Chapter IV (1)

1807-1812.

In the spring of 1807 the long-sought-for permission to return
to England was at last obtained. As I have no intention of
writing a Memoir, but record only the events of my Mother’s
life so far as is necessary for making these _Remains_
intelligible, I shall at once proceed with my selection of
these. They will for the most part, if I mistake not, with
only here and there a brief elucidation, sufficiently explain
themselves.

* * * * *

_June 7, 1807._—There seems to be a physical as well as a moral effect in the return of the season, the month, the day, the hour on which a beloved object has been torn away from us. We know that many disorders of the body are periodical. Why may not the violent pains of the mind bear some analogy to them—those tempests of sorrow which tear up every pleasure by the root, and sweep away the very soil whence new ones might have sprung, leaving nothing but the bare old rock behind?

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Dublin, Dec., 1807.

I send your map, though late, and _Corinne_. Do not you think d’Erfeuil drawn with uncommon skill, and in point of _character_, the best of the book? It is a slight sketch, but, as far as it goes, perfect. Oswald and Corinne are ‘beauteous monsters’ like Darwin’s rose-nightingale; and are made to exhibit qualities, to commit actions, not merely opposite and unnatural, but contradictory. No man could unite such weakness and such energy; and, with such superabundance of the former, he would never attach any woman whatever. No woman could be pedantic, disserting, ambitious of the public applause of the mob, and emulating the tricks of a mountebank, with the character and feelings she is represented to possess, wherever her affections are engaged. Besides, I am provoked all through with the absolute necessity of changing their dress, and giving him the petticoat and her the Scotch plaid.

* * * * *

Among my Mother’s papers I have found the notes which she took
of more than one of Kirwan’s sermons; but immense, and, I
believe, deserved, as was his reputation as a preacher,—I do
not say as a divine, for his statements of Christian doctrine
are most inadequate and defective—these, like everything of
his which has seen the light of day since his death, are quite
insufficient to explain to the reader the marvellous effects
which his eloquence produced on those who actually heard it.
More interesting than these is the following sketch of his
character as a sacred orator. It leaves on me the impression of
having been prepared for publication; but I am ignorant whether
it has been published or not. It may be needful to observe that
the posthumous volume of Kirwan’s sermons was not published
till many years later, in 1814. I do not know when this sketch
was written; but as Kirwan had died during the writer’s absence
in France, in 1805, I think very probably soon after her return
to Ireland, and I place it here.

Kirwan, in the language of Grattan, ‘disturbed the repose of the pulpit, and discovered a mine of charity in the breasts of his countrymen with which the owners were unacquainted.’ He taught the passions to move at the command of Virtue; his eloquence could with equal facility melt and subdue, or animate and inflame, terrify the libertine in his mid career, or relax the purse-strings of the usurer. Time seemed concentrated to a point while his lightnings flashed or his thunders rolled; and when he ended, a sensation of regret and privation preceded the vivid and animating glow of high and just applause. In his charitable discourses (most difficult branch of pulpit oratory), he never failed to discover some untrodden path; and the tears and gifts of his hearers bore equal testimony to his power. Year after year has he pleaded the cause of the same institutions with increasing effect, and still surprised his audience with new motives for their liberality. He had the art of discovering analogies new but not fantastical, unexpected but not overstrained, between the passing events of the times and the necessary subjects of his discourse; and from these events he often deduced arguments the most forcible, or imaged scenes the most pathetic. When his thoughts were condensed, their brevity was never affected, and, when most expanded, lost none of their force; for, if he repeated the same idea in hope to impress it more firmly on a popular audience, he dressed it in such vivid colours and such breadth of light and shade, that his repetition had all the charm of novelty. His hearers were often reminded of Burke, often of Grattan; for, though he disdained all imitation, apparent similarity to great models must arise from variety of excellence. His eloquence appeared like inspiration, yet his sermons were not, in fact, extemporaneous. It is said that he wrote them, like Pope, on scraps of paper, committed them to memory, and then—for Genius is ever careless of her Sybil leaves—condemned them to the flames. Perhaps he feared their being less admired when read in the closet than from the pulpit. Was this an excess of modesty, or of vanity? Whatever may have been the cause, deeply is the effect regretted by all his hearers, and great the loss to the morals and literature of his country.

I have seldom seen him in mixed society. He was serious, silent, and reserved; and, when he did speak, his remarks were occasionally tinctured with somewhat of sharpness and severity. The affection of his amiable wife, and his habit, when absent, of writing to her daily, give a most favourable impression of his domestic character.

* * * * *

Sir Francis Hutchinson, of whose virtues the following lines
contain a slight record, was an uncle of my father’s by
marriage. He died full of years and full of good works, at the
close of the year 1807. The death of his wife, to which there
will be found references a little further on, was only divided
from his by about three months.

_Dec. 1807._—Lines on the Death of Sir Francis Hutchinson:—

Thy useful labours, Hutchinson, are o’er,
And heaven has gained one kindred spirit more.
Wise, cheerful, pious, active, and humane,
Acknowledged lord of learning’s wide domain,
Thy path was graced with all that blesses life.
Cheered and illumined by a tender wife;
Honour was thine, health, virtue, length of days,
And thine the soul whose undiminished rays,
Bright to the last, with living lustre burned,
Then to the Fountain of all light returned.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Hounslow, March 6, 1808.

