CHAPTER XXXVIII
SWALLOWFIELD
The “flitting” was accomplished in September, 1851. “I was compelled to move from the dear old house,” writes Miss Mitford; “not very far; not much further than Cowper when he migrated from Olney to Weston and with quite as happy an effect.
“I walked from the one cottage to the other in an Autumn evening when the vagrant birds whose habit of assembling here for their annual departure gives, I suppose, its name of Swallowfield to the village, were circling and twittering over my head.
“Here I am now in this prettiest village, in the snuggest and cosiest of all snug cabins; a trim cottage garden divided by a hawthorn hedge from a little field guarded by grand old trees; a cheerful glimpse of the high road in front, just to hint that there is such a thing as the peopled world; and on either side the deep, silent, woody lanes that form the distinctive character of English scenery. Very lovely is my favourite lane, leading along a gentle declivity to the valley of the Loddon, by pastoral water meadows studded with willow pollards, past picturesque farm-houses and quaint old mills, the beautiful river glancing here and there like molten silver.”
Again she writes: “I am charmed with my new cottage.... It stands under the shadow of superb old trees, oak and elm, upon a scrap of common which catches every breeze and I see the coolest of waters from my window.”
We have visited Swallowfield Cottage, have been into its various rooms and have wandered about its pretty garden. No wonder that Miss Mitford felt it to be a sweet and peaceful home to retire to! The front court is now a pretty piece of garden with a small lawn and with borders of flowers on either side of the path which leads to the front door from the garden gate. The house has been enlarged in recent years by the addition of a small wing on the left-hand side, while two shallow bay-windows have also been introduced—but it is still a cottage in appearance.
On the right-hand side there still rises the tall acacia tree with the syringa bush by its side of which Miss Mitford speaks. “So you do not write out of doors,” she writes to a literary friend. “I _do_, and am writing at this moment at a corner of the house under a beautiful acacia tree with as many snowy tassels as leaves. It is waving its world of fragrance over my head mingled with the orange-like odours of a syringa bush. I have a love of sweet smells that amounts to a passion.”
The larger garden at the back as well as the small front garden are kept up with reverent care by their present owner; so that they seem to suggest the presence of their flower-loving mistress.
Wild flowers, too, so dear to her heart, were to be seen just beyond her garden fence. “Have you the white wild hyacinth [in your parts]?” she asks a friend. “It makes a charming variety amongst its blue sisters and is amongst the purest of white flowers—all so pure. A bank close to my little field is rich in both. Have you fritillaries? They are beautiful in our water meadows, looking like painted glass.”
Miss Mitford’s many friends both English and American were soon visiting her in her new home.
[Illustration: THE LAST HOME]
“I have often been with her,” writes Mr. Fields, “among the wooded lanes of her pretty country, listening to the nightingales, and on such occasions she would discourse so eloquently of the sights and sounds about us that her talk seemed to me ‘far above singing.’...
She knew all the literature of rural life and her memory was stored with delightful eulogies of forests and meadows. When she repeated or read aloud the poetry she loved, her accents were ‘like flowers’ voices, if they could speak.’
“... One day we drove along the valley of the Loddon and she pointed out the Duke of Wellington’s seat of Strathfieldsaye.... But the mansion most dear to her in that neighbourhood was the residence of her tried friends the Russells of Swallowfield Park. It is indeed a beautiful old place, full of historical and literary associations, for there Lord Clarendon wrote his story of the Great Rebellion. Miss Mitford never ceased to be thankful that her declining years were passing in the society of such neighbours as the Russells.... She frequently told me that their affectionate kindness had helped her over the dark places of life more than once, when without their succour she must have dropped by the way.”
Among the many friends who hurried to Swallowfield to pay their respects to Miss Mitford was a young writer in whom she was much interested—James Payn. In his _Literary Recollections_ he calls her “the dear little old lady, looking like a venerable fairy, with bright sparkling eyes, a clear incisive voice, and a laugh that carried you away with it.”
Mary Mitford’s mind, in spite of advancing years, was ever open to new ideas and new impressions, so that she gladly hailed the arrival of works just published in America.
She writes to Mr. Fields, who on leaving England had proceeded to Italy, to thank him for sending her an illustrated edition of _Longfellow’s Poems_ together with a copy of the _Golden Legend_: “I hope I shall be only one among the multitude who think this the greatest and best thing he has done yet, so racy, so full of character, of what the French call local colour, so in its best and highest sense, original.... Then those charming volumes of De Quincey and Sprague and Grace Greenwood, and dear Mr. Hawthorne and the two new poets, who if also young poets will be fresh glories for America. How can I thank you enough for all these enjoyments? I have fallen in with Mr. Kingsley, and a most charming person he is ... you must know Mr. Kingsley. He is very young too, really young, for it is characteristic of our ‘young poets’ that they generally turn out middle-aged and very often elderly.”
