[Footnote 1: My wife, on reading this passage, tells me that according to her recollection the differences in question had no reference to politics at all, but to matters of higher interest relating to man's ultimate destinies.]

* * * * *

"Polly and I were immensely pleased at the prospect for you. She was rejoiced that you should once more be giving yourself to public affairs, which you so well understand.... We are but just come back from the solitudes of a farm-house in Surrey, whither I took Polly immediately after our loss [of his son], of which I suppose Anthony told you. It had shaken her seriously. She had lavished almost a mother's love on the dear boy, and suffered a mother's grief in the bereavement. He died in her arms; and for a long while it seemed as if she could never get over the pain. But now she is calm again, though very sad. But she will get to work, and that will aid her.

"For me, I was as fully prepared (by three or four months' conviction of its inevitableness) as one can be in such cases. It is always sudden, however foreseen. Yet the preparation was of great use; and I now have only a beautiful image living with me, and a deep thankfulness that his sufferings are at an end, since recovery was impossible.

"Give my love to your wife and Bice, and believe ever in yours faithfully,

"G.H. LEWES."

* * * * *

The following highly interesting letter was written to my wife by Mrs. Lewes, about a year after his death. It is dated "The Priory, 19 December, 1879":—

* * * * *

"DEAR MRS. TROLLOPE,—In sending me Dr. Haller's words you have sent me a great comfort. A just appreciation of my husband's work from a competent person is what I am most athirst for; and Dr. Haller has put his finger on a true characteristic. I only wish he could print something to the same effect in any pages that would be generally read.

"There is no biography. An article entitled 'George Henry Lewes' appeared in the last New London Quarterly. It was written by a man for whom he had much esteem; but it is not strong. A few facts about the early life and education are given with tolerable accuracy, but the estimate of the philosophic and scientific activity is inadequate. Still it is the best thing you could mention to Dr. Haller. You know perhaps that a volume entitled The Study of Psychology appeared in May last, and that another volume (500 pp.) of Problems of Life and Mind has just been published. The best history of a writer is contained in his writings; these are his chief actions. If he happens to have left an autobiography telling (what nobody else can tell) how his mind grew, how it was determined by the joys, sorrows, and other influences of childhood and youth—that is a precious contribution to knowledge. But biographies generally are a disease of English literature.

"I have never yet told you how grateful I was to you for writing to me a year ago. For a long while I could read no letter. But now I have read yours more than once, and it is carefully preserved. You had been with us in our happiness so near the time when it left me—you and your husband are peculiarly bound up with the latest memories.

"You must have had a mournful summer. But Mr. Trollope's thorough recovery from his severe attack is a fresh proof of his constitutional strength. We cannot properly count age by years. See what Mr. Gladstone does with seventy of them in his frame. And my lost one had but sixty-one and a half.

"You are to come to England again in 1881, I remember, and then, if I am alive, I hope to see you. With best love to you both, always, dear Mrs. Trollope,

"Yours faithfully,

"M.E. LEWES."

* * * * *

The "words of Dr. Haller," to which the above letter refers, were to the effect that one of Lewes's great advantages in scientific and philosophical research was his familiar acquaintance with the works of German and French writers, which enabled him to follow the contemporaneous movement of science throughout Europe, whereas many writers of learning and ability wasted their own and their readers' time in investigating questions already fully investigated elsewhere, and advancing theories which had been previously proved or disproved without their knowledge. Dr. Ludwig Haller, of Berlin, in writing to me about G.H. Lewes, then recently deceased, had said, if I remember rightly, that he had some intention of publishing a sketch of Lewes in some German periodical. I am not aware whether this intention was ever carried into effect.

The attack to which the above letter alludes was a very bad one of sciatica. At length the baths of Baden in Switzerland cured me permanently, but after their—it is said ordinary and normal, but very perverse—fashion, having first made me incomparably worse. I suffered excruciatingly, consolingly (!) assured by the doctor that sciatica never kills—only makes you wish that it would! While I was at the worst my brother came to Baden to see me, and on leaving me after a couple of days, wrote to my wife the following letter, which I confiscated and keep as a memorial.

After expressing his commiseration for me, he continues:—

"For you, I cannot tell you the admiration I have for you. Your affection and care and assiduity were to be expected. I knew you well enough to take them as a matter of course from you to him. But your mental and physical capacity, your power of sustaining him by your own cheerfulness, and supporting him by your own attention, are marvellous. When I consider all the circumstances I hardly know how to reconcile so much love with so much self-control."

Every word true! And what he saw for a few hours in each of a couple of days, I saw every hour of the day and night for four terrible months!

But all this is a parenthesis into which I have been led, I hope excusably, by Mrs. Lewes's mention of my illness.

N.B.—I said at an early page of these recollections that I had never been confined to my bed by illness for a single day during more than sixty years. The above-mentioned illness leaves the statement still true. The sciatica was bad, but never kept me in bed. Indeed I was perhaps in less torment out of it.

Here is the last letter of George Eliot's which reached us. It is written by Mrs. Lewes to my wife, from "The Priory, 30 December, 1879":—

* * * * *

"DEAR MRS. TROLLOPE,—I inclose the best photograph within my reach. To me all portraits of him are objectionable, because I see him more vividly and truly without them. But I think this is the most like what he was as you knew him. I have sent your anecdote about the boy to Mr. Du Maurier, whom it will suit exactly. I asked Charles Lewes to copy it from your letter with your own pretty words of introduction.

"Yours affectionately,

"M.E. LEWES."

* * * * *

It is pretty well too late in the day for me to lament the loss of old friends. They have been well-nigh some time past all gone. I have been exceptionally fortunate in an aftermath belonging to a younger generation. But they too are dropping around me! And few losses from this second crop have left a more regretted void than George Henry Lewes and his wife.



CHAPTER XVII.

I have thought that it might be more convenient to the reader to have the letters contained in the foregoing chapter all together, and have not interrupted them therefore to speak of any of the events which were meantime happening in my own life.

But during the period which the letters cover the two greatest sorrows of my life had fallen upon me—I had lost first my mother, then my wife.

The bereavement, however, was very different in the two cases. If my mother had died a dozen years earlier I should have felt the loss as the end of all things to me—as leaving me desolate and causing a void which nothing could ever fill. But when she died at eighty-three she had lived her life, upon the whole a very happy one, to the happiness of which I had (and have) the satisfaction of believing I largely contributed.