After you left me, I passed Hounslow Heath in a state of moderate fear and alert disquietude. I will tell you, because it will give ease to your mind, that I am at this moment less alarmed and distressed at your absence than I was before it really began. I would not say this perhaps, if you were not what you are, as I might apprehend that it would make you less sensitive to my fears and sorrows on another occasion; but such apprehensions on my part would be as mean as ungrateful.

On Hounslow Heath I made an address _improvviso_ to a gander. You say I have the power _d’improvvisare_, and I thought I could not make my first essay to a less formidable object, but one whom I had _in fact_ mistaken for a highway robber. I imitated the style of some modern sonneteers, with what success you will tell me.

TO A GANDER ON HOUNSLOW HEATH.

Poor Gander, on this wide and lonely waste,
Patient of ill, and hopeless of all good,
Thou seek’st with toilsome industry thy food,
Hardly obtained, and bitter to the taste.
Yet here, thou careworn fowl, thy lot is cast,
By selfish pride and callous wealth debarred
From all the comforts of the farmer’s yard,
Vile yard, by gates and bolts and bars disgraced!
While distant yet, thy mild and drooping form
Like some bold robber to these eyes appeared;
My purse prepared, I watched the coming storm,
And much I trembled, Gander, much I feared:
From fools exalted in a chaise and pair
Such insults virtuous poverty must bear.

I own that a ludicrous imitation of the style I have chosen, seems _now_ like giving a blow to a man who is down; or, _they_ might say, my blow is the Ass’s kick to the expiring Lion; for the whining pity for things not pitiable, the contempt and hatred of all who are comfortable as to this world’s goods, and of all institutions calculated to keep them so, as well as addresses to frogs, fleas, donkeys, and spiders, are equally out of fashion.

I have been reading _Cymbeline_, and find five pages of admiring criticism on the song, ‘Hark, hark, the lark at heaven’s gate sings.’ Pray read it, and then tell me whether you do not agree with me in thinking Shakespeare wrote it to ridicule some compositions of the time, now forgotten; as he often has done in other pieces, particularly as it is introduced with praise by his fool, Cloten. The language is so forced and unnatural, the imagery so far-fetched and overstrained, the grammar so bad, and the sacrifice of sense to rhyme so evident, that I cannot view it in any other light, and am surprised it has not been so considered. You see how I am obliged to keep thought at bay by every help I can pick up.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

London, March 10, 1808.

Your kind letter found me safely deposited in London with my babes. A heavy cold, in consequence of travelling through roads dug out of snow, combined with other circumstances to delay my answer. We set out in the softest, finest weather possible; and the same day our journey began, the snow began also, and locked us up in a small and solitary inn in the wildest part of Wales during four days, which, however, I passed very pleasantly. I _need_ not explain this to you, and to many I _could_ not explain it; for I assure you the excess of pity which has been lavished on my husband and me, for having been four days wholly dependant on each other’s society for amusement, has raised in me many an inward smile, as being (while intended for politeness) the very essence of rudeness. ‘Dear me, so you were four days in that terrible way. How you must have suffered from _ennui_, &c. &c.’ In vain I tell people that I am not subject to _ennui_, &c. &c.; they will continue to pity, till I am more tired _of them_ than they could be of retirement.

Your idea of the motive for writing _The Butterfly’s Ball_ is so ingenious, one inclines to suppose it just. My dread of some insects was long troublesome to myself and others. Your favourites, the bees, formerly excited in me a degree of terror and disgust never entirely removed till I was once or twice stung. Many would say this was a strange method of cure, but _you_ know enough of imagination to feel the advantage of correcting her caricatures by comparison with reality. My children, on the contrary, are pleased with everything that has life and motion; and I find some exertion necessary, when they insist on my admiring the beauties of a huge beetle or the labours of an enormous spider.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

London, March 15, 1808.

I am just returned from performing the most solemn act of our religion, which, as you know, I had much too long deferred. As I feared, those thoughts I wished to silence _would_ arise, and those tears which ought to have proceeded from devotion, sprung, in fact, from recollections of my lost darling. I never saw a stronger proof that London is a religious town, than in the numbers and the respectful awe of those who remained to-day to receive. This, you know, was a common Sunday, no festival, no charity sermon, no good singing, no popular preacher, and the weather was intolerably cold; yet I dare say more than a hundred stayed in this private chapel; and these persons, of whom a great part were young _men_ and women, and whose dress announced at the least opulence. _More_ solemnity and attention, both in administering and receiving, I have never seen. What a contrast to the manners we have left, where no one ever thought of giving more to Heaven than _les restes du diable_.

