “be ignorant that your books are re-printed and widely circulated on this side of the Atlantic, but ... it is probably difficult for you to realize that your name has penetrated beyond our maritime cities, and is familiar and honoured and loved through many a village circle, and to the borders of the lonely depths of unpierced woods—that we venerate ‘Mrs. Mosse’ and are lovers of ‘Sweet Cousin Mary’ ... and, in short, that your pictures have wrought on our affections like realities.

“... My niece, a child of nine years old, who is sitting by me, not satisfied with requesting that her _love_ may be sent to Miss Mitford, has boldly aspired to the honour of addressing a postscript to her, and I ... not forgetting who has allowed us a precedent for spoiling children, have consented to her wishes. Forgive us both, dear Miss Mitford.”

In her little letter the child asks after the various characters in the stories that have taken her fancy, not forgetting the pretty greyhound Mayflower.

Miss Mitford responds in the following way:—

“My dear young friend,

“I am very much obliged to you for your kind enquiries respecting the people in my book. It is much to be asked about by a little lady on the other side of the Atlantic, and we are very proud of it accordingly. ‘May’ was a real greyhound, and everything told of her was literally true; but alas! she is no more.... ‘Harriet’ and ‘Joel’ are not married yet; you shall have the very latest intelligence of her. I am expecting two or three friends to dinner and she is making an apple-tart and custards—which I wish with all my heart that you and your dear aunt were coming to partake of. The rest of the people are all doing well in their several ways, and I am always, my dear little girl,

“Most sincerely yours, M. R. MITFORD.”