It is very common for a mother and daughter to live during many years of life together in as close companionship as I lived with my mother, but it is not common for a son to do so. During many years, and many, many journeyings, and more tete-a-tete walks, and yet more of tete-a-tete home hours, we were inseparable companions and friends. I can truly say that, from the time when we put our horses together on my return from Birmingham to the time of my marriage, she was all in all to me! During some four or five days in the early time of our residence at Florence I thought I was going to lose her, and I can never forget the blank wretchedness of the prospect that seemed to be before me.

She had a very serious illness, and was, as I had subsequently reason to believe, very mistakenly treated. She was attended by a practitioner of the old school, who had at that time the leading practice in Florence. He was a very good fellow, and an admirable whist player; and I do not think the members of our little colony drew a sufficiently sharp line of division between his social and his professional qualifications. He was, as I have said, essentially a man of the (even then) old school, and retained the old-fashioned general practitioners phraseology. I remember his once mortally disgusting an unhappy dyspeptic old lady by asking her, "Do we go to our dinner with glee?" As if the poor soul had ever done anything with glee!

This gentleman had bled my mother, and had appointed another bleeding for the evening. I believe she would assuredly have died if that had been done, and I attribute to Lord Holland the saving of her. Her doctor had very wrongly resisted the calling in of other English advice, professional jealousy, and indeed enmity, running high just then among us. Lord Holland came to the house just in the nick of time; and over-ruling authoritatively all the difficulties raised by the Esculapius in possession of the field, insisted on at once sending his own medical attendant. The result was the immediate administration of port wine instead of phlebotomy, and the patient's rapid recovery.

My mother was at the time far past taking any part in the discussion of the medical measures to be adopted in her case. But I am not without a suspicion that she too, if she could have been consulted, would have sided with phlebotomy and whist, as against modern practice unrelieved by any such alleviation. For the phlebotomist had been a constant attendant at her Friday night whist-table; and as it was she lost him, for he naturally was offended at her recovery under rival hands.

What my mother was I have already said enough to show, as far as my imperfect words can show it, in divers passages of these reminiscences. She was the happiest natured person I ever knew—happy in the intense power of enjoyment, happier still in the conscious exercise of the power of making others happy; and this continued to be the case till nearly the end. During the last few years the bright lamp began to grow dim and gradually sink into the socket. She suffered but little physically, but she lost her memory, and then gradually more and more the powers of her mind generally. I have often thought that this perishing of the mind before the exceptionally healthy and well-constituted physical frame, in which it was housed, may have been due to the tremendous strain to which she was subjected during those terrible months at Bruges, when she was watching the dying bed of a much-loved son during the day, and, dieted on green tea and laudanum, was writing fiction most part of the night. The cause, if such were the case, would have preceded the effect by some forty years; but whether it is on the cards to suppose that such an effect may have been produced after such a length of time, I have not physiological knowledge enough to tell.

She was, I think, to an exceptional degree surrounded by very many friends, mostly women, but including many men, at every period of her life. But the circumstances of it caused the world of her intimates during her youth, her middle life, and her old age, to be to a great degree peopled by different figures.

She was during all her life full of, and fond of, fun; had an exquisite sense of humour; and at all times valued her friends and acquaintances more exclusively, I think, than most people do, for their intrinsic qualities, mainly those of heart, and, not so much perhaps intellect, accurately speaking, as brightness. There is a passage in my brother's Autobiography which grates upon my mind, and, I think, very signally fails to hit the mark.

He writes (vol. i. p. 28):—"She loved society, affecting a somewhat Liberal role, and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from the wrongs of would-be regicides and the poverty of patriot exiles. An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate, or a French proletaire with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality of her house. In after years, when marquises of another caste had been gracious to her, she became a strong Tory, and thought that archduchesses were sweet. But with her, politics were always an affair of the heart, as indeed were all her convictions. Of reasoning from causes I think that she knew nothing."

Now there is hardly a word of this in which Anthony is not more or less mistaken; and that simply because he had not adequate opportunities for close observation. The affection which subsisted between my mother and my brother Anthony was from the beginning to the end of their lives as tender and as warm as ever existed between a mother and son. Indeed I remember that in the old days of our youth we used to consider Anthony the Benjamin. But from the time that he became a clerk in the Post Office to her death, he and my mother were never together but as visitors during the limited period of a visit. From the time that I resigned my position at Birmingham to the time of her death, I was uninterruptedly an inmate of her house, or she of mine. And I think that I knew her, as few sons know their mothers.

No regicide, would-be or other, ever darkened her doors. No French proletaire, or other French political refugee was ever among her guests. She never was acquainted with any Italian marquis who had escaped in any degree of distress from poverty. With General Pepe she was intimate for years. But of him the world knows enough to perceive that my brother cannot have alluded to him. And I recollect no other marquis. It is very true that in the old Keppel Street and Harrow days several Italian exiles, and I think some Spaniards, used to be her occasional guests. This had come to pass by means of her intimacy with Lady Dyer, the wife and subsequently widow of Sir Thomas Dyer, whose years of foreign service had interested him and her in many such persons. The friends of her friend were her friends. They were not such by virtue of their political position and ideas. Though it is no doubt true, that caring little about politics, and in a jesting way (how jesting many a memorial of fun between her and Lady Dyer, and Miss Gabell, the daughter of Dr. Gabell of Winchester, is still extant in my hands to prove;) the general tone of the house was "Liberal." But nothing can be farther from the truth than the idea that my mother was led to become a Tory by the "graciousness" of any "marquises" or great folks of any kind. I am inclined to think that there was one great personage, whose (not graciousness, but) intellectual influence did impel her mind in a Conservative direction. And this was Metternich. She had more talk with him than her book on Vienna would lead a reader to suppose; and very far more of his mind and influence reached her through the medium of the Princess.

To how great a degree this is likely to have been the case may be in some measure perceived from a letter which the Princess addressed to my mother shortly after she had left Vienna. She preserved it among a few others, which she specially valued, and I transcribe it from the original now before me.

* * * * *

"Vous ne pourriez croire, chere Madame Trollope, combien le portrait que vous avez charge le Baron Huegel de me remettre m'a fait de plaisir!

"Il y a longtemps que je cachais au fonds de mon coeur le desir de posseder votre portrait, qui, interressant pour le monde, est devenu precieux pour moi, puisque j'ai le plaisir de vous connaitre telle que vous etes, bonne, simple, bienveillante, et loin de tout ce qui effroie et eloigne des reputations literaires. Je remercie M. Hervieu de Tavoir fait aussi ressemblant. Et je vous assure, chere Madame Trollope, que rien ne pouvait me toucher aussi vivement et me faire autant de plaisir que ce souvenir venant de vous, qui me rappelera sans cesse les bons moments que j'ai eu la satisfaction de passer avec vous et qui resteront a jamais cheres a ma memoire.