I was so low last night, yet so unwilling and unfit for company, that I persuaded Mrs. Arabin to go to Walker’s Orrery and lecture. It is very interesting, but I must go again before I find it very improving. However, something remains; and at all events, it is equal (from the feelings it inspires) to the finest sermon of Blair or Porteus. I was much better all night from having given my mind this magnificent subject for awe, wonder, and self-abasement. The fulness of the pit and gallery gave a strong proof of the knowledge disseminated in the middle classes. Women who, from their appearance, you would think never turned their thoughts beyond their kitchen or laundry, were there, numerous and attentive listeners. I think if I had a female to educate of a scientific turn, I should lead her to astronomy in preference to the more fashionable studies of botany, chemistry, &c. It elevates the mind much more, and it is less easy, I should imagine, in that science to dazzle the multitude with a little knowledge than in most others; and it seems more like a commencement of those floods of knowledge we shall gain in another existence, than anything relating to the material world, which can be learned here.

TO THE SAME.

London, March 17, 1808.

I have just seen Lady ——, who is, as usual, entertaining. She exercised some of her powers on me. First, ‘London is too dear for anybody to live in,’ leaving me to draw my own conclusions how I could exist, if she found it so. Next, a little quizzing of the old-womanish style of my dress, _through_ Mrs. ——’s, which she described as exactly what I wore, and then said she was always dressed like a person of a hundred. Next, a discovery that —— (though _en gros_, she says they are both beautiful) is very like the print of my grandfather in Lord Chesterfield’s _Letters_. This, to be sure, I should be glad of. She pressed me much to go there continually to dinner, while you were away; and said, with tears in her eyes, that ‘her heart was once _all_ my own.’ But the knowledge of what she has said of me appeared too plainly, I fear, in the total insensibility with which I received this declaration; I promised, however, to go sometimes in the evening. People think I have lost my memory, because I do not appear to remember what I do not think they desire I should. You must not allow me, even if hereafter I am so inclined, to renew my intimacy with Lady ——, for her conversation is of the kind which always leaves little stings; and she chooses, I know not why, always to try and lower all those I esteem and love, or whom she thinks I esteem and love; while my happiness depends almost entirely on raising them. Those constant complaints of her poverty, intended to prove to others by the Rule of Three that they are _paupers_, may perhaps help to keep one at a distance. I do not allow that this flows from any false shame one would have of being _poor_, if it was really the case. But it is a rule in polished society not to remind one of being ugly, or old, or poor, or low born; and though one would not blush at any of these circumstances, one thinks oneself not treated with sufficient respect, when they are constantly hinted at as having fallen to one’s lot.

Mrs. —— dined with me on Wednesday. She _likes_ me for being attentive to her; but she _respects_ Lady —— for being what she calls ‘too much engrossed with the great world to take any notice of such an old woman, &c. &c.’ If one had no higher motive than standing well in the opinion of the old and retired, one would treat them with _hauteur_ and neglect; for except a Lady Hutchinson and one or two more, they all respect you for it.

TO THE SAME.

London, March 18, 1808.

I have this instant heard of Lady Hutchinson’s illness. I did not think I could have fretted so much about anyone out of my own circle of _possessed_ treasures. Her conversation, her letters, above all, the silent lesson of her life, are inestimable, and can ill be spared. She is the only person I have associated with for many years from whose society I always feel better and wiser. Many others are so superior to myself that they _might_ have that effect, but it is only with her I am _sensible_ of it. Perhaps she is already happy, has seen my Frederick, knows everything I am now saying, and smiles at the vanity and shortsightedness of a mortal, whose faults may now be all laid open to her, stript of that veil with which we naturally seek to conceal them from those we respect and love. I think _that_ a painful reflection on losing a friend. She will, however, see that I loved her much. My eyes fill so fast that I can hardly see what I am writing; but at the same time, without any painful emotion that is not more than counterbalanced by the consoling and elevating thoughts with which the close of such a life is contemplated. I begin to think that she left us on the night before last. This is superstition, because I had a splendid vision on that night; but why may she not have been allowed for a moment to undraw the curtains of some of our future habitations? My dream was merely that I saw a prospect before me of such exquisite beauty as this earth owns not, in which was united the softness of moonlight with the splendour of sunshine, and _shaded_, if I may so express it, with different degrees of golden brightness.

TO THE SAME.

March 19, 1808.

Your conversation or your letters alone animate my existence enough to prevent me from fixing my eyes steadily on the misfortune from which I date my second life, as different, certainly, from the former, as two separate modes of being. Why cannot I interest myself in what interests so many wiser and better people? I know not, and I feel I cannot walk in their path. _Là-haut, là-haut_—if I can but follow the bright track which may conduct me thither, little does it signify how devious or how absurd my steps appear in the eyes of mortals. I awakened this morning with an impression of _him_ as powerful as any I felt in the beginnings of that melancholy tranquillity which followed my first distress, and it has accompanied me all day. I shall, however, struggle to divert my mind from it, and will send for some musical person in a day or two, not, like Saul, to drive away the evil spirit, but to detach my thoughts from the angelic spirit that hovers about them.

