[Afoot in England by W.H. Hudson]@TWC D-Link bookAfoot in England CHAPTER Six: By Swallowfield 4/11
I possess a copy of a very small pencil sketch made of her face by a dear old lady friend of mine, now dead, about the year 1851 or 2.
My friend had a gift for portraiture in a peculiar way.
When she saw a face that greatly interested her, in a drawing-room, on a platform, in the street, anywhere, it remained very vividly in her mind and on going home she would sketch it, and some of these sketches of well known persons are wonderfully good.
She was staying in the country with a friend who drove with her to Swallowfield to call on Miss Mitford, and on her return to her friend's house she made the little sketch, and in this tiny portrait I can see the refinement, the sweetness, the animation and charm which she undoubtedly possessed. But let me now venture to step a little outside of my own province, my small plot--a poor pedestrian's unimportant impressions of places and faces; all these p's come by accident; and this I put in parenthetically just because an editor solemnly told me a while ago that he couldn't abide and wouldn't have alliteration's artful aid in his periodical.
Let us leave the subject of what Miss Mitford was to those of her day who knew her; a thousand lovely personalities pass away every year and in a little while are no more remembered than the bright-plumaged bird that falls in the tropical forest, or the vanished orchid bloom of which some one has said that the angels in heaven can look on no more beautiful thing.
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