Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/91

Mitford was produced at Drury Lane, 9 Oct. 1828. Young played the hero, and Stanfield painted the scenery. It was acted thirty-four times, and Miss Mitford received 400l. from the theatre, besides selling eight thousand copies of the printed play. Its success caused a temporary coolness between Miss Mitford and her friend Talfourd, who fancied that his 'Ion,' which was being performed at the same time, was unduly neglected through 'Rienzi's' popularity. The piece became popular in America, where Miss Charlotte Cushman assumed the part of Claudia. Another of Miss Mitford's tragedies, 'Charles I,' was rejected by Colman because the lord chamberlain refused it his license, but in 1834, when urgently in need of money, Miss Mitford disposed of it on liberal terms to the manager of the Victoria Theatre, on the Surrey side of the Thames, and beyond the lord chamberlain's jurisdiction. Miss Mitford also wrote 'Mary Queen of Scots,' a scena in English verse, 1831, and an opera libretto, 'Sadak and Kalascade,' produced in 1835, and she contributed several dramatic scenes to the 'London Magazine' and other periodicals. Genest (Hist. of the Stage, ix. 201-2, 384-5, 454-5) finds her plays meritorious, but dull. They met with the approval of Miss Edgeworth, Joanna Baillie, and Mrs. Hemans. After passing separately through several editions, they were published collectively in 1854 in two volumes, with a valuable autobiographical introduction describing the influences under which they were written, and their adventures among the theatrical managers.

Happily, the pressing necessity of earning money led Miss Mitford to turn, as she says herself, 'from the lofty steep of tragic poetry to the every-day path of village stories.' Her inimitable series of country sketches, drawn from her own experiences at Three Mile Cross, entitled 'Our Village,' began to appear in 1819 in the 'Lady's Magazine,' a little-known periodical, whose sale was thereby increased from 250 to 2,000. She had previously offered them to Thomas Campbell for the 'New Monthly Magazine,' but he rejected them as unsuitable to the dignity of his pages. The sketches had an enormous success, and were collected in five volumes, published respectively in 1824, 1826, 1828, 1830, and 1832. Editions of the whole came out in 1843, 1848, 1852, and 1856, and selections appeared in 1870, 1879,1883,1884, 1886, 1891, and 1893 (edited by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, with illustrations by Hugh Thomson).

The book may be said to have laid the foundation of a branch of literature hitherto untried. The sketches resemble Dutch paintings in their fidelity of detail, and in the brightness and quaint humour of their style. Chorley (Authors of England) calls Mitford the Claude of English village life. The tales at once made Miss Mitford famous. Charles Lamb declared that nothing so fresh and characteristic had appeared for a long time; Christopher North spoke of their 'genuine rural spirit;' Mrs. Hemans was cheered by them in sickness; Mrs. S. C. Hall acknowledges that they suggested her own 'Sketches of Irish Character;' Mrs. Browning called Miss Mitford 'a sort of prose Crabbe in the sun;' while Harriet Martineau looked upon her as the originator of the new style of 'graphic description.' Distinguished visitors crowded to her cottage. Passing coachmen and post-boys pointed out to travellers the localities in the village described in the book, and children were named after Miss Mitford's village urchins and pet greyhounds. She was feted on her visits to the metropolis. In 1836 Mr. Kenyon introduced her to Elizabeth Barrett, afterwards Mrs. Browning, and the acquaintance speedily ripened into friendship.

Miss Mitford's popularity enabled her to command high prices for her work. Writing to Miss Mitford in 1832, Mrs. Trollope says that 'Whittaker (the publisher) told me some time ago that your name would sell anything.' In 1835 Miss Mitford remarked: 'It is one of the signs of the times that a periodical selling for three halfpence ['Chambers's Edinburgh Journal'] should engage so high-priced a writer as myself.' But her mother died on 1 Jan. 1830, and her father's increasing extravagances kept her poor. She confessed to Miss Barrett that 'although want, actual want has not come, yet fear and anxiety have never been absent.' Miss Mitford still wrote with energy, but the strain injured her style. A novel, 'Belford Regis, or Sketches of a Country Town,' viz. Reading, appeared in 1835, and, although Mrs. Browning ranked it with Miss Mitford's best work, it plainly lacks the spontaneity and charm of 'Our Village.' A second and third edition appeared respectively in 1846 and 1849. In 1837 she received a civil list pension of 100l. a year, and on 11 Dec. 1842 her father died. His heavy liabilities were met by a public subscription, which left a surplus to be added to the daughter's narrow income. 'I have not bought a bonnet, a cloak, a gown, hardly a pair of gloves, for four years' (10 Jan. 1842). In 1851 Miss Mitford removed to her last residence, a little cottage at Swallowfield, near Reading, 'placed where three roads meet'. Though her cheerfulness and industry were unabated, her health was broken by her earlier anxieties, and she was crippled