Dear Mr. Fields: My silence has been caused by severe illness. For more than a twelvemonth my health has been so impaired as to leave me a very poor creature, almost incapable of any exertion at all times, and frequently suffering severe pain besides. So that I have to entreat the friends who are good enough to care for me never to be displeased if a long time elapses between my letters. My correspondents being so numerous, and I myself so utterly alone, without any one even to fold or seal a letter, that the very physical part of the task sometimes becomes more fatiguing than I can bear. I am not, generally speaking, confined to my room, or even to the house; but the loss of power is so great that after the short drive or shorter walk which my very skilful medical adviser orders, I am too often compelled to retire immediately to bed, and I have not once been well enough to go out of an evening during the year 1848. Before its expiration I shall have completed my sixty-first year; but it is not age that has so prostrated me, but the hard work and increasing anxiety of thirty years of authorship, during which my poor labors were all that my dear father and mother had to look to, besides which for the greater part of that time I was constantly called upon to attend to the sick-bed, first of one aged parent and then of another. Few women could stand this, and I have only to be intensely thankful that the power of exertion did not fail until the necessity of such exertion was removed. Now my poor life is (beyond mere friendly feeling) of value to no one. I have, too, many alleviations,—in the general kindness of the neighborhood, the particular goodness of many admirable friends, the affectionate attention of a most attached and intelligent old servant, and above all in my continued interest in books and delight in reading. I love poetry and people as well at sixty as I did at sixteen, and can never be sufficiently grateful to God for having permitted me to retain the two joy-giving faculties of admiration and sympathy, by which we are enabled to escape from the consciousness of our own infirmities into the great works of all ages and the joys and sorrows of our immediate friends. Among the books which I have been reading with the greatest interest is the Life of Dr. Channing, and I can hardly tell you the glow of gratification with which I found my own name mentioned, as one of the writers in whose works that great man had taken pleasure. The approbation of Dr. Channing is something worth toiling for. I know no individual suffrage that could have given me more delight. Besides this selfish pleasure and the intense interest with which I followed that admirable thinker through the whole course of his pure and blameless life, I have derived another and a different satisfaction from that work,—I mean from its reception in England. I know nothing that shows a greater improvement in liberality in the least liberal part of the English public, a greater sweeping away of prejudice whether national or sectarian, than the manner in which even the High Church and Tory party have spoken of Dr. Channing. They really seem to cast aside their usual intolerance in his case, and to look upon a Unitarian with feelings of Christian fellowship. God grant that this spirit may continue! Is American literature rich in native biography? Just have the goodness to mention to me any lives of Americans, whether illustrious or not, that are graphic, minute, and outspoken. I delight in French memoirs and English lives, especially such as are either autobiography or made out by diaries and letters; and America, a young country with manners as picturesque and unhackneyed as the scenery, ought to be full of such works. We have had two volumes lately that will interest your countrymen: Mr. Milnes's Life of John Keats, that wonderful youth whose early death was, I think, the greatest loss that English poetry ever experienced. Some of the letters are very striking as developments on character, and the richness of diction in the poetical fragments is exquisite. Mrs. Browning is still at Florence with her husband. She sees more Americans than English.
Books here are sadly depreciated. Mr. Dyce's admirable edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, brought out two years ago at £6 12s. is now offered at £2 17s.
Adieu, dear Mr. Fields; forgive my seeming neglect, and believe me always most faithfully yours,
M.R. MITFORD.
(No date, 1849.)
Dear Mr. Fields: I cannot tell you how vexed I am at this mistake about letters, which must have made you think me careless of your correspondence and ungrateful for your kindness. The same thing has happened to me before, I may say often, with American letters,—with Professor Norton, Mrs. Sigourney, the Sedgwicks,—in short I always feel an insecurity in writing to America which I never experience in corresponding with friends on the Continent; France, Germany, Italy, even Poland and Russia, are comparatively certain. Whether it be the agents in London who lose letters, or some fault in the post-office, I cannot tell, but I have twenty times experienced the vexation, and it casts a certain discouragement over one's communications. However, I hope that this letter will reach you, and that you will be assured that the fault does not lie at my door.
During the last year or two my health has been declining much, and I am just now thinking of taking a journey to Paris. My friend, Henry Chorley of the Athenaeum, the first musical critic of Europe, is going thither next month to assist at the production of Meyerbeer's Prophète at the French Opera, and another friend will accompany me and my little maid to take care of us; so that I have just hopes that the excursion, erenow much facilitated by railways, may do me good. I have always been a great admirer of the great Emperor, and to see the heir of Napoleon at the Elysée seems to me a real piece of poetical justice. I know many of his friends in England, who all speak of him most highly; one of them says, "He is the very impersonation of calm and simple honesty." I hope the nation will be true to him, but, as Mirabeau says. "there are no such words as 'jamais' or 'toujours' with the French public."
10th of June, 1849.
I have been waiting to answer your most kind and interesting letter, dear Mr. Fields, until I could announce to you a publication that Mr. Colburn has been meditating and pressing me for, but which, chiefly I believe from my own fault in not going to town, and not liking to give him or Mr. Shoberl the trouble of coming here, is now probably adjourned to the autumn. The fact is that I have been and still am very poorly. We are stricken in our vanities, and the only things that I recollect having ever been immoderately proud of—my garden and my personal activity—have both now turned into causes of shame and pity; the garden, declining from one bad gardener to worse, has become a ploughed field,—and I myself, from a severe attack of rheumatism, and since then a terrible fright in a pony-chaise, am now little better than a cripple. However, if there be punishment here below, there are likewise consolations,—everybody is kind to me; I retain the vivid love of reading, which is one of the highest pleasures of life; and very interesting persons come to see me sometimes, from both sides of the water,—witness, dear Mr. Fields, our present correspondence. One such person arrived yesterday in the shape of Doctor ——, who has been working musical miracles in Scotland, (think of making singing teachers of children of four or five years of age!) and is now on his way to Paris, where, having been during seven years one of the editors of the National, he will find most of his colleagues of the newspaper filling the highest posts in the government. What is the American opinion of that great experiment; or, rather, what is yours? I wish it success from the bottom of my heart, but I am a, little afraid, from their total want of political economy (we have not a school-girl so ignorant of the commonest principles of demand and supply as the whole of the countrymen of Turgot from the executive government downwards), and from a certain warlike tendency which seems to me to pierce through all their declarations of peace. We hear the flourish of trumpets through all the fine phrases of the orators, and indeed it is difficult to imagine what they will do with their soi-disant ouvriers,—workmen who have lost the habit of labor,—unless they make soldiers of them. In the mean time some friends of mine are about to accompany your countryman Mr. Elihu Burritt as a deputation, and doubtless M. de Lamartine will give them as eloquent an answer as heart can desire,—no doubt he will keep peace if he can,—but the government have certainly not hitherto shown firmness or vigor enough to make one rely upon them, if the question becomes pressing and personal. In Italy matters seem to be very promising. We have here one of the Silvio Pellico exiles,—Count Carpinetta,—whose story is quite a romance. He is just returned from Turin, where he was received with enthusiasm, might have been returned as Deputy for two places, and did recover some of his property, confiscated years ago by the Austrians. It does one's heart good to see a piece of poetical justice transferred to real life. Apropos of public events, all London is talking of the prediction of an old theological writer of the name of Fleming, who in or about the year 1700 prophesied a revolution in France in 1794 (only one year wrong), and the fall of papacy in 1848 at all events.
Ever yours, M.R.M.