"MELANIE, PRINCESSE DE METTERNICH."

* * * * *

I think that the hours passed by the Princess and my mother tete-a-tete, save for the presence of the artist occupied by his work during the painting of the Princess Melanie's portrait for my mother, were mainly the cause of the real intimacy of mind and affection which grew up between them—though, of course, the painting of the portrait shows that a considerable intimacy had previously arisen. And it had been arranged that the portrait of my mother, which was the occasion of the above letter, should be exchanged for that of the Princess. But there had been no time amid the whirl of the Vienna gaieties to get it executed. It was, therefore, sent from England by Baron Huegel when he called on my mother, on visiting this country shortly after her return from Austria.

It occurs to me here to mention a circumstance which was, I think, the first thing to begin—not the acquaintance but—the intimacy in question; and which may be related as possessing an interest not confined to either of the ladies in question.

The Archduchess Sophie had graciously intimated her desire that my mother should be presented to her, and an evening had been named for the purpose. But a few days before—just three, if I remember rightly—my mother caught a cold, which resulted in erysipelas, causing her head to become swollen to nearly double its usual size! Great was the dismay of the ladies who had arranged the meeting with the Archduchess, chief among whom had been the Princess Melanie. She came to my mother, and insisted upon sending to her an old homoeopathic physician, who was her own medical attendant, and had been Hahnemann's favourite pupil. He came, saw his patient, and was told that what he had to do was to make her presentable by the following Friday! He shook his head, said the time was too short—but he would do his best. And the desired object was fully attained.

I have no doubt that my mother returned from her Vienna visit a more strongly convinced Conservative in politics than she had hitherto been. And it does not seem to me that the modification of her opinions in that direction, which was doubtless largely operated by conversation with the great Conservative statesman and his alter ego, the Princess, needs to be in any degree attributed to the "graciousness" of people in high position either male or female. Is it not very intelligible and very likely that such opinions, so set forth, as she from day to day heard them, should have honestly and legitimately influenced her own?

But I think that I should be speaking, if perhaps presumptuously, yet truly, if I were to add that there was also one very far from great personage, whose influence in the same direction was greater than even that of Prince Metternich or of any other great folks whatever; and that was the son in daily and almost hourly communion and conversation with whom she lived. I also had begun life as a "Liberal," and was such in the days when Mr. Gladstone was a high Tory. But my mind had long been travelling in an inverse direction to his. And far too large a number of my contemporaries distinguished and undistinguished have been moving in the same direction for it to be at all necessary to say that most assuredly my slowly maturing convictions were neither generated nor fostered by any "graciousness" or other influence of dukes or duchesses or great people of any sort.

That my mother's political ideas were in no degree "an affair of the heart," I will not say, and by no means regret not being able to say. But I cannot but assert that it is a great mistake to say that they were uninfluenced by "reasoning from causes," or that the movement of her mind in this respect was in any degree whatever due to the caresses which my brother imagines to have caused it.

She was not a great or careful preserver of papers and letters, or I might have been able to print here very many communications from persons in whom the world feels an interest. Among her early and very dear friends was Mary Mitford.

I have a very vivid remembrance of the appearance of Mary Russell Mitford as I used to see her on the occasions of my visits to Reading, where my grandfather's second wife and then widow was residing. She was not corpulent, but her figure gave one the idea of almost cubical solidity. She had a round and red full moon sort of face, from the ample forehead above which the hair was all dragged back and stowed away under a small and close-fitting cap, which surrounding her face increased the effect of full-blown rotundity. But the grey eye and even the little snub nose were full of drollery and humour, and the lines about the generally somewhat closely shut mouth indicated unmistakable intellectual power. There is a singular resemblance between her handwriting and that of my mother. Very numerous letters must have passed between them. But of all these I have been able to find but four.

On the 3rd of April, 1832, she writes from the "Three Mile Cross," so familiar to many readers, as follows:—

* * * * *

"My dear Mrs. Trollope,—I thank you most sincerely for your very delightful book, as well as for its great kindness towards me; and I wish you joy from the bottom of my heart of the splendid success which has not merely attended but awaited its career—a happy and I trust certain augury of your literary good fortune in every line which you may pursue. I assure you that my political prejudices are by no means shocked at your dislike of Republicanism. I was always a very aristocratic Whig, and since these reforming days am well-nigh become a staunch Tory, for pretty nearly the same reason that converted you—a dislike to mobs in action.... Refinement follows wealth, but not often closely, as witness the parvenu people even in dear England.... I heard of your plunge into the Backwoods first from Mr. Owen himself, with whom I foregathered three years ago in London, and of whom you have given so very true and graphic a picture. What extraordinary mildness and plausibility that man possesses! I never before saw an instance of actual wildness—madness of theory accompanied by such suavity and soberness of manner. Did you see my friend, Miss Sedgwick? Her letters show a large and amiable mind, and a little niece of nine years old, who generally writes in them, has a style very unusual in so young a girl, and yet most youthful and natural too.... Can you tell me if Mr. Flint be the author of George Mason, or the Young Backwoodsman? I think that he is; and whether the name of a young satirical writer be Sams or Sands? Your answering these questions will stead me much, and I am sure that you will answer them if you can.

"Now to your kind questions. I am getting ready a fifth and last volume of Our Village as fast as I can, though with pain and difficulty, having hurt my left hand so much by a fall from an open carriage that it affects the right, and makes writing very uncomfortable to me. And I am in a most perplexed state about my opera, not knowing whether it will be produced this season or not, in consequence of Captain Polhill and his singers having parted. This would not have happened had my coadjutor the composer kept to his time. And I have still hopes that when the opera be [shall, omitted probably] taken in (the music is even now not finished), a sense of interest will bring the parties together again. I hope that it may, for it will not only be a tremendous hit for all of us, but it will take me to London and give me the pleasure of a peep at you, a happiness to which I look forward very anxiously. I know Mr. Tom, and like him of all things, as everybody who knows him must, and I hear that his sisters are charming. God bless you, my dear friend. My father joins me in every good wish, and

"I am ever most affectionately yours,

"M.R. MITFORD."

* * * * *

A few weeks later she writes a very long letter almost entirely filled with a discussion of the desirability or non-desirability of writing in this, that, and the other "annual" or magazine. Most of those she alludes to are dead, and there is no interest in preserving her mainly unfavourable remarks concerning them and their editors and publishers. One sentence, however, is so singularly and amusingly suggestive of change in men and women and things, that I must give it. After reviewing a great number of the leading monthlies she says "as for Fraser's and Blackwood's, they are hardly such as a lady likes to write for"!

