Digital Mitford: Letter View

Letter to Benjamin Robert HaydonBenjamin Robert Haydon | Born: 1786-01-26 in Plymouth, England. Died: 1846-06-22 in London.
Benjamin Robert Haydon was a painter educated at the Royal Academy, who was famous for contemporary, historical, classical, biblical, and mythological scenes, though tormented by financial difficulties and incarceration. He painted William Wordsworth's portrait in 1842 and painted a cameo of Keats in his epic canvas Christ's Entry into Jerusalem(1814-20). MRM was introduced to him at his London studio in the spring of 1817, and Sir William Elford was a mutual friend, and Haydon’s own acquaintances included several prominent British Romantic literary figures. He completed The Raising of Lazarus in 1823 . He wrote a diary and an autobiography, both of which were published only posthumously, and he committed suicide in 1846. George Paston's Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century (1893) contends that Mitford was asked to edit Haydon's memoir, but declined.—rnes, ebb, August 13, 1820

Edited by Anne Longmuir Anne Longmuir, Editor, Kansas State University
Anne Longmuir is Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University. Anne specializes in Victorian literature and has published more than ten articles and book chapters on Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Wilkie Collins, among others. She also co-edited Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates (Routledge 2016) with Lee Behlman (Montclair State University). Anne is currently working on a book on the gender politics of John Ruskin's economic theory, which will explore his relationship with several nineteenth-century women writers, including Mary Russell Mitford. Anne is working on Mitford's letters and Our Village for the Digital Mitford Project. .

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Digital Mitford Letters: The Mary Russell Mitford Archive

Repository: Reading Central Library. Shelf mark: qB/TU/MIT Vol. 4 Horizon No.: 1361550 ff. 410

Hands other than Mitford's noted on this manuscript:

Red crayon or thick red pencil. Probably a different hand from Mitford's that marks many of her letters, sometimes drawing diagonal lines across pages, and sometimes writing words overtop and perpendicularly across Mitford's writing.

Someone, apparently other than Mitford, perhaps cataloging letters and describing them, who left grey pencil marks and numbered her letters now in the Reading Central Library's collection. This letter numbered "13" in the top left of the first leaf.

Someone, apparently other than Mitford, perhaps cataloging letters and describing them, who left grey pencil marks on her letters now in the John Rylands Library's collection.