I have been very attentive to Mrs. ——. Poor woman! her old age is but melancholy. Too unsteady to fix in a place where she had friends, or indeed in any place—not _deeply_ attached to any one, finding no pleasure in books, in intellectual conversation, nor in acts of charity, she can think of nothing but self, and at eighty, what a melancholy prospect; indeed, at what age is it not so? I have been obliged _to rest from her_ (as poor Breteuil called it) to-day. Talking much, without going deeper than the mere dust of the earth, but just scratching the surface, fatigues me more than labour or application. I think people are not sufficiently pitied, who, with a taste for intellectual pleasures, are married to mere _materialists_, if you will allow me to use the word in a new sense. Everyone pities those who marry a person extremely disagreeable in externals, and surely the other misfortune is far greater, as minds come into contact at every moment of existence; and yet the world always think and talk of it as a kind of jest, when people are greatly mismatched as to understanding. I reproach myself for having done so a thousand times.

TO LADY HUTCHINSON.

London, March 19, 1808.

I shall not attempt to tell you, my dear Lady Hutchinson, with what pleasure I heard to-day that you were in progress of recovery. Your illness was only made known to me yesterday, and indeed my feelings were more proportioned to my quick sense of your perfections, and of your kindness to me and mine, than to the date of our intimacy. For our sakes, and for the sake of the many to whom you are dear, and who benefit by your example, your influence, and your protection, apply, I beseech you, a little of your prudence to the case of yourself—the only point in which I think it fails.

I think Mrs. ——’s bearing with so much temper the disappointment of not going to a birth-night ball, when ready dressed, as you mention, shows she is superior to at least half the petty subjects of fretting which diminish female happiness. Really I have seen more peevishness wasted on the disappointments about public places, during the short time that mine was a dissipated life, than was excited by any other cause, and you know Hayley has chosen a similar mishap as one of the most severe trials of his heroine. However, I am sorry she had the opportunity of this ‘Triumph of Temper,’ and think her husband deserved a curtain lecture, if he did not exert himself to the utmost to prevent it.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

London, March 26, 1808.

As this was a day of low spirits and indisposition, I indulged myself with a novel, and one fell into my hands which I beg you will read, if in any country town you are compelled to such an amusement. It is called _The Hungarian Brothers_, and is written by Miss Porter. Nothing, perhaps, shows the superiority of English literature more than our novels. This is really almost equal to any of Mad. Cottin’s, which make such a noise in France, yet is lost here in the crowd of others, _as_ excellent in principle, taste, and feeling. It describes what few novelists have touched on, the closing scene of a valuable and beloved _old woman_. Alas! why have you men made this almost a term of reproach? It is _very_ ungrateful. Mrs. Arabin sent it to me when I asked _au hazard for a book_. You know how I plague people sometimes in that way. This, however, quieted me a whole morning.

... But how foolish these weak, faint flashes of ambition and cupidity in my mind. After _what I have seen_, I am surprised such thoughts can ever rise in a mind so constantly aware of the fragility of every earthly good. Certainly I do not limit the power Heaven has over our hearts; but I think when I forget the angel whose loss first made me sensible of this plain and evident truth, or cease to lament him, it will prove, not that I am consoled, but that some decay has taken place in my feelings and faculties. Till then—

‘Each lovely scene must him restore,
For him the tears he duly shed,
_Beloved_, till life can charm no more,
And _mourned_, till Pity’s self be dead.’

You know I have no weak, vain pride in being inconsolable; on the contrary, no sooner did anything divert my thoughts, than I adopted and cherished it. Neither do I profess at all moments to feel the wound, although I always feel its general effects on my mind. I need not apologize for the last page, you well know I cannot love you as I do without speaking to you of what lies nearest my heart, my master passion.

What you say of Lady Hutchinson not feeling that confidence which is so often remarked in those far her inferiors in piety and virtue, does not surprise me. We do not expect that _any one_ temporal reward should be uniformly extended to the good, and certainly that of a happy exit appears to be the greatest of all. But I am sure, ‘he that goeth on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall _doubtless_ come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him.’ We know that the Author and Finisher of our faith was not exempt from mortal pains, as appears by His pathetic exclamation; and, therefore, I am astonished that so many divines dwell on the certainty that the righteous will be distinguished by the serenity of their closing scene.

TO THE SAME.

London, April 4, 1808.

I sat yesterday at Mrs. Dawson’s between Baron Montalembert and a young man about two and twenty, who, hearing me speak French fluently to my neighbour who knew not English, and seeing I was applied to on Continental matters, was suddenly seized with such a desire to dazzle and enchant me from the idea that I was a foreigner or professed traveller, as was very amusing to everybody. He began immediately to talk French, to say he would go to Paris the hour there was a peace, to sigh over the charms of archduchesses and the fascinating manners of Poles, to call foreign princes by their names—the Radziwills, the Mecklenburgs—to say what pleasant houses they kept, and to repeat such French _bon-mots_ as are in every collection of anecdotes, at the same time trying to talk over such parts of Germany as I only had seen, and this not in a whisper, but so as to preclude the conversation of others. Mrs. D. says it was a _Continental fit_, assumed entirely for poor me.

