Read it through once

It was during this period, notably in 1812, that Miss Mitford must, metaphorically speaking, have begun “to feel her feet” in literary matters. The adulation of her father’s friends in London, backed up by the reviews, which were, generally, favourable to her work, were sufficient proof that she had a public and that, in time, she might hope to secure something like a regular and even handsome income from her pen. In this she was encouraged by Sir William Elford, who did all that was possible to impress upon her the necessity for studied and polished work. To this end he informed her that he was carefully saving her letters, playfully hinting that they might prove valuable some day. This may account for the “high, cold, polish” which William Harness deprecated. The hint was not lost on her and drew from her an amusing and, as events have proved, prophetic reply: “I am highly flattered, my dear Sir William, to find that you think my letters worth preserving. I keep yours as choice as the monks were wont to keep the relics of their saints; and about sixty years hence your grandson or great grandson will discover in the family archives some notice of such a collection, and will send to the grandson of my dear cousin Mary (for as I intend to die an old maid, I shall make her heiress to all my property, i.e. my MSS.) for these inestimable remains of his venerable ancestor. And then, you know, my letters will be rummaged out, and the whole correspondence be sorted and transcribed, and sent to the press, adorned with portraits, and _facsimiles_, and illustrated by lives of the authors, beginning with the register of their birth, and ending with their epitaphs. Then it will come forth into the world, and set all the men a-crowing and talking over their old nonsense (with more show of reason, however, than ordinary) about the superiority of the sex. What a fine job the transcriber of my letters will have! I hope the booksellers of those days will be liberal and allow the poor man a good price for his trouble; no one but an unraveller of state cyphers can possibly accomplish it,”—this in allusion to the occasional illegibility of her handwriting which elsewhere she described as “hieroglyphics, which the most expert expounders of manuscripts fail to decipher.”