English Novelist

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6626, 12 August 1931, Page 10

English Novelist

Who: MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. Where: England. When: Eighteenth to nineteenth centuries. Why famous: An English novelist and dramatist, best known for her book, “Our Village,” a scries oi sketches based upon scenes and characters known intimately to the author. As a child in the old-world village oi Alfrestore, Hampshire, she combined an extravagant love of boisterous play with a contrasting love of-- reading. Miss Mitford related how her father would support her on the dinner table, at the age of three, and induce her to show off ner accomplishments to guests “who admired ail the more, because, a small puny child, looking far younger than I really was, nicely dressed, as only children generally are, and gifted witn an affluence of curls, i might have passed for the twin sister of my own great doll.” : Later circumstances were less happy. For Dr Mitford, the eccentric physician father, developed certain bad habits, so that the family fortunes were scattered. For some time they moved about; were now in the south counties, now m dingy rooms in London, finally in a pleasant house at Reading after there nad been an unexpected replenishment of the family funds. Vet that money, too, the doctor squandered; hence for many years his talented daughter worked on under the stress of poverty. At last she received a civil list pension which somewhat lightened her burden. Yet Miss Mitford was all devotion to this father, who does not appear to have deserved the care and affection which she lavished upon him. While she wrote poems which are faintly reminiscent of Scott dr Coleridge and several plays which were produced, it is for “Our Village” that Miss . Mitford is remembered. Many link it with Mrs Gaskeil’fc “Cranford.” Even in a modern, sophisticated age, “Our Village” delights oy its freshness, its wit and its pathos, deftly mingled with true literary skill.