The Argosy — page 127: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

IIo MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. So of those whose names, in art or letters, are as household words among us, have, with toil and effort, struggled up into fame, while others have glided into it almost as if it were a matter of course that they should reach it. Of this latter class is the history of Mary Russell Mitford. She stepped into celebrity as easily as she did into the figure of her first country dance in her first ball- room experiences. There were various causes for the quickness and ease with which Miss Mitford’s name became known in her day. In the first place, her parents were on terms of close intimacy with many of the most distinguished people of their time, who belonged to the aristocracy of both birth and intellect, and all of these were naturally interested in the bright, lively-witted girl, and did their utmost to bring her for- ward. Constant intercourse with such visitors at her father’s house had also sharpened prematurely, no doubt, her faculties, and given her whole character something of calmness and assurance which is not very common in youth. Besides all this, Mary Mitford certainly, like many highly-gifted girls, ripened early, and sprang at once into considerable intellectual power, though the best fruit of her talents is most decidedly that of her middle age, “ Our Village.” Mary Russell Mitford was born in 1787. Her father, Dr. Mitford, was one of the most popular men of his day in the best English society of the period. Gentlemanly manners were his birthright, coming to him from the race from which he sprang, and his genial, sunny, affectionate nature, and ready tongue made him, with these, a welcome guest in every drawing-room, and at every table. There were most grave faults in his character, as the future story of his daughter will show ; but there was a certain lovable, attractive sweetness about the man which caused these faults to be overlooked by friends, and wife and child alike. Mrs, Mitford, in many respects, widely differed from her husband; but she possessed, in common with him, those social qualities which easily win friends. Moreover, she had a calm, gentle temper, which enabled her to live far more tranquilly and happily at Dr. Mitford’s side than a woman of an anxious, restless temperament would have done. The pair were always gay, always in love with each other, always in a crowd, always full of talk, and always empty of pocket, yet always dressing and dining as if they had gold mines in their garden. From her very babyhood little Mary breathed an atmosphere of love and of wit. Her parents idolised her, for she was an only child, and a child whose sparkling face and eager busy prattle showed soon "Gomicbooks.com