Outlines
I
MISS MITFORD
Speaking truthfully, Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings is not a good book. It neither enlarges the mind nor purifies the heart. There is nothing in it about Prime Ministers and not very much about Miss Mitford. Yet, as one is setting out to speak the truth, one must own that there are certain books which can be read without the mind and without the heart, but still with considerable enjoyment. To come to the point, the great merit of these scrapbooks, for they can scarcely be called biographies, is that they license mendacity. One cannot believe what Miss Hill says about Miss Mitford, and thus one is free to invent Miss Mitford for oneself. Not for a second do we accuse Miss Hill of telling lies. That infirmity is entirely ours. For example: “Alresford was the birth-place of one who loved nature as few have loved her, and whose writings ‘breathe the air of the hayfields and the scent of the hawthorn boughs’, and seem to waft to us ‘the sweet breezes that blow over ripened cornfields and daisied meadows’.” It is perfectly true that Miss Mitford was born at Alresford, and yet, when it is put like that, we doubt whether she was ever born at all. Indeed she was, says Miss Hill; she was
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