finder, and broom-maker—whose home menagerie of ferrets, and terriers, and mongrels, do really look, as his crony, the head-keeper, can't help hinting, "fitter to find Christian hares and pheasants, than rats, and such vermin." And there is Jack Hatch—as mystic a personage in some respects as Geoffirey Crayon's Stout Gentleman—whom not to know argues oneself unknown in "Our Village."—Not know Jack Hatch? the beet cricketer in the parish, in the county, in the country Jack Hatch, who has got seven notches at one hit: Jack Hatch, who has trolled, and caught out a whole eleven:[1] Jack Hatch, who is moreover the best bowler and the best musician in the hundred—can dance a hornpipe and a minuet, sing a whole song-book, bark like a dog, mew like a cat, crow like a cock, and go through Punch from beginning to end! Not know Jack Hatch! Such ignorance is of course preposterous, and it would be equally an affectation to pretend ignorance of Aunt Martha, that most delightful of old maids; and Hannah Besit, that energetic little dairy-woman; and Lizzy, the spoiled child of the village; and the old family-servant, Mrs. Mosse, in appearanee so eminentlv "respectable" (not at all in the sense of Steerforth's Littimer); and that comely vulgarian and boisterous sportsman, Tom Hopkins; and Lucy, that wholesale coquette; and Doctor Tubb, all-accomplished barber-surgeon, with accommodations in his pocket-book for distressed man and beast; and gentle Olive Hathaway, lame and pensive, the village mantua-maker "by appointment," the sound of whose crutch subdues every rough temper, and whose fame is far-spread for begging off condemned kittens, and nursing sick ducklings, and giving her last penny to prevent a wayward urchin from taking a bird's nest. On the whole, little wonder was it that an obscure Berkshire hamlet, as Mr. Chorley says, by the magic of talent and kindly feeling, was converted into a place of resort and interest[2] for not a few of the finest spirits of the age.
"Belford Regis" transfers and enlarges the sphere of observation from a village to a market town. There are some touching sketches—as that of "The Old Emigré," and humorous ones by the dozen, such as Mrs. Tomkins, the cheesemonger; and Mrs. Hollis, the fruiterer; and
- ↑ Miss Mitford has been charged with speaking at random on her favourite theme, the cricket-field. Who but Miss Mitford, asks an authority both in literature and in field sports, ever heard of a cricket-ball being thrown five hundred yards? And the conclusion is, that ladies never can make themselves mistresses of the rules, technicalities, and character of male games. Which conclusion need not exclude those ladies, however, from taking their revenge in the thought that equally fallible are their barbarian critics, when a game is going on from the "Lady's Own Book," or some labyrinthine recreation in crotchet and Berlin wool.
- ↑ "Miss Mitford," says one of her transatlantic visitors (though 'tis twelve summers since), "is dressed a little quaintly, and as unlike as possible to the faces we have seen of her in the magazines, which have all a broad humour, bordering on coarseness. She has a pale grey, soul-lit eye, and hair as white as snow: a wintry sign that has come prematurely upon her, as like signs come upon us, while the year is yet fresh and undecayed. Her voice has a sweet, low tone, and her manner a naturalness, frankness, and affectionateness that we have so long been familiar with in their other modes of manifestation, that it would have been, indeed, a disappointment not to have found them."—Miss Sedgwick's "Letters from Abroas."