Someone, apparently other than Mitford, who occasionally left notes in a spidery thin hand to explain or document details in Mitford's letters in the margins of her pages, noted in the manuscripts held at Reading Central Library. This may be William HarnessWilliam Harness | Born: 1790-03-14 in Wickham, Hampshire, England. Died: 1869-11-11 in Battle, Sussex, England .
A lifelong friend of Mary Russell Mitford who knew her from their childhood in the 1790s, Harness launched the first major effort to collect and edit Mitford’s letters into a series of volumes, which was completed by his assistant, Alfred Guy Kingan L’Estrange a year after Harness’s death, and published as The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, Related in a Selection from her Letters to her Friends. This collection was originally intended to be six volumes, but was cut back to three by the publishers, to Harness’s distress. Harness and Byron were also friends from their schooling at Harrow, as Byron sympathized with Harness’s experience of a disabled foot, crushed in an accident in early childhood. Byron considered dedicating the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage to Harness, but refrained so as not to taint Harness’s reputation as he was taking orders as an Anglican curate. Harness admired and encouraged Mitford’s playwrighting in particular, and she commented that he was one of the few of her friends who thought she should prioritize the drama over prose. When William Macready was attacked in an anonymous Blackwood’s Magazine piece in 1825 for his demands and rudeness to Mitford over revisions to Rienzi, Macready assumed that Harness was the author of the anonymous piece, though in 1839 after many years of distance, Harness assured Macready in person that he was not the writer, though he may have shared word of the poor treatment his friend had endured. William Harness was the son of John Harness, M.D. and Sarah Dredge; he was baptized at Whitchurch, Hampshire on April 13, 1790. He received his B.A. in 1812 and his M.A. in 1816 from Christ’s College, Cambridge. He served as curate at Kelmeston, Hampshire (1812) and Dorking (1814-1816). He was preacher at Trinity Chapel, Conduit Street, London and minister and lecturer at St. Anne’s in Soho. He was Boyle lecturer in London (1822) and was curate at Hampstead from 1828 to 1844. In 1825, he published an eight-volume edition of Shakespeare, including a biography; his friends would later endow a prize in his name at Cambridge for the study of Shakespearean literature. He also authored numerous essays and reviews, some for the Quarterly Review. From 1844 to 1847 he was minister of Brompton Chapel in London. He undertook to raise the funds to build the church of All Saints, Knightsbridge, in the parish of St. Margaret’s Westminster, which opened in 1849, and he then became perpetual curate of that congregation. At the 1851 and 1861 censuses, he lived at 3 Hyde Park Terrace, Westminster St. Margaret, Middlesex, with his sister Mary Harness and his first cousin Jemima Harness, daughter of his uncle William. He died while on a visit to one of his former curates in Battle, Sussex. At the time of his death he living at the same address at 3 Hyde Park Terrace; he is buried in Bath.Sources: Duncan-Jones, Miss Mitford and Mr. Harness (1955); Lord Byron and His Times: —ebb, lmw
or A. G. L'EstrangeAlfred Guy Kingan L’Estrange | Born: 1832. Died: 1915.
L’Estrange was a curate working for William Harness, and assisted him with the first edition of Mary Russell Mitford’s letters until Harness’s death, at which point L’Estrange took over the editing and produced the collection of letters as the three-volume The Life of Mary Russell Mitford under his own name. [Sources: Frances Needham’s notes on Mitford’s papers and the Harness/L’Estrange edition. VIAF ] —ebb. This letter labeled on top left of first leaf: "To B. R. Haydon E." and "Fragment"

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Maintained by: Elisa E. Beshero-Bondar (eeb4 at psu.edu)

Last modified: 2024-04-18T02:35:59.0232Z

My FatherGeorge Mitford, Esq., or: George Midford | Born: . Died: .
Father of Mary Rusell Mitford, George Mitford was the son of Francis Midford, surgeon, and Jane Graham. The family name is sometimes recorded as Midford. Immediate family called him by nicknames including Drum, Tod, and Dodo. He was a member of a minor branch of the Mitfords of Mitford Castle in Northumberland. Although later sources would suggest that he was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh medical school, there is no evidence that he obtained a medical degree and he did not generally refer to himself as Dr. Mitford, preferring to style himself Esq.. In 1784, he is listed in a Hampshire directory as surgeon (medicine) of Alresford. His father and grandfather worked as apothecary-surgeons and it seems likely that he served a medical apprenticeship with family members.
He married Mary Russell on October 17, 1785 at New Alresford, Hampshire. On the marriage allegation papers, both gave their addresses as Old Alresford; they later came to live at Broad Street in New Alresford. Their only child to live to adulthood, Mary Russell Mitford, was born two years later on December 16, 1787 at New Alresford, Hampshire. He assisted Mitford's literary career by representing her interests in London and elsewhere with theater owners and publishers. He was active in Whig politics and later served as a local magistrate. He coursed greyhounds with his friend James Webb.
—lmw would have answered your very kind letter immediately had he not been expecting from day to day to go to town where he intended to have the pleasure of seeing you. He is still thinking of going tomorrow or Tuesday - but I cannot bear this appearance of neglect & shall write as a venture to be franked off from ReadingReading, Berkshire, England | Reading | Berkshire | England | 51.4542645 -0.9781302999999753 County town in Berkshire, in the Thames valley at the confluence of the Thames and the River Kennet. The town developed as a river port and in Mitford’s time served as a staging point on the Bath Road and was developing into a center of manufacturing. Mitford lived here with her parents from 1791 to 1795, on Coley Avenue in the parish of St. Mary’s and attended the Abbey School. The family returned to Reading from 1797 to about 1804, after which they relocated to Bertram House. They frequently visited Reading thereafter from their homes at nearby Bertram House, Three Mile Cross and Swallowfield. Mitford later used scenes from Reading as the basis for Belford Regis; or Sketches of a Country Town.—lmw or taken to LondonLondon, England | London | England | 51.5073509 -0.12775829999998223 Capital city of England and the United Kingdom; one the oldest cities in Western Europe. Major seaport and global trading center at the mouth of the Thames. From 1831 to 1925, the largest city in the world.—lmw by my father as may happen. — We shall be infinitely obliged to you for one puppy (only one) which shall be a joint property between Papa & me — Will you name it? I should like it to have a name of your choosing beginning with an M remember — such old coursers as we must not depart from the rule. — Mr. Webb will be enchanted with his brace — he had been unfortunate this year & never had so few puppies in his life — I should page 2
be enchanted too with your kind liberality to our friend if I were not afraid that by sending so many into this quarter you had deprived yourself of the opportunity of obliging other people I only say, what I so often think that you are a thousand times too good. — The puppies may be sent whenever you like — only write a line to give notice. — I have not seen Mr. Webb since we heard from you, but have no more doubt of his hospitality to your greyhounds than I should have of his hospitality to myself — at all events if not there they could be here — but they would be better there amongst green fields & with so many other dogs than here shut up in a close stable or lying along the side of the road. Send them certainly. The coursing season will begin in about six weeks — perhaps later — it will depend on the weather — The ground is now as hard as a rock & will require a fortnight’s soaking to make it fit for the dog’s feet. We all look forward page 3
to this coursing season, my dear Sir, with very unusual pleasure I assure you.