By the bye, I saw a curious instance of the sameness of French character in a _marchande de toilette_ whom Miss A. employs. She came from a provincial town, has been fifteen years out of France, and yet is precisely a second-hand inferior Mad. Canot. After Miss A. had given her three guineas for two little quizzical things, bought at one of the worst shops in the Palais Royal for a _petit écu_, she packed up, saying, ‘_Pour moi je serai toujours pauvre, car je déteste les gains excessifs. Je ne puis pas souffrir les grands profits._’

Now I am wound up for letter-writing, I am going to _compose_ one to Mrs. ——. You know, some letters _we write_; some _write themselves_ (as ours to each other); and others _we compose_. Thank heaven, there are none which _we invent_, though I fear this last branch is in several hands.

TO THE SAME.

London, April 6, 1808.

I have read Mrs. Grant’s _Letters_,[44] and am charmed with them, but they were very unfit for me, as we were both wounded in the same vital part. I am now certain that my wound will never close, though it only throbs and pains at intervals. But every agitation revives in me the sense of my loss; even those of a pleasurable kind. I am like a man who bears in his breast the weapon which has wounded him, and who, when quite still, does not always feel it, but the least movement makes it a torment. I think if I could have seen my angel’s vivid smile to-day it would have calmed all my anxiety. He was certainly sent to give me an idea of celestial happiness. There is a source of bitterness in my love for you; for one of us must survive the other; but I used to think with a certain satisfaction of _his_ closing my eyes and living _happily_ afterwards, which I can scarcely hope for you. Then ‘Hope waits upon the flowery prime,’ and _that_ which we think we shall see improving for years acquires almost a kind of immortality in our eyes. I give up all idea of being more consoled than I am, though I will not oppose the designs of Providence; but as my feelings interfere with no duty, and assist in giving me that indifference we ought to have for the pomps, and vanities, and follies of the world, I rather think it would be wrong to try and repress what I know has made me less faulty than I am by nature. When our Saviour said ‘Weep not’ (which is the text I most often recollect) to the widow who had lost her son, He intended to restore him to her once more in this life, as He afterwards did. Besides, I cannot possibly in any way hope you will never be absent from me; and I expected to have enjoyed his constant company and constant happiness for ten long years, of which only four and a half would have now expired. Adieu! I know I grieve you a little; but I trust it does your mind no injury to recall it now and then to what it is useful sometimes to think on; and I prefer your feeling a momentary pang, to the least chance of your forgetting him, which I should think a faint shadow of losing him again.

* * * * *

_April, 1808._—On receiving Lady Hutchinson’s watch, after her decease:—

This watch, uncouth to modern eyes,
My care shall rescue from neglect;
Its sculpture rude, its antique size,
Diminish nought my fond respect.

It marked her well-divided hours,
The faithful friend, the matchless wife;
Whose gifted mind, of various powers,
In virtue found the charm of life.

Oft has it seen her summer day,
When nature blushed with brightest glow,
In calm attendance pass away
On heirs of sickness, want, and woe.

Oft has it seen her winter eve
Glide on, absorbed in tender cares,
How best their sorrows to relieve,
Their garments while her hand prepares.

Oft has it pointed to the time
For grateful praise and humble prayer,
Reclaiming vice, preventing crime,
And softening tearless pale despair.

Undazzled, she beheld the blaze
Of earthly pleasure, earthly pride;
’Twas thus she numbered well her days,
To wisdom thus her heart applied.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

Bognor, Aug. 25, 1808.

I continue my early rising, and have overcome my reluctance to visit _sick_ poor, which I felt to a great degree of weakness; and as the command is positive, ‘Visit the sick,’ no Christian should indulge it.

As to society, the two B——s do not afford me much resource. The maiden lady is very good, and sees clearly all that is _very_ near her; but her circumference is so small, that conversation dies for want of aliment. The married one is too much studied to bear a close inspection, stage effect being her principal object; therefore intimacy destroys her charm, and every step one makes behind the scenes, lessens one’s admiration. She, too, is _good_ in all main points.

... Do not think I am _sniffing_ at your franks. On the contrary, I am learning properly to value 1_s._ 3_d._, by seeing at once how hardly-earned, and how useful, money is in the country. In towns it appears contemptible, because one has always in view the baubles for which it is exchanged—the useless and fatiguing ball or assembly, the cadence of the public singer, the bill for frippery at the milliner’s, the trinket which it is more troublesome to keep than gratifying to show; but in the country, where one sees how much hard labour is necessary to realize a shilling, one is more ready to part with it for the relief of indigence, and less willing to throw it away on vanity and self-indulgence.

TO THE SAME.

Bognor, Sept. 15, 1808.

To amuse Miss Agar, I went yesterday to see Goodwood. Fine undulating lawns, and a luxuriant growth of trees, give it that degree of beauty which few large places in England are without; and the pheasantry is a little spot of great charms. This is a little _dip_, nearly oval, almost on the top of a high hill, and thickly fenced all round with trees and shrubs. The ground rises from it abruptly, opposite the entrance, and more gradually on either side. In the bottom lies the neat cottage of the protector and guide of the most beautiful race of gold and silver pheasants, which wander about _apparently_ free from restraint, but alas! a few unseen feathers have been clipped, which completely rob them of the liberty of quitting the little circuit allotted to them. There is a total want of water, for which your being able by an effort to see the sea, and your discovering the Isle of Wight with difficulty, when you have mounted to a particular spot, can by no means compensate. The house is unfinished, and the windows seem too small for a building of such extent and magnificence as it is intended to be. You may be sure we did not go to see the dog-kennel, which is the grand curiosity of the place, and of such magnificence as makes one blush; but we were persuaded to pick our way through an ugly, gloomy, damp collection of little rocks and moss and tombstones, to which you descend by a short flight of steps; and this, forsooth, is the dogs’ burial-ground!

