"Our Miss Austen": Jane Austen and Mary Russell Mitford--A New Appraisal

Today, Mitford's name is familiar to most readers of Austen through two, now infamous, quotations: her mother's description of the young Jane Austen as "the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers" and a friend's more contemporary image of her as a "perpendicular, precise, taciturn . . . poker of whom every one is afraid" (L'Estrange 1: 305-06). Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers; and a friend of mine, who visits her now, says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, taciturn piece of "single blessedness" that ever existed, and that, till 'Pride and Prejudice' showed what a precious gem was hidden in that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or a fire-screen, or any other thin upright piece of wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. (Ashe, in fact, was Mrs. Mitford's childhood home.) Dodds concludes that "Jane Austen at twenty-one was evidently defying the gossips, and they took their revenge on her" (189).1 Bearing in mind the evident vivacity these letters display, it seems at least possible that Mrs. Mitford's comment may have contained an element of truth. A number of Austen's biographers have therefore questioned AustenLeigh's confident dismissal by pointing out that Mrs. Mitford did not move far away and, having grown up in the area, may well have had friends there who passed on local news and gossip (Le Faye, Family Record 46-47).