and the church is rich in objects of interest. Foremost among these may be indicated a black and gold monument to William Ken drick and his wife (1635), strangely ornamented by an extraordinary profusion of skulls. Whether the deceased were responsible for this motley collection of human headpieces, the inscription saith not. In the parish of St. Giles, ReadParish Regis- ing, the registers date back to 1564, and the church-wardens' accounts ters to 1518. They have in part been printed, and contain much that is interesting to the student of English manners and customs as they were three and four centuries ago. A few items, selected from the registers of various Reading parishes, will sufficiently denote the social condition of the time to justify Russell's final remark. 1615, March 14. Mr. Richard Turner, an aunciente magistrate, and a good man to the poore, was buried. 1618, Mr. Bernard Harrison, an honest man and a good magistrate, was buried. 1630, Jan. 10. wich. 1630, Jan. 13. Kathren Roose apprehended for a Joane Patey, the same. Ann Clinch, the same. 1630, Jan. 13. Symon Wilkes, gent'man, executed 1631, Aug. 11. uppon p'sompson of murder, but he denied it to death. 1633, July 24. 7 prisoners executed. 1636, Feby. 25. 5 prisoners executed. 1638, Jany. II. Sir Edward Clarke, Knight, Steward of Reading, his bowells interred in St. Marie's, his body carried to Dorchester in Oxfordshire. 1642, Nov. 10. A parliament soldier executed. 1642, Nov. 10. Three of the King's soldiers executed. 1655, Dec. 15. Cathrine Eldridge, a servant, and Mary Wellbank, a child, drowned together at the second bridge from the Beare, for want of a rail to the bridge in frosty weather. "I think," said Russell slowly and thoughtfully, "I think I'll congratulate myself on successfully contriving to be born so recently as the last half of the nineteenth century." CHAPTER X WHERE GENIUS WROUGHT ITS STORY Three Mile Cross A Father A Mother Α Three Mile Daughter. At Three Mile Cross, a small village on the turnpike road between Reading and Basingstoke, in a mean cottage of the sort usually inhabited by English farm labourers, for more than thirty years (1820-51) Mary Russell Mitford lived and worked. The largest room in this humble dwelling was not more than eight feet square; yet here were produced those masterpieces of character delineation which for nearly a century have instructed and delighted all who read the English language, and still deservedly rank among woman's highest achievements in literature. Mary Russell Mitford was born in A Father 1787 at Alresford, in Hampshire, the only child of George Mitford, who was descended from an ancient Northumberlandshire family, a graduate of Edinburgh University. As a physician Robert Southey described George Mitford as "worse than a farce"; yet he had a superficial kind of cleverness, but was without principle, incautiously speculative, and conceited of his skill as a player of whist, a game which assisted him to lose large sums of money belonging to his wife and daughter. In a few years Mitford contrived to squander the whole of his wife's fortune, amounting to about £50,000 as well as £20,000 belonging to his daughter, which she won in a State lottery by choosing the number 2224 because its digits added together made up the sum of her age ten. A Mother The mother of Mary Russell Mitford was the only surviving child of the Rev. Dr. Richard Russell, a wealthy clergyman who held the rich livings of Overton and Ash, in Hampshire, for more than sixty years, and who was moreover a scion of the great ducal family of Bedford. Mrs. Mitford was ten years older than Mr. Mitford, of an amiable disposition, and chiefly remarkakle for her blindness to the folly and selfishness of her husband, whom she permitted to waste her fortune without protest. |