TO THE SAME.

Jan., 1809.

I have been reading Petrarch lately, not his sonnets _before_, but _after_, the loss of Laura. He is not a true mourner. His genius enabled him to guess at the workings of grief, and to clothe them in beautiful and appropriate expressions; but oh! how different from the deep sorrows of the truth. Yet many passages brought my own loss home to my mind, particularly his delight in her loveliness of form, of manners, and of voice; and his sense of his own privation from these being no more.

Probably the fair unknown is amiable, since her person is so attractive. I have ever found more talents, sense, and, above all, _gentleness_, amongst handsome young women than plain ones. Indeed, the highest kind of beauty, expression, is essentially indicative of softness, or intelligence, or sensibility; as the lower kinds give proof of that perfect health and organization which is always favourable to good-humour and vivacity. If handsome women do not shine so often in mature life as artists or authoresses, it is from having generally had a wider choice in marriage, and therefore becoming wives and mothers; while the others, remaining single, have had leisure for improvement.

TO THE SAME.

London, March, 1809.

I brought to my box last night Mr. and Mrs. Langham. No party is so comfortable to me as a happy married pair. They are usually satisfied and amused with the spectacle: the lady is neither looking askant at the door, nor regretting that my box conceals her from the public eye, nor hinting at the number of men that are in other boxes, nor wanting to go into The Room; while the gentleman takes care of me out, without expecting to be repaid by my chatting and being on the _qui vive_, in return for the favour. I was particularly pleased at taking _them_. She is the favourite niece of Lady Jones, and he the son of Lady Langham, two excellent women, who loaded me with attentions, invitations, and tickets for concerts, &c., on the delightful first winter I passed in London, when (deprived of my birthright by a concurrence of circumstances one would think could hardly have occurred to one whose infancy and girlhood was so hedged round by precautions, and by all the foresight of provident affection) I appeared in this great town literally as a _desolate orphan_, without one appendage of affluence, ignorant, when the fifty pounds in my last draft were gone, where to get another; in short, exactly like the birds, with nothing to recommend me among strangers but my plumage and my song (insignificant as they were), and, like them also, ‘content and careless of to-morrow’s fare.’ Excuse this egotism; you encourage it when it tends to cheerful reflections; and I cannot look back on that winter, the kindness shown me, and the protecting hand of Providence in throwing me not merely among affectionate, but _moral_ and _good_ people, without infinite gratitude to that Power which brought me happily through a situation so dangerous in every point of view. What might have become of me in the world’s eye, if at that age I had fallen into the intimacies which it was unfortunate to make at any time; but which were of so much less consequence when youth, bloom, and novelty no longer made me conspicuous; when poverty no longer threatened to be my companion; and when I was quietly _domiciliée_? However, Providence has brought me now to the haven where I would be, as far as this life goes: and I wish and pray for nothing but a continuance of my present blessings. _For nothing!_ a strange-sounding phrase, when I possess _everything_ I can desire.

* * * * *

_April, 1809._—On reading Lord Byron’s _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_:—

Here wit and humour willing smiles excite,
Yet who can read the volume with delight?
Or, pleased, behold a youthful censor rise,
Disdain and anger flashing from his eyes;
Who tears the silken rose to show the thorn,
Bids Genius quaff the bitter draught of scorn,
Spurns the soft charities of social life,
And rends the veil that hid domestic strife?
Prompt with misguided hand, and zeal misplaced,
The keen, bright shafts of ridicule to waste.

Pope, brilliant star of our Augustan age,
For dulness and for guilt reserved his rage.
The mighty master of the Northern lyre,
Dowered with a painter’s eye, a poet’s fire,
Scott, spirit-stirring bard to Fancy dear,
Had ne’er endured from him the cutting sneer.
Well had _he_ marked the beauties that belong
To the wild melody of Southey’s song,
(Though strangely destitute of taste and rule);
Nor given this cordial to each rhyming fool,
That if he fall, the same unsparing blow
Had purposed to lay Scott and Southey low.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

London, April 29, 1809.

I dined at the Grattans with Catalani and her husband. They spoiled the party, as professors always do, when made of the company; and Valabrègue got a convenient _colique_; and they went off as soon as he came up from dinner, without her singing. She did not choose to open her mouth for fine speeches, and a good dinner, as was expected; and to prove that Mrs. Grattan might subscribe and come to the concerts of Catalani, they said at dinner that _vingt estropiés s’y faisoient porter_ both in London and Bath, also in Dublin. It was a curious day. She is coarse in person and manner in private; nay, even in voice, which is extraordinary. He is presumption and impudence double-distilled.