And again writing to Mr. Fields she says: “I was delighted with Dr. Holmes’s poems for their individuality. How charming a person he must be! And how truly the portrait represents the mind, the lofty brow full of thought, and the wrinkle of humour in the eye! (Between ourselves I always have a little doubt of genius when there is no humour; certainly in the very highest poetry the two go together—Scott, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Burns.) Another charming thing in Dr. Holmes is that every succeeding poem is better than the last.... And I like him all the better for being a physician—the one truly noble profession. There are noble men in all professions, but in medicine only are the great mass, almost the whole, generous, liberal, self-denying, living to advance science and to help mankind.
“I rejoice to hear of another romance by the author of _The Scarlet Letter_. That is a real work of genius.”
On receiving _The House of Seven Gables_ a little later on, she apologizes to Mr. Fields for a delay in thanking him for his kind gift saying that she delayed doing so until she had read the book twice. “At sixty-five,” she remarks, “life gets too short to allow us to read every book once and again; but it is not so with Mr. Hawthorne, the first time one sketches them (to borrow Dr. Holmes’s excellent word) and cannot put them down for the vivid interest; the next one lingers over the beauty with a calmer enjoyment. Very beautiful this book is!”
Later on she writes to Mr. Fields of Whittier: “He sent me a charming poem on Burns, full of tenderness and humanity and the indulgence which the wise and good can so well afford, and which only the wisest and best can show to their erring brethren.”
She writes early in January, 1852, of her _Recollections of a Literary Life_: “My book is out at last, hurried through the press in a fortnight—a process which half killed me and has left the volumes no doubt full of errata,—and you, I mean your House, have not got it. I am keeping a copy for you personally. People say that they like it. I think you will, because it will remind you of this pretty country and of an old Englishwoman who loves you well.”
And later on she writes to Mr. Fields: “Thank you for telling me about the kind American reception of my book.... I do assure you that to be heartily greeted by my kinsmen across the Atlantic is very precious to me.”
Miss Mitford writes to her friend Mrs. Hoare on the subject of Jane Austen’s works: “Your admiration of Jane Austen is so far from being a ‘heresy,’ that I never met any high literary people in my life who did not prefer her to any female prose writer.... For my own part I delight in her.” And again writing of truth in works of fiction she says: “The greatest fictions of the world are the truest. Look at the _Vicar of Wakefield_, look at the _Simple Story_, look at Scott, look at Jane Austen, greater because truer than all.” In the same letter she remarks:—
“Yes, I ought to have liked Shelley better. But I have a love of clearness—a perfect hatred of all that is vague and obscure—and I still think with the grand exception of the ‘Cenci’ and of a few shorter poems, that there was rather the making of a great poet, if he had been spared, than the actual accomplishment of any great work. It was an immense promise.”
“If you have command of French books,” she writes to another friend, “read Saint Beuve’s _Causeries du Lundi_—charming volumes, full of variety and attractive in every way.”
During the late autumn of 1852 Miss Mitford was busy writing an Introduction to a complete edition of her _Dramatic Works_ which her publishers were preparing to bring out. À propos of this undertaking she writes: “For my own part I am convinced that without pains there will be no really good writing.... I am still so difficult to satisfy that I have written a long preface to the _Dramatic Works_ three times over, many parts far more than three times.”
This Introduction forms very interesting reading, giving as it does an account of her own experiences, together with many shrewd and clever remarks and criticisms. We have quoted several passages in our chapters upon the production of the plays.
The work was dedicated to Mr. Bennock, a warm friend and a patron of Art and Letters, who had first suggested the idea to the author of gathering together all her plays in this way and editing them.
On the 24th December of this same year Miss Mitford had a severe accident from an overturn of her pony-chaise in Swallowfield Park. She was thrown violently down on the hard gravel road and was much bruised and shaken although no bones were actually broken. In spite of her sufferings she indites a letter to her friend Miss Jephson in which she says: “I am writing to you at this moment with my left arm bound tightly to my body and no power of raising either foot from the ground.... The muscular power of the lower limbs seem completely gone.... So much for the bad; now for the consolation. Nobody else was hurt, nobody to blame; the two parts of me that are quite uninjured are my head and my right hand. K. is safe in bed and Sam is really everything in the way of help that a man can be, lifting me about, and directing a stupid old nurse and a giddy young maid with surprising foresight and sagacity. I need not tell you how kind everybody is; poor Lady Russell comes every day through mud and rain and wind.... Everybody comes to me, everybody writes to me, everybody sends me books.
“Mr. Bentley has done me good by giving me something to think of in writing no less than three pressing applications for a second series of _Recollections_, and, although I am forbidden anything like literary composition, and even most letter writing, yet it is something to plan and consider over. I shall (if it please God to grant me health and strength to accomplish this object) introduce several chapters on French literature, and am at this moment in full chase of all Casimir Delavigne’s ballads.”
Miss Jephson writes to a mutual friend when sending on this letter to him: “Dear Miss Mitford! She is like lavender, the sweeter the more it is bruised. How wonderful are her spirits and energy after such an accident!... I am glad she is thinking of a second series of _Recollections_. She cannot be idle; it would be death to her.”