Our Village | Page 8

in the spring-time of 1816. Dr. Mitford may be
impecunious and their affairs may be threadbare, but the lovely seasons
come out ever in fresh beauty and abundance. The coppices are

carpeted with primroses, with pansies and wild strawberry
blossom,--the woods are spangled with the delicate flowers of the
woodsorrel and wood anemone, the meadows enamelled with
cowslips. . . . Certainly few human beings were ever created more fit
for this present world, and more capable of admiring and enjoying its
beauties, than Miss Mitford, who only desired to be beautiful herself,
she somewhere says, to be perfectly contented.
III.
Most people's lives are divided into first, second and third volumes; and
as we read Miss Mitford's history it forms no exception to the rule. The
early enthusiastic volume is there, with its hopes and wild judgments,
its quaint old-fashioned dress and phraseology; then comes the second
volume, full of actual work and serious responsibility, with those
childish parents to provide for, whose lives, though so protracted, never
seem to reach beyond their nurseries. Miss Mitford's third volume is
retrospective; her growing infirmities are courageously endured, there
is the certainty of success well earned and well deserved; we realise her
legitimate hold upon the outer world of readers and writers, besides the
reputation which she won upon the stage by her tragedies.
The literary ladies of the early part of the century in some ways had a
very good time of it. A copy of verses, a small volume of travels, a few
tea-parties, a harp in one corner of the room, and a hat and feathers
worn rather on one side, seemed to be all that was wanted to establish a
claim to fashion and inspiration. They had footstools to rest their satin
shoes upon, they had admirers and panegyrists to their heart's content,
and above all they possessed that peculiar complacency in which (with
a few notable exceptions) our age is singularly deficient. We are
earnest, we are audacious, we are original, but we are not complacent.
THEY were dolls perhaps, and lived in dolls' houses; WE are ghosts
without houses at all; we come and go wrapped in sheets of newspaper,
holding flickering lights in our hands, paraffin lamps, by the light of
which we are seeking our proper sphere. Poor vexed spirits! We do not
belong to the old world any more! The new world is not yet ready for
us. Even Mr. Gladstone will not let us into the House of Commons; the
Geographical Society rejects us, so does the Royal Academy; and yet
who could say that any of their standards rise too high! Some one or
two are happily safe, carried by the angels of the Press to little altars

and pinnacles all their own; but the majority of hard-working,
intelligent women, 'contented with little, yet ready for more,' may they
not in moments of depression be allowed to picture to themselves what
their chances might have been had they only been born half a century
earlier?
Miss Mitford, notwithstanding all her troubles (she has been known to
say she had rather be a washerwoman than a literary lady), had
opportunities such as few women can now obtain. One is lost in
admiration at the solidity of one's grandparents' taste, when one
attempts to read the tragedies they delighted in, and yet 'Rienzi' sold
four thousand copies and was acted forty-five times; and at one time
Miss Mitford had two tragedies rehearsed upon the boards together;
one at Covent Garden and one at Drury Lane, with Charles Kemble and
Macready disputing for her work. Has not one also read similar
descriptions of the triumphs of Hannah More, or of Johanna Baillie;
cheered by enthusiastic audiences, while men shed tears.*
*Mem. Hannah More, v.i. p.124.
'Julian' was the first of Miss Mitford's acted plays. It was brought out at
Covent Garden in 1823, when she was thirty-six years old; Macready
played the principal part. 'If the play do reach the ninth night,' Miss
Mitford writes to Macready, 'it will be a very complete refutation of Mr.
Kemble's axiom that no single performer can fill the theatre; for except
our pretty Alfonso (Miss Foote) there is only Julian, one and only one.
Let him imagine how deeply we feel his exertions and his
kindness.*. . .'
*In Macready's diary we find an entry which is not over gracious.
'"Julian" acted March the 15th. Had but moderate success. The C. G.
company was no longer equal to the support of plays containing moral
characters. The authoress in her dedication to me was profuse in her
acknowledgments and compliments, but the performance made little
impression, and was soon forgotten.'
'Julian' was stopped on the eighth night, to her great disappointment,
but she is already engaged on another--on several