CHAPTER XXXV

A LONDON WELCOME

In the spring of 1836 Miss Mitford paid a short visit to London. She stayed in the house of her father’s old friend Sergeant Talfourd, No. 56 Russell Square. Her stories were so well known by this time, and so universally admired, that she received quite an ovation from the literary world. Dinners and receptions were given in her honour, and she had the pleasure of meeting many a writer whose works she valued highly but whose personality was hitherto unknown to her.

Amongst these was the poet Wordsworth. Writing to her father on May 26th she says:—

“Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Landor and Mr. White dined here. I like Mr. Wordsworth of all things; he is a most venerable-looking old man, delightfully mild and placid, and most kind to me”; and again she writes: “You cannot imagine how very very kindly Mr. Wordsworth speaks of my poor works. You who know what I think of him can imagine how much I am gratified by his praise.” Speaking of the other guests, she says:—

“Mr. Landor is a very striking-looking person, and exceedingly clever. Also we had a Mr. Browning, a young poet (author of _Paracelsus_), and Mr. Proctor and Mr. Chorley, and quantities more of poets, etc.... Mr. Willis has sailed for America. Mr. Moore and Miss Edgeworth are not in town....

“There was a curious affair to-night. All the Sergeants went to the play in a body [to see Sergeant Talfourd’s _Ion_]. Lord Grey and his family were in a private box just opposite to us, and the house was filled with people of that class, and the pit crammed with gentlemen. Very very gratifying was it not?”

Writing to her father on May 31st Miss Mitford says:—

“At seven William [Harness] came to take me to Lord Dacre’s. It is a small house, with a round table that only holds eight. The company was William, Mrs. Joanna [Baillie], Mrs. Sullivan (Lady Dacre’s daughter, the authoress), Lord and Lady Dacre, a famous talker called Bobus Smith (otherwise the great Bobus) and my old friend Mr. Young the actor, who was delighted to see me, and very attentive and kind indeed. But how kind they were all!...

“In the evening we had about fifty people, amongst others, Edwin Landseer, who invited himself to come and paint Dash. He is a charming person; recollected me instantly, and talked to me for two whole hours.... You may imagine that I was very gracious to the best dog painter that ever lived, who asked my leave to paint Dash.... Edwin Landseer says that it is the most beautiful and rarest race of dogs in existence—the dogs who have most intellect and most _countenance_. Stanfield had talked to him of his intention to paint my country, and then Edwin Landseer resolved to paint my dog....

“Edwin Landseer has a fine Newfoundland dog whom he has often painted, and who is content to maintain his posture as long as his master keeps his palette in his hand, however long that may be; but the moment the palette is laid down off darts Neptune and will sit no more that day....

“It is very odd that Mr. Knight should want to paint _me_. Mr. Lucas will make the most charming picture of all—_of you_.

[Illustration:

_John Lucas_

DR. MITFORD]

“I told you, my dearest father, that Mr. Kenyon was to take me to the giraffes and the Diorama, with both of which I was delighted. A sweet young woman whom we called for in Gloucester Place went with us—a Miss Barrett—who reads Greek as I do French, and has published some translations from Æschylus and some most striking poems. She is a delightful young creature, shy and timid and modest. Nothing but her desire to see me got her out at all, but now she is coming to us to-morrow night also.”

Again she writes of her on further acquaintance: “Miss Barrett has translated the most difficult of the Greek plays (the _Prometheus Bound_). If she be spared to the world you will see her passing all women and most men as a narrative and dramatic poet. Our sweet Miss Barrett!—to think of virtue and genius is to think of her.... She is so sweet and gentle and so pretty that one looks at her as if she were some bright flower.”

The two corresponded afterwards, and their letters are full of interest. We should like to quote a passage from one of Miss Barrett’s upon the Greek drama. “The Œdipus is wonderful,” she writes, “the sublime truth which pierces through to your soul like lightning seems to me to be the humiliating effect of guilt, even when unconsciously incurred. The abasement, the self-abasement, of the proud, high-minded King before the mean mediocre Creon, not because he is wretched, not because he is blind, but because he is criminal, appears to me a wonderful and most affecting conception. And there is Euripides with his abandon to the pathetic, and Æschylus who sheds tears like a strong man and moves you to more because you know that his struggle is to restrain them.”

Miss Mitford writes to her friend in October of this year (1836):—

“I have just read your delightful ballad.[17] My earliest book was _Percy’s Reliques_, the delight of my childhood, and after them came Scott’s _Minstrelsy of the Borders_, the favourite of my youth, so that I am prepared to love ballads, although perhaps a little biased in favour of great directness and simplicity by the earnest plainness of my old pet. Do read Tennyson’s _Ladye of Shalott_. You will be charmed with its spirit and picturesqueness.

[Footnote 17: “The Romaunt of the Page.”]

“Are you a great reader of the old English drama? I am—preferring it to every other sort of reading; of course, admitting and regretting the grossness of the age, but that from habit one skips without a thought, just as I should over so much Greek or Hebrew which I knew that I could not comprehend. Have you read Victor Hugo’s plays? ... and his _Notre Dame_? I admit the bad taste of these, the excess, but the power and the pathos are to me indescribably great. And then he has broken through the conventional phrases and made the French a new language. He has accomplished this partly by going back to the old fountains, Froissart, etc. Again these old chronicles are great books of mine.”