Lady —— is really a firebrand. I hear the two younger brothers of her husband are not very cordial, which I can easily conceive with such a person in the family. Her husband does not attempt to make the slightest reply to any insult she offers him, either in his own person or that of his relations. Is this love, philosophy, Christianity, or what? Love, I think, though it bears much violence and passion from its object, is easily roused to anger by _insult_, especially before a third person. Philosophy would probably teach a line of conduct that might reclaim by dignified firmness. And Christianity, which says, ‘Wives, _submit_ yourselves to your husbands,’ should, I think, instruct a man to keep his place. ‘Honouring her as the _weaker_ vessel,’ is not allowing her vessel to shove his out of its place, and scatter it in fragments in the dust.

TO THE SAME.

July 7, 1809.

As I always fall on something melancholy when my guardian is absent, I this morning have happened to read a wife’s adieu in _Gertrude of Wyoming_, and a beautiful passage on the loss of a child in Morehead’s _Sermons_, which were both particularly calculated to affect me. All Gertrude says of the topics of consolation left to her husband, with the exception of the stanza complaining of her not leaving a child, I beg you to apply to yourself, if ever you happen to want them. The words are few, but so true to nature, that they will suit ours as well as any fancied situation.

Mrs. —— seems an excellent woman, and wholly without background. I have seen few more estimable as a wife and mother, or more easy and safe as an acquaintance. As to _friendships_, no married woman can really _form_ one. The most she can do is to _continue_ one or two made when single. The intimacies made afterwards may be ‘confederacies in pleasure,’ but nothing more.

* * * * *

_July 9, 1809._—There is a strong resemblance between St. Pierre’s _Paul et Virginie_ and _Gertrude of Wyoming_. Perhaps the one may have elicited the other. I am far from detracting from the merit of one of the most beautiful poems in the English language by this remark. It is not the resemblance of plagiarism, but a species of likeness independent of imitation, which the admirers of both will find pleasure in tracing; and it is not uninteresting to observe what a different character may be stamped on events and situations nearly similar. In each we are presented with exquisite pictures of the lonely smiles of nature in a remote clime, where we suppose an almighty hand to have scattered with ‘boon profusion’ those beauties we endeavour to obtain by the slow progress of art and industry. In each the mind reposes on the idea of primeval innocence, and of lovers whose pure affections are guarded by their situation from any ills that may spring from intercourse with the world: who not only derive from each other their chief felicity, but to whom inconstancy, and even jealousy, are happily impossible. In each the hero is bowed to earth by the premature and sudden death of the woman he loves, who meets her fate with courage and sensibility before his eyes. In each a friend of mature age and high endowments endeavours to ‘minister to a mind diseased,’ and to soften that grief ‘which knows not consolation’s name.’ These beautiful tales have also this in common, that we conclude them with regret, wish we had been _so_ pained a little longer, feel our hearts raised and ameliorated, our sense of domestic happiness more lively, our interest in the fate of our fellow wanderers in the path of human life more strong and tender, than before. Such ought to be the effect of every work of imagination that bears the stamp of genius, and such effects alone give immortality to its productions.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Sept., 1809.

I was greatly disappointed in _Madoc_, which I have just read, though, I believe, it is not very new. What a strange delight Southey takes in wounds and tortures! I would almost as soon visit the Inquisition, or witness a boxing-match, as read it again.

I have seen an interesting letter from Hannah More on the subject of _Cœlebs_, and was greatly pleased with the candour and simplicity of her sentiments and style. She says it has gone through ten large editions, and has been the means of sending many readers to ‘the best of books;’ but she apologizes for the marks it bears of having been written when her health and spirits were somewhat impaired; and she owns _that_ lady may have been right who said ‘it was a bad novel and a bad sermon.’

Your admiration of _Gertrude of Wyoming_ is not greater than my own. There is an exquisite sensibility in some passages, and a pomp of poetical diction, united with apparent truth of descriptive painting, in others, which cover all the faults of its meagre, disjointed, improbable narrative, and its occasional obscurity of expression. Its condensed beauties are numerous, and particularly to be admired at present, when the art of saying much in few words seems almost forgotten.

TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.

London, April, 1810.

I find myself lonely and low and alarmed and anxious and uncomfortable to an uncommon degree. The strangeness of this house and of all the faces round me, makes me very nervous. Cornwall, you know, wanders round me like something between an old Irish mourner, a troubled spirit, and an undertaker’s assistant. In short, I am miserable, and every forgotten spectre of past sorrow gathers round me. I cannot express to you what I feel at finding myself here to-night with only this melancholy woman. What a witch is Imagination, and how she can darken, as well as brighten, the same groundwork, so as to make it appear perfectly a different picture!

I met an old acquaintance to-day. She told me she would not have known me had she met me anywhere; but added, as a consolation, that I was grown very ‘stout and jolly.’ ‘Stout and jolly;’ charming epithets! But, indeed, I am very indifferent about this. Nobody has gone so far in speaking of my change as the looking-glass; so I am still much in debt to the politeness of my friends.