After advising my mother to stick to writing novels, she says, "I have not a doubt that that is by far the most profitable branch of the literary profession. If ever I be bold enough to try that arduous path, I shall endeavour to come as near as I can to Miss Austen, my idol. You are very good about my opera. I am sorry to tell you, and you will be sorry to hear, that the composer has disappointed me, that the music is not even yet ready, and that the piece is therefore necessarily delayed till next season. I am very sorry for this on account of the money, and because I have many friends in and near town, yourself amongst the rest, whom I was desirous to see. But I suppose it will be for the good of the opera to wait till the beginning of a season. It is to be produced with extraordinary splendour, and will, I think, be a tremendous hit. I hope also to have a tragedy out at nearly the same time in the autumn, and then I trust we shall meet, and I shall see your dear girls.

"How glad I am to find that you partake of my great aversion to the sort of puffery belonging to literature. I hate it! and always did, and love you all the better for partaking of my feeling on the subject. I believe that with me it is pride that revolts at the trash. And then it is so false; the people are so clearly flattering to be flattered. Oh, I hate it!!!

"Make my kindest regards [sic] and accept my father's.

"Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours,

"M.R. MITFORD.

"P.S.—I suppose my book will be out in about a month. I shall desire Whittaker to send you a copy. It is the fifth and last volume."

* * * * *

The following interesting letter, franked by her friend Talfourd, and shown only by the post-mark to have been posted on the 20th of June, 1836, is apparently only part of a letter, for it is written upon one page, and the two "turnovers" only; and begins abruptly:—

* * * * *

"My being in London this year seems very uncertain, although if Mr. Sergeant Talfourd's Ion be played, as I believe it will, for Mr. Macready's benefit, I shall hardly be able to resist the temptation of going up for a very few days to be present upon that occasion. But I scarcely ever stir. I am not strong, and am subject to a painful complaint, which renders the service of a maid indispensable not only to my comfort but to my health; and that, besides the expense, has an appearance of fuss and finery, to which I have a great objection, and to which indeed I have from station no claim. My father, too, hates to be left even for a day. And splendid old man as he is in his healthful and vigorous age, I cannot but recollect that he is seventy-five, and that he is my only tie upon earth—the only relation (except, indeed, a few very distant cousins, Russells, Greys, Ogles, and Deans, whom I am too proud and too poor to hook on upon), my only relation in the wide world. This is a desolate view of things; but it explains a degree of clinging to that one most precious parent which people can hardly comprehend. You can scarcely imagine how fine an old man he is; how clear of head and warm of heart. He almost wept over your letter to-day, and reads your book with singular delight and satisfaction, in spite of the difference in politics. He feels strongly, and so, I assure you, do I, your kind mention of me and my poor writings—a sort of testimony always gratifying, but doubly so when the distinguished writer is a dear friend. Even in this desolation, your success—that of your last work [Paris and the Parisians] especially must be satisfactory to you. I have no doubt that two volumes on Italy will prove equally delightful to your readers, whilst the journey will be the best possible remedy for all that you have suffered in spirits and health.

"I am attempting a novel, for which Messieurs Saunders and Ottley have agreed to give 700l. It is to be ready some time in September—I mean the MS.—and I am most anxious upon every account to make it as good as possible, one very great reason being the fair, candid, and liberal conduct of the intended publishers. I shall do my very best. Shall I, do you think, succeed? I take for granted that our loss is your gain, and that you see Mr. Milman and his charming wife, who will, I am sure, sympathise most sincerely in your present[1] affliction.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Milman had resigned recently the incumbency of a parish in Reading. My mother's affliction alluded to was the death of her youngest daughter, Emily.]

"Adieu, my dear friend. I am tying myself up from letter-writing until I have finished my novel. While I cannot but hope for one line from you to say that you are recovering. Letters to me may always be inclosed to Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M.P., 2, Elm Court, Temple. Even if he be on circuit, they will reach me after a short delay. God bless you all. My father joins heartily in this prayer, with

"Your faithful and affectionate,

"M.R. MITFORD."

* * * * *

The next, and last which I have found, is entirely undated, but post-marked 20th April, 1837.

* * * * *

"MY DEAR FRIEND,—I don't know when a trifle has pleased me so much as the coincidence which set us a-writing to each other just at the same time. I have all the north-country superstition flowing through my veins, and do really believe in the exploded doctrine of sympathies. That is to say, I believe in all genial superstitions, and don't like this steam-packet railway world of ours, which puts aside with so much scorn that which for certain Shakespeare and Ben Jonson held for true. I am charmed at your own account of yourself and your doings. Mr. Edward Kenyon—(whose brother, John Kenyon, of Harley Place, the most delightful man in London—of course you know him—is my especial friend)—Mr. Edward Kenyon, who lives chiefly at Vienna, although, I believe, in great retirement, spending 200l. upon himself, and giving away 2,000l.—Mr. Edward Kenyon spoke of you to me as having such opportunities of knowing both the city and the country as rarely befell even a resident, and what you say of the peasantry gives me a strong desire to see your book.

"A happy subject is in my mind, a great thing, especially for you whose descriptions are so graphic. The thing that would interest me in Austria, and for the maintenance of which one almost pardons (not quite) their retaining that other old-fashioned thing, the State prisons, is their having kept up in their splendour those grand old monasteries, which are swept away now in Spain and Portugal. I have a passion for Gothic architecture, and a leaning towards the magnificence of the old religion, the foster-mother of all that is finest and highest in art, and if I have such a thing as a literary project, it is to write a romance, of which Reading Abbey in its primal magnificence should form a part, not the least about forms of faith, understand, but as an element of the picturesque, and as embodying a very grand and influential part of bygone days. At present I have just finished (since writing Country Stories, which people seem so good as to like) writing all the prose (except one story about the fashionable subject of Egyptian magicians, furnished to me by your admirer, Henry Chorley; I wish you had seen him taking off his hat to the walls as I showed him your father's old residence at Heckfield), all the prose of the most splendid of the annuals, Finden's Tableaux, of which my longest and best story—a Young Pretender story—I have been obliged to omit in consequence of not calculating on the length of my poetical contributors. But my poetry, especially that by that wonderful young creature Miss Barrett, Mr. Kenyon, and Mr. Procter, is certainly such as has seldom before been seen in an annual, and joined with Finden's magnificent engravings ought to make an attractive work.

