Our Village | Page 6

of every dinner she goes to.
In 1806 Dr. Mitford takes his daughter, who was then about nineteen,
to the North to visit his relations; they are entertained by the
grandparents of the Trevelyans and the Swinburnes, the Ogles and the
Mitfords of the present day. They fish in Sir John Swinburne's lake,
they visit at Alnwick Castle. Miss Mitford kept her front hair in papers
till she reached Alnwick, nor was her dress discomposed though she
had travelled thirty miles. They sat down, sixty-five to dinner, which
was 'of course' (she somewhat magnificently says) entirely served on
plate. Poor Mary's pleasure is very much dashed by the sudden
disappearance of her father,--Dr. Mitford was in the habit of doing
anything he felt inclined to do at once and on the spot, quite
irrespectively of the convenience of others,--and although a party had
been arranged on purpose to meet him in the North, and his daughter
was counting on his escort to return home, (people posted in those days,
they did not take their tickets direct from Newcastle to London), Dr.
Mitford one morning leaves word that he has gone off to attend the
Reading election, where his presence was not in the least required. For
the first and apparently for the only time in her life his daughter
protests. 'Mr. Ogle is extremely offended; nothing but your immediate
return can ever excuse you to him! I IMPLORE you to return, I call
upon Mamma's sense of propriety to send you here directly. Little did I
suspect that my father, my beloved father, would desert me at this
distance from home! Every one is surprised.' Dr. Mitford was finally
persuaded to travel back to Northumberland to fetch his daughter.
The constant companionship of Dr. Mitford must have given a curious
colour to his good and upright daughter's views of life. Adoring her
father as she did, she must have soon accustomed herself to take his
fine speeches for fine actions, to accept his self-complacency in the
place of a conscience. She was a woman of warm impressions, with a
strong sense of right. But it was not within her daily experience, poor
soul, that people who did not make grand professions were ready to do

their duty all the same; nor did she always depend upon the uprightness,
the courage, the self-denial of those who made no protestations. At that
time loud talking was still the fashion, and loud living was considered
romantic. They both exist among us, but they are less admired, and
there is a different language spoken now to that of Dr. Mitford and his
school.* This must account for some of Miss Mitford's judgments of
what she calls a 'cynical' generation, to which she did little justice.
*People nowadays are more ready to laugh than to admire when they
hear the lions bray; for mewing and bleating, the taste, I fear, is on the
increase.
II.
There is one penalty people pay for being authors, which is that from
cultivating vivid impressions and mental pictures they are apt to take
fancies too seriously and to mistake them for reality. In story-telling
this is well enough, and it interferes with nobody; but in real history,
and in one's own history most of all, this faculty is apt to raise up
bogies and nightmares along one's path; and while one is fighting
imaginary demons, the good things and true are passed by unnoticed,
the best realities of life are sometimes overlooked. . . .
But after all, Mary Russell Mitford, who spent most of her time
gathering figs off thistles and making the best of her difficult
circumstances, suffered less than many people do from the influence of
imaginary things.
She was twenty-three years old when her first book of poems was
published; so we read in her letters, in which she entreats her father not
to curtail ANY of the verses addressed to him; there is no reason, she
says, except his EXTREME MODESTY why the verses should be
suppressed,--she speaks not only with the fondness of a daughter but
with the sensibility of a poet. Our young authoress is modest, although
in print; she compares herself to Crabbe (as Jane Austen might have
done), and feels 'what she supposes a farthing candle would experience
when the sun rises in all its glory.' Then comes the Publisher's bill for
59 pounds; she is quite shocked at the bill, which is really exorbitant!
In her next letter Miss Mitford reminds her father that the taxes are still
unpaid, and a correspondence follows with somebody asking for a
choice of the Doctor's pictures in payment for the taxes. The Doctor is
in London all the time, dining out and generally amusing himself.

Everybody is speculating whether Sir Francis Burdett will go