I was amused by ——’s apprehension of meeting with ‘a careful wife.’ I never found any of the fears my friends entertained relative to their fate in marriage realized. Though the hydra-headed monster of matrimony may have produced to them ‘Gorgons and Chimæras dire,’ these have never been precisely of the kind they apprehended. A notable wife was often troublesome in the last age, when the feudal hospitality and profusion of some families were contrasted in others with a species of narrow bustling husbandry that has long bustled its last, and subsided into the temperate and well-regulated economy of our time; which requires not the sacrifice of more than the daily half-hour, and will amply repay it in a consciousness of utility and of fulfilling the claims made on us by children, friends, servants, the community, and the poor, all of whom must be injured, more or less, by every species of waste.

TO THE SAME.

Dec. 17, 1810.

There is no party at present here except Mr. —— and his wife, who is just the person formed to distress me, by always talking to me of _my_self and _her_self—two topics on which a fair easy dialogue is impossible, as I cannot possibly say exactly what I think of either of us. Her compliments to me are very strong, but _now_ such compliments give me pain. Though in the exuberance of youth and spirits I could once bear a powerful light, I am now scorched by what used only to warm me. She is quite miserable at her husband being ‘so stupid a thing’ as a clergyman. I thought this opinion was extinct, and was quite surprised to hear of its revival. I own it appears to me a particularly happy fate, if one likes one’s husband, to have married a clergyman. He is safe not merely from the dangers of a profession, but of a duel, and his wife has _un gage de plus_ for his moral conduct and his leading a domestic stationary life. Add to this an eternal comparison with poor me—my garnets, my shawl, my house in Hampshire, all wished for; and finally, she assured me, when we were alone, she would be very glad we could exchange husbands, that she heard you were very much to be liked, and I should have ——, and welcome. Now, you think I exaggerate, and upon my word I soften the picture. I have written a whole page of gossip. I hope we shall continue to associate but little with those who give materials for it.

TO THE SAME.

Bursledon Lodge, Dec., 1810.

None of us have been out of the house since Monday, and there was a fresh fall of snow to-day. How I thank my _young_ self for having cultivated such a taste for occupation that my _old_ self never knows _ennui_. That I prefer society to loneliness, is quite another thing; and I am glad to see clearly that I do so, and no longer to be cheated by the false ideas a warm imagination picks up on the subject from books, or an impatient spirit from the momentary disgust inspired by unpleasant company.

... I think to be excellent as a husband a man must be excellent in many other points; and if women were more convinced of this than they are in general, there would be fewer marriages, and perhaps more happiness; or else, in hope of pleasing us, men would improve themselves. The greatest fault our sex can be accused of, is being too easily pleased by yours; who seem to take an unfair advantage of it in being as much _over_, as we often are _under_, nice; since the smallest fault of temper, manners, or even person, is thought a sufficient apology for your breaking loose; while _poor we_——; but this is too copious a subject, and my poor baby is crying. I hope Buonaparte may have a sick child, as I think the cry of an infant, whose pain one cannot know or assuage, would make him feel his want of power, though nothing else has done it.

TO MRS. LEADBEATER.

Jan. 2, 1811.

I have never seen Miss Edgeworth, which I do not very much regret, having invariably been disappointed whenever I have greatly admired a book, on being introduced to its author. This may partly be my own fault, but I believe it is so common a feeling that those to whom admiration gives pleasure, ought rather to wish to retain their idea of a favourite writer than to exchange it for reality. You might say this was ‘sour grapes,’ if I did not also acknowledge that, if an opportunity offered of making acquaintance with a person so distinguished, and of such eminent talents, as Miss Edgeworth, I should certainly embrace it; so my little theory will never deprive me of any positive pleasure, and only serve to save me from unavailing wishes.

(_Bursledon Lodge, Feb. 26._)—You will be pleased at knowing we are all well; and that I, who for many, many years, have never seen the country, but when visiting at other peoples’ houses, and of course under some constraint, feel a childish delight at watching the first crocuses, snowdrops, and the gradual unfolding of the honeysuckles and other creepers. My children are equally entertained, and find a great difference between the liberty and variety of a garden, and the formal pacing up and down town flags, ever either damp or dusty. Indeed, as to education, being in the country lops off half the difficulties which attend it in town.

TO THE SAME.

London, May 1, 1811.

The letter on the _strenuous idleness_ of those who devote their whole leisure to needlework, I imagine to be Mr. Lefanu’s. Am I right? My grandfather was more averse from this employment than even the writer of that letter, and could never bear to see a needle in my hands. Your friend does not go so far, and argues not against the _use_ of the needle, but the _abuse_ of it. I think he is right. But in general I own myself a friend to what we females call _work_. It fills up the _interstices_ of time, if I may use the expression. It accords with most of the indoor employments of men, who, if they care for us at all, do not much like to see us engaged in anything which abstracts us too much from _them_. It lessens the _ennui_ of hearing children read the same story five hundred times. It can be brought into the sick room without diminishing our attention to an invalid, while it seems to release the sufferer from any obligation of conversing with _us_. It is a sort of composer, a _calmant_ peculiarly useful, I believe, to the delicate and irritable spirits of women. Those who can use the pen so well as the friend whom I have the pleasure of addressing, are, I think, entitled to lay aside the ‘shining store,’ but they are so few as to be considered merely as exceptions.