"I am now going to my novel, if it please God to grant me health. For the last two months I have only once crossed the outer threshold, and, indeed, I have never been a day well since the united effects of the tragedy and the influenza ... [word destroyed by the seal]. What will become of that poor play is in the womb of time. But its being by universal admission a far more striking drama than Rienzi, and by very far the best thing I ever wrote, it follows almost of course, that it will share the fate of its predecessor, and be tossed about the theatres for three or four years to come. Of course I should be only too happy that it should be brought out at Covent Garden under the united auspices of Mr. Macready and Mr. Bartley.[1] But I am in constitution and in feeling a much older person than you, my dear friend, as well as in look, however the acknowledgment of age (I am 48) may stand between us; and belonging to a most sanguine and confiding person, I am of course as prone to anticipate all probable evil as he is to forestall impossible good. He, my dear father, is, I thank Heaven, splendidly well. He speaks of you always with much delight, is charmed with your writings, and I do hope that you will come to Reading and give him as well as me the great pleasure of seeing you at our poor cottage by the roadside. You would like my flower-garden. It is really a flower-garden becoming a duchess. People are so good in ministering to this, my only amusement. And the effect is heightened by passing through a labourer's cottage to get at it, for such our poor hut literally is.

[Footnote 1: This gentleman was an old and highly valued friend of my mother.]

"You have heard, I suppose, that Mr. Wordsworth's eldest son, who married a daughter of Mr. Curwen, has lost nearly, if not quite, all of his wife's portion by the sea flowing in upon the mine, and has now nothing left but a living of 200l. given him by his father-in-law. So are we all touched in turn.

"I have written to the Sedgwicks for the scarlet lilies mentioned by Miss Martineau in her American book. Did you happen to see them in their glory? of course they would flourish here; and having sent them primroses, cowslips, ivy, and many other English wild flowers, which took Theodore Sedgwick's fancy, I have a right to the return. How glad I am to hear the good you tell me of my friend Tom. His fortune seems now assured. My father's kindest regards.

"Ever my dear friend,

"Very faithfully yours,

"M.R. MITFORD.

"P.S.—Mr. Carey, the translator of Dante, has just been here. He says that he visited Cowper's residence at Olney lately, and that his garden room, which suggested mine, is incredibly small, and not near so pretty. Come and see. You know, of course, that the 'Modern Antiques' in Our Village were Theodosia and Frances Hill, sisters of Joseph Hill, cousins and friends of poor Cowper."

* * * * *

What the "good" was by which my "fortune was assured" I am unable to guess. But I am sure of the sincerity of the writer's rejoicing thereat.

Mary Mitford was a genuinely warm-hearted woman, and much of her talk would probably be stigmatised by the young gentlemen of the present generation, who consider the moral temperature of a fish to be "good form," as "gush." How old Landor, who "gushed" from cradle to grave, would have massacred and rended in his wrath such talkers! Mary Mitford's "gush" was sincere at all events. But there is a "hall-mark," for those who can decipher it, "without which none is genuine."

A considerable intimacy grew up between my mother and the author of Highways and Byeways during the latter part of his residence in England, and subsequently, when returning from Boston on leave, he visited Florence and Rome. Many letters passed between them after his establishment as British Consul at Boston, some characteristic selections from which will, I doubt not, be acceptable to many readers.

The following was written on the envelope enclosing a very long letter from Mrs. Grattan, and was written, I think, in 1840:—

* * * * *

"I cannot avoid squeezing in a few words more just as the ship is on the point of sailing or steaming away for England ... 'The President' has been a fatal title this spring. Poor Harrison, a good and honest man, died in a month after he was elected, and this fine ship, about which we have been at this side of the Atlantic so painfully excited ever since March, is, I fear, gone down with its gallant captain (Roberts, with whom we crossed the Atlantic in the British Queen) and poor Power, whom the public cannot afford to lose.

"Since I wrote my letter three days ago—pardon the boldly original topic—the weather has mended considerably. Tell Tom that every tree is also striving to turn over a new leaf, and it is well for you that I have not another to turn too. God bless you.

"T.C.G."

* * * * *

I beg to observe that the exhortation addressed to me had no moral significance, but was the writer's characteristic mode of exciting me to new scribblements.

The following, also written on the envelope enclosing a letter from Mrs. Grattan, is dated the 30th of July, 1840:—

* * * * *

"I cannot let the envelope go quite a blank, though I cannot quite make it a prize ... In literature I have done nothing but write a preface and notes for two new editions of the old Highways and Byeways, and a short sketchy article in this month's number of the North American Review on the present state of Ireland. I am going to follow it up in the next number in reference to the state of the Irish in America, and I hope I shall thus do some good to a subject I have much at heart. I have had various applications to deliver lectures at Lyceums, &c, and to preside at public meetings for various objects. All this I have declined. I have been very much before the public at dinners for various purposes, and have refused many invitations to several neighbouring cities. I must now draw back a little. I think I have hitherto done good to the cause of peace and friendship between the countries. But I know these continued public appearances will expose me to envy, hatred, and malice. I hope to do something historical by and by, and perhaps an occasional article in the North American Review. But anything like light writing I never can again turn to."

* * * * *

From a very long letter written on the 13th of May, 1841, I will give a, few extracts:—

* * * * *

"MY DEAR AND VALUED FRIEND,—Your letter from Penryth [sic] without date, but bearing the ominous post-mark, 'April 1st,' has completely made a fool of me, in that sense which implies that nothing else can excuse a grey head and a seared heart for thinking and feeling that there are such things in the world as affection and sincerity. Being fond of flying in the face of reason, and despising experience, whenever they lay down general rules, I am resolved to believe in exceptions, to delight in instances, and to be quite satisfied that I have 'troops of friends'—you being one of the troopers—no matter how few others there may be, or where they are to be found.

"You really must imagine how glad we were to see your handwriting again, and I may say also, how surprised; for it passeth our understanding to discover how you make time for any correspondence at all. We have followed all your literary doings step by step since we left Europe, and we never cease wondering at your fertility and rejoicing at your success. But I am grieved to think that all this is at the cost of your comfort. Or is it that you wrote in a querulous mood, when you said those sharp things about your grey goose quill. Surely composition must be pleasant to you. No one who writes so fast and so well can find it actually irksome. I am aware that people sometimes think they find it so. But we may deceive ourselves on the dark as well as on the bright side of our road, and more easily, because it is the dark. That is to say, we may not only cheat ourselves with false hopes of good, but with false notions of evil, which proves, if it proves anything just now, that you are considerably mistaken when you fancy writing to be a bore, and that I know infinitely better than you do what you like or dislike."

It is rather singular to find a literary workman talking in this style. Grattan was not a fertile writer, and, I must suppose, was never a very industrious one. But he surely must have known that talk about the pleasures of "composition" was wholly beside the mark. That may be, often is, pleasant enough, and if the thoughts could be telephoned from the brain to the types it would all be mighty agreeable; and the world would be very considerably more overwhelmed with authorship than it is. It is the "grey goose quill" work, the necessity for incarnating the creatures of the brain in black and white, that is the world's protection from this avalanche. And I for one do not understand how anybody who, eschewing the sunshine and the fields and the song of birds, or the enjoyment of other people's brain-work, has glued himself to his desk for long hours, can say or imagine that his task is, or has been, aught else than hard and distasteful work, demanding unrelaxing self-denial and industry. And however fine the frenzy in which the poet's eye may roll while he builds the lofty line, the work of putting some thousands of them on the paper when built must be as irksome to him as the penny-a-liner's task is to him—more so, in that the mind of the latter does not need to be forcibly and painfully restrained from rushing on to the new pastures which invite it, and curbed to the pack-horse pace of the quill-driving process.

"You must not," he continues, "allow yourself to be, or even to fancy that you are tired or tormented, or worn out. Work the mine to the last. Pump up every drop out of the well. Put money i' thy purse; and add story after story to that structure of fame, which will enable you to do as much to that house by the lake side, where I will hope to see you yet."

* * * * *

He then goes on to speak at considerable length of the society of Boston, praising it much, yet saying that it is made more charming to a visitor than to a permanent resident. "In this it differs," he says, "from almost all the countries I have lived in in Europe, except Holland."

Speaking of a visit to Washington during the inauguration of General Harrison, which seems to have delighted him much, he says he travelled back with a family, "at least with the master and mistress of it, of whom I must tell you something. Mr. Paige is a merchant, and brother-in-law of Mr. Webster; Mrs. Paige a niece of Judge Story. From this double connection with two of the first men in the country their family associations are particularly agreeable. Mrs. Paige is one of three sisters, all very handsome, spirited, and full of talent. One is married to Mr. Webster's eldest son. Another, Mrs. Joy, has for her husband an idle gentleman, a rare thing in this place. Mrs. Paige was in Europe two years ago with Mr. and Mrs. Webster senior (the latter by the bye is a most charming person) and had the advantage of seeing society in England and France in its best aspect, and is one who can compare as well as see ... Among the men [of the Boston society] are Dr. Chinning, a prophet in our country, a pamphleteer in his own; Bancroft, the historian of America, a man of superior talents and great agreeability, but a black sheep in society, on account of his Van Buren politics, against whom the white sheep of the Whig party will not rub themselves; Prescott, the author of Ferdinand and Isabella, a handsome, half blind shunner of the vanities of the world, with some others, who read and write a good deal, and no one the wiser for it. Edward Everett is in Italy, where you will surely meet him [we saw a good deal of him]. He is rather formal than cold, if all I hear whispered of him be true; of elegant taste in literature, though not of easy manners, and altogether an admirable specimen of an American orator and scholar. At Cambridge, three miles off, we have Judge Story, of the Supreme Court, eloquent, deeply learned, garrulous, lively, amiable, excellent in all and every way that a mortal can be. He is decidedly the gem of this western world. Mr. Webster is now settled at Washington, though here at this moment on a visit to Mrs. Paige. Among our neighbouring notabilities is John Quincy Adams, an ex-President of the United States, ex-Minister at half the courts in Europe, and now at seventy-five, a simple Member of Congress, hard as a piece of granite, and cold as a lump of ice."

Speaking of his having very frequently appeared at public meetings during the first year of his Consulship, and of his having since that refrained from such appearances, he continues: "I was doubtful as to the way my being so much en evidence might be relished at home. Of late public matters have been on so ticklish a footing, that all the less a British functionary was seen the better.

"In literature I have done nothing barring a couple of articles on Ireland and the Irish in America, a subject I have much at heart. But much as I feel for them and with them, I refused dining with my countrymen on St. Patrick's Day because they had the gaucherie (of which I had previous notice), to turn the festive meeting into a political one, by giving 'O'Connell and success to repeal' as one of their 'regular' toasts, and by leaving out the Queen's health, which they gave when I dined with them last year."

Then after detailed notices of the movements of his sons, he goes on:

"We have many plans in perspective, Niagara, Canada, Halifax, the mountains, the springs, the sea; the result of which you shall know as soon as we receive a true and faithful account of your adventures in just as many pages as you can afford; but Tom must in the meantime send me a long letter ... Tell Tom I have half resolved to give up punning and take to repartee. A young fellow said to me the other day, 'Ah! Mr. Consul (as I am always called), I wish I could discover a new pleasure.' 'Try virtue!' was my reply. A pompous ex-Governor said swaggeringly to me at the last dinner party at which I assisted, 'Well, Mr. Consul, I suppose you Europeans think us semi-civilised here in America?' 'Almost!' said I. Now ask Tom if that was not pretty considerable smart. But assure him at the same time, it is nothing at all to what I could do in the way of impertinence! Need I say how truly and affectionately we all love you?

"T.C. GRATTAN."

* * * * *

I wrote back that I would enter the lists with him in the matter of impertinence; and as a sample told him that I thought he had better return to the punning.

I could, I doubt not, find among my mother's papers some further letters that might be worth printing or quoting. But my waning space warns me that I must not indulge myself with doing so.



CHAPTER XVIII.

I said at the beginning of the last chapter, that during the period, some of the recollections of which I had been chronicling, the two greatest sorrows I had ever known had befallen me. A third came subsequently. But that belonged to a period of my life which does not fall within the limits I have assigned to these reminiscences. Of the first, the death of my mother, I have spoken. The other, the death of my wife, followed it at no great distance, and was of course a far more terrible one. She had been ailing—so long indeed that I had become habituated to it, and thought that she would continue to live as she had been living. We had been travelling in Switzerland, in the autumn of 1864; and I remember very vividly her saying on board the steamer, by which we were leaving Colico at the head of the Lake of Como, on our return to Italy, as she turned on the deck to take a last look at the mountains, "Good-bye, you big beauties!" I little thought it was her last adieu to them; but I thought afterwards that she probably may have had some misgiving that it was so.

But it was not till the following spring that I began to realise that I must lose her. She died on the 13th of April, 1865.