Mary Russell Mitford’s letters written to intimate friends were at all times a true reflection of her mind and nature, and it is interesting to learn from a passage in her _Recollections of a Literary Life_ what her opinion was of the value of letters, “provided they are truthful and spontaneous.” “Such is the reality and identity belonging to letters written at the moment,” she writes, “and intended only for the eye of a favourite friend, that it is probable that any genuine series of epistles, were the writer ever so little distinguished, would possess the invaluable quality of individuality, a quality which so often causes us to linger before an old portrait of which we know no more than it is a Burgomaster by Rembrandt or a Venetian Senator by Titian. The least skilful pen when flowing from the fullness of the heart, and untroubled by any misgivings of after publication, shall often paint with as faithful and life-like a touch as either of these great masters.”

Writing to Miss Barrett of her country rambles in the autumn of 1836 she says: “I was this afternoon for an hour on Heckfield Heath, a common dotted with cottages and a large piece of water backed by woody hills; the nearer portion of the ground a forest of oak and birch and hawthorn and holly and fern, intersected by grassy glades.... On an open space just large enough for the purpose a cricket match was going on,—the older people sitting on benches, the younger ones lying about under the trees; and a party of boys just seen glancing backward and forward in a sunny glade, where they were engaged in an equally merry and far more noisy game. Well, there we stood, Ben and I and Dash, watching and enjoying the enjoyments we witnessed. And I thought if I had no pecuniary anxiety, if my dear father were stronger and our dear friend well[18] I should be the happiest creature in the world, so strong was the influence of that happy scene.”

[Footnote 18: Miss Barrett’s health was causing much anxiety to her friends.]

The pecuniary anxiety here referred to had been growing greater and greater. The literary earnings of the devoted daughter seem to have melted away in the father’s speculations. At last she was urged by her valued friend William Harness to apply to Government for a pension—an application which was strongly supported by influential friends. Her petition, dated May, 1837, to Lord Melbourne concludes with these words: “I am emboldened to take this step by the sight of my father’s white hairs and the certainty that such another winter as the last would take from me all power of literary exertion and send those white hairs with sorrow to the grave.”

On the 31st May Miss Mitford writes to her friend Miss Jephson:—

“I cannot suffer one four-and-twenty hours to pass, my own dearest Emily, without telling you what I am sure will give you so much pleasure, that I had to-day an announcement from Lord Melbourne of a pension of £100 a year. The sum is small, but that cannot be considered derogatory, which was the amount given by Sir Robert Peel to Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Somerville, and it is a great comfort to have something to look forward to as a certainty, however small, in sickness or old age.... But the real gratification of this transaction has been the kindness, the warmth of heart, the cordiality and the delicacy of every human being connected with the circumstances. It originated with dear William Harness and that most kind and zealous friend, Lady Dacre; and the manner in which it was taken up by the Duke of Devonshire, Lord and Lady Holland, Lord and Lady Radnor, Lord Palmerston and many others, some of whom I had never even seen, has been such as to make this one of the most pleasurable events of my life....

“Is not this very honourable to the kind feelings of our aristocracy? I always knew that I had as a writer a strong hold in that quarter; that they turned with disgust from the trash called fashionable novels to the common life of Miss Austen, the Irish tales of Miss Edgeworth, and my humble village stories; but I did not suspect the strong personal interest which these stories had excited, and I am intensely grateful for it.”

Miss Mitford was further cheered in her outlook upon life by an offer to edit an important publication called _Finden’s Tableaux_, a large quarto work illustrated by fine steel engravings from the works of the leading artists of the day, and handsomely bound in leather elaborately ornamented—a style then much in vogue. She gladly accepted the offer and was soon applying to Miss Barrett, her “Sweet Love,” for a contribution in the shape of a poem. The poem was supplied, bearing the title of “A Romance of the Ganges,” and was followed in course of time by many others.

This offer was followed in September, 1836, by a commission from the editors of _Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal_. “It is one of the signs of the times,” writes Miss Mitford, “that a periodical selling for threepence halfpenny should engage so high-priced a writer as myself; but they have a circulation of 200,000 or 300,000.” This was her passing comment on the transaction, but it was to be of far more lasting importance than she anticipated, resulting as it did in a close friendship with William Chambers, and in a scheme of collaboration in which she took a prominent part.[19]

[Footnote 19: See _Life and Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford_, by W. J. Roberts.]

Mr. William Chambers paid a visit to Three Mile Cross in 1847, when he and Miss Mitford and the latter’s warm friend, Mr. Lovejoy, of Reading, talked over a scheme for forming Rural Libraries.

It was on the 31st March, 1836, that _Pickwick_ first made its appearance, electrifying the reading world. It came out in monthly numbers, price one shilling. Of the first number, it seems, 400 copies were printed, but by the time it had reached the fifteenth number no less than 40,000 were issued!

Miss Mitford writes to her friend Miss Jephson in June, 1837:—

“So you never heard of the _Pickwick Papers_? Well!... It is fun. London life—but without anything unpleasant; a lady might read it all _aloud_; and it is so graphic, so individual and so true that you could curtsy to all the people as you met them in the street.... All the boys and girls talk his fun—the boys in the streets; and yet they who are of the highest taste like it the most. Sir Benjamin Brodie takes it to read in his carriage between patient and patient, and Lord Denman studies _Pickwick_ on the bench whilst the jury are deliberating.

“Do take some means to borrow the _Pickwick Papers_. It seems like not having heard of Hogarth, whom he resembles greatly, except that he takes a far more cheerful view, a Shakespearian view, of humanity. It is rather fragmentary except the trial, which is as complete and perfect as any bit of comic writing in the English language. You must read the _Pickwick Papers_.”

[Illustration]