Before I received your touching letter I had seen your noble & manly appeal in the London MagazineThe London Magazine. 1820-1829.
An 18th-century periodical of this title (The London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer) ran from 1732 to 1785 . In 1820, John Scott launched a new series of The London Magazine emulating the style of Blackwood’s Magazine, though the two magazines soon came into heated contention. This series ran until 1829, and this is the series to which Mitford and her correspondents frequently refer in their letters. Scott’s editorship lasted until his death by duel on 27 February 1821 resulting form bitter personal conflict with the editors of Blackwood’s Magazine connected with their insulting characterization of a London Cockney School. After Scott’s death, William Hazlitt took up editing the magazine with the April 1821 issue.—ebb, lmw[2] Reference to Haydon's recent article On the Relative Encouragement of Sculpture and of Painting in England in London Magazine August 1820, vol. 2, no. 8. pp. 207-9 . In the article, Haydon makes the case for the public purchase of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem—aol & wondered how any one with a guinea in his purse & a heart of flesh in his bosom could resist such a statement.—I am not however so much surprised at the failure of the subscription. Vanity I am afraid is the soul of English patronage — & that inimitable picture has perhaps a better chance of being purchased for the éclat of the thing than of being bestowed upon a church in the unostentatious manner you proposed — It will certainly be bought I am quite sure of that — probably by some parvenu who will like it the better for costing a large sum. I cannot think why the KingGeorge Augustus Frederick , King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Prince Regent, or: Prince Regent | Born: 1762-08-12 in St James's Palace, London, England. Died: 1830-06-26 in Windsor Castle, London, England.
King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and King of Hanover. House of Hanover. Reigned as Prince Regent during the long final illness of his father from 1811 to 1820. Formerly Prince of Wales and a supporter of the Foxite Whigs. He commissioned the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and supervised the large-scale remodeling of Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.—ebb, lmw
does not purchase that & popularity at a stroke He could do nothing half so wise — Have the Mulgraves no personal interest with him? Has the subject been hinted to him? Forgive me if these questions seem impertinent page 4
they proceed from an interest too strong to be repressed. — It is indeed a comfort my dear Sir that that divine Image should so strong a possession of your soul — Nothing but that could have sustained you through such a suspense & agitation as you have suffered — Do you intend the face in the small picture to be an exact resemblance of the Christ in your Triumphal Entrance Certainly the “Sin no more” is the very expression he ought to have — but how difficult to catch! You will do it though I am sure? — In the mean time pray take care of your health & your eyes — strong excitement is not good for you. Pray take care.