I have spoken of her as she was when she became my wife, but without much hope of representing her to those who never had the happiness of knowing her, as she really was, not only in person, which matters little, but in mind and intellectual powers. And to tell what she was in heart, in disposition—in a word, in soul—would be a far more difficult task.

In her the aesthetic faculties were probably the most markedly exceptional portion of her intellectual constitution. The often cited dictum, les races se feminisent was not exemplified in her case. From her mother, an accomplished musician, she inherited her very pronounced musical[1] faculty and tendencies, and, I think, little else. From her father, a man of very varied capacities and culture, she drew much more. How far, if in any degree, this fact may be supposed to have been connected in the relation of cause and effect, with the other fact that her mother was more than fifty years of age at the time of her birth, I leave to the speculations of physiological inquirers. In bodily constitution her inheritance from her father's mother was most marked. To that source must be traced, I conceive, the delicacy of constitution, speaking medically, which deprived me of her at a comparatively early age; for both father and mother were of thoroughly healthy and strong constitutions. But if it may be suspected that the Brahmin Sultana, her grandmother, bequeathed her her frail diathesis, there was no doubt or difficulty in tracing to that source the exterior delicacy of formation which characterised her. I remember her telling me that the last words a dying sister of her mother's ever spoke, when Theodosia standing by the bedside placed her hand on the dying woman's forehead were, "Ah, that is Theo's little Indian hand," And truly the slender delicacy of hand and foot, which characterised her, were unmistakably due to her Indian descent. In person she in nowise resembled either father or mother, unless it were possibly her father in the conformation and shape of the teeth.

[Footnote 1: But this she might also have got from her father, who was passionately fond of music, and was a very respectable performer on the violin.]

I have already in a previous chapter of these reminiscences given a letter from Mrs. Browning in which she speaks of Theodosia's "multiform faculty." And the phrase, which so occurring, might in the case of almost any other writer be taken as a mere epistolary civility, is in the case of one whose absolute accuracy of veracity never swerved a hair's-breadth, equivalent to a formal certificate of the fact to the best of her knowledge. And she knew my wife well both before and after the marriage of either of them. Her faculty was truly multiform.

She was not a great musician; but her singing had for great musicians a charm which the performances of many of their equals in the art failed to afford them. She had never much voice, but I have rarely seen the hearer to whose eyes she could not bring the tears. She had a spell for awakening emotional sympathy which I have never seen surpassed, rarely indeed equalled.

For language she had an especial talent, was dainty in the use of her own, and astonishingly apt in acquiring—not merely the use for speaking as well as reading purposes, but—the delicacies of other tongues. Of Italian, with which she was naturally most conversant, she was recognised by acknowledged experts to be a thoroughly competent critic.

She published, now many years ago, in the Athenaeum, some translations from the satirist Giusti, which any intelligent reader would, I think, recognise to be cleverly done. But none save the very few in this country, who know and can understand the Tuscan poet's works in the original, can at all conceive the difficulty of translating him into tolerable English verse. And I have no hesitation in asserting, that any competent judge, who is such by virtue of understanding the original, would pronounce her translations of Giusti to be a masterpiece, which very few indeed of contemporary men or women could have produced. I have more than once surprised her in tears occasioned by her obstinate struggles with some passage of the intensely idiomatic satirist, which she found it almost—but eventually not quite—impossible to render to her satisfaction.

She published a translation of Niccolini's Arnaldo da Brescia, which won the cordial admiration and friendship of that great poet. And neither Niccolini's admiration nor his friendship were easily won. He was, when we knew him at Florence in his old age, a somewhat crabbed old man, not at all disposed to make new acquaintances, and, I think, somewhat soured and disappointed, not certainly with the meed of admiration he had won from his countrymen as a poet, but with the amount of effect which his writings had availed to produce in the political sentiments and then apparent destinies of the Italians. But he was conquered by the young Englishwoman's translation of his favourite, and, I think, his finest work. It is a thoroughly trustworthy and excellent translation; but the execution of it was child's play in comparison with the translations from Giusti.

She translated a number of the curiously characteristic stornelli of Tuscany, and especially of the Pistoja mountains. And here again it is impossible to make any one, who has never been familiar with these stornelli understand the especial difficulty of translating them. Of course the task was a slighter and less significant one than that of translating Giusti, nor was the same degree of critical accuracy and nicety in rendering shades of meaning called for. But there were not—are not—many persons who could cope with the especial difficulties of the attempt as successfully as she did. She produced also a number of pen-and-ink drawings illustrating these stornelli, which I still possess, and in which the spirited, graphic, and accurately truthful characterisation of the figures could only have been achieved by an artist very intimately acquainted intus et in cute with the subjects of her pencil.

She published a volume on the Tuscan revolution, which was very favourably received. The Examiner, among other critics—all of them, to the best of my remembrance, more or less favourable—said of these Letters (for that was the form in which the work was published, all of them, I think, having been previously printed in the Athenaeum), "Better political information than this book gives may be had in plenty; but it has a special value which we might almost represent by comparing it to the report of a very watchful nurse, who, without the physician's scientific knowledge, uses her own womanly instinct in observing every change of countenance and every movement indicating the return of health and strength to the patient ... She has written a very vivid and truthful account." The critic has very accurately, and, it may be said, graphically, assigned its true value and character to the book.

I have found it necessary in a former chapter, where I have given a number of interesting and characteristic letters from Landor to my wife's father, to insert a deprecatory caveat against the exuberant enthusiasm of admiration which led him to talk of the probability of her eclipsing the names and fame of other poets, including in this estimate Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The preposterousness of this no human being would have felt more strongly than Theodosia Garrow, except Theodosia Trollope, when such an estimate had become yet more preposterous. But Landor, whose unstinted admiration of Mrs. Browning's poetry is vigorously enough expressed in his own strong language, as may be seen in Mr. Forster's pages, would not have dreamed of instituting any such comparison at a later day. But that his critical acumen and judgment were not altogether destroyed by the enthusiasm of his friendship, is, I think, shown by the following little poem by Theodosia Trollope, written a few years after the birth of her child. I don't think I need apologise for printing it.

The original MS. of it before me gives no title; nor do I remember that the authoress ever assigned one to the verses.

I.

"In the noon-day's golden pleasance, Little Bice, baby fair, With a fresh and flowery presence, Dances round her nurse's chair, In the old grey loggia dances, haloed by her shining hair.

II.

"Pretty pearl in sober setting, Where the arches garner shade! Cones of maize like golden netting, Fringe the sturdy colonnade, And the lizards pertly pausing glance across the balustrade.

III.

"Brown cicala drily proses, Creaking the hot air to sleep, Bounteous orange flowers and roses, Yield the wealth of love they keep, To the sun's imperious ardour in a dream of fragrance deep.

IV.

"And a cypress, mystic hearted, Cleaves the quiet dome of light With its black green masses parted But by gaps of blacker night, Which the giddy moth and beetle circle round in dubious flight.

V.

"Here the well chain's pleasant clanging, Sings of coolness deep below; There the vine leaves breathless hanging, Shine transfigured in the glow, And the pillars stare in silence at the shadows which they throw.

VI.

"Portly nurse, black-browed, red-vested, Knits and dozes, drowsed with heat; Bice, like a wren gold-crested, Chirps and teases round her seat, Hides the needles, plucks the stocking, rolls the cotton o'er her feet.

VII.

"Nurse must fetch a draught of water, In the glass with painted wings,[1] Nurse must show her little daughter All her tale of silver rings, Dear sweet nurse must sing a couplet—solemn nurse, who never sings!

VIII.

"Blest Madonna! what a clamour! Now the little torment tries, Perched on tiptoe, all the glamour Of her coaxing hands and eyes! May she hold the glass she drinks from—just one moment, Bice cries.

IX.

"Nurse lifts high the Venice beaker, Bossed with masks, and flecked with gold, Scarce in time to 'scape the quicker Little fingers over-bold, Craving tendril-like to grasp it, with the will of four years old.

X.

"Pretty wood bird, pecking, flitting, Round the cherries on the tree. Ware the scarecrow, grimly sitting, Crouched for silly things, like thee! Nurse hath plenty such in ambush. 'Touch not, for it burns,'[2] quoth she.

XI.

"And thine eyes' blue mirror widens With an awestroke of belief; Meekly following that blind guidance, On thy finger's rosy sheaf, Blow'st thou softly, fancy wounded, soothing down a painless grief.

XII.

"Nurse and nursling, learner, teacher, Thus foreshadow things to come, When the girl shall grow the creature Of false terrors vain and dumb, And entrust their baleful fetish with her being's scope and sum.

XIII.

"Then her heart shall shrink and wither, Custom-straitened like her waist, All her thought to cower together, Huddling sheep-like with the rest, With the flock of soulless bodies on a pattern schooled and laced.

XIV.

"Till the stream of years encrust her With a numbing mail of stone, Till her laugh lose half its lustre, And her truth forswear its tone, And she see God's might and mercy darkly through a glass alone!

XV.

"While our childhood fair and sacred. Sapless doctrines doth rehearse, And the milk of falsehoods acrid, Burns our babe-lips like a curse, Cling we must to godless prophets, as the suckling to the nurse.

XVI.

"As the seed time, so the reaping, Shame on us who overreach, While our eyes yet smart with weeping, Hearts so all our own to teach, Better they and we lay sleeping where the darkness hath no speech!"

[Footnote 1: Those unacquainted with the forms of the old decorated Venetian glass will hardly understand the phrase in the text. Those who know them will feel the accuracy of the picture.]

[Footnote 2: "Non toccare che brucia," Tuscan proverb.]

It is impossible for any but those who know—not Florence, but—rural Tuscany well, to appreciate the really wonderful accuracy and picturesque perfection of the above scene from a Tuscan afternoon. But I think many others will feel the lines to be good. In the concluding stanzas, in which the writer draws her moral, there are weak lines. But in the first eleven, which paint her picture, there is not one. Every touch tells, and tells with admirable truth and vividness of presentation. In one copy of the lines which I have, the name is changed from Bice to "Flavia," and this, I take it, because of the entire non-applicability of the latter stanzas to the child, whose rearing was in her own hands. But the picture of child and nurse—how life-like none can tell, but I—was the picture of her "baby Beatrice," and the description simply the reproduction of things seen.

I think I may venture to print also the following lines. They are, in my opinion, far from being equal in merit to the little poem printed above, but they are pretty, and I think sufficiently good to do no discredit to her memory. Like the preceding, they have no title.

I.

"I built me a temple, and said it should be A shrine, and a home where the past meets me, And the most evanescent and fleeting of things, Should be lured to my temple, and shorn of their wings, To adorn my palace of memories.

II.

"The pearl of the morning, the glow of the noon, The play of the clouds as they float past the moon, The most magical tint on the snowiest peak, They are gone while I gaze, fade before you can speak, Yet they stay in my palace of memories.

III.

"I stood in the midst of the forest trees, And heard the sweet sigh of the wandering breeze, And this with the tinkle of heifer bells, As they trill on the ear from the dewy dells, Are the sounds in my palace of memories.

IV.

"I looked in the face of a little child, With its fugitive dimples and eyes so wild, It springs off with a bound like a wild gazelle, It is off and away, but I've caught my[1] And here's mirth for my palace of memories.

V.

"In the morning we meet on a mountain height, And we walk and converse till the fall of night, We hold hands for a moment, then pass on our way, But that which I've got from the friend of a day, I'll keep in my palace of memories."

[Footnote 1: Word here illegible.]

The verses which Landor praised with enthusiasm so excessive were most, or I think all of them, published in the annual edited by his friend Lady Blessington, and were all written before our marriage. I have many long letters addressed to her by that lady, and several by her niece Miss Power, respecting them. They always in every instance ask for "more."

Many of her verses she set to music, especially one little poemlet, which I remember to this day the tune of, which she called the Song of the Blackbird, and which was, if I remember rightly, made to consist wholly of the notes uttered by the bird.

Another instance of her "multiform faculty" was her learning landscape sketching. I have spoken of her figure drawing. And this, I take it, was the real bent of her talent in that line. But unable to compass the likeness of a haystack myself, I was desirous of possessing some record of the many journeys which I designed to take, and eventually did take with her. And wholly to please me she forthwith made the attempt, and though her landscape was never equal to her figure drawing, I possess some couple of hundred of water-colour sketches done by her from nature on the spot.

I used to say that if I wanted a Sanscrit dictionary, I had only to put her head straight at it, and let her feel the spur, and it would have been done!

We lived together seventeen happy years. During the five first, I think I may say that she lived wholly and solely in, by, and for me. That she should live for somebody other than herself was an absolute indefeasible necessity of her nature. During the last twelve years I shared her heart with her daughter. Her intense worship for her "Baby Beatrice" was equalled only by—that of all the silliest and all the wisest women, who have true womanly hearts in their bosoms, for their children. The worship was, of course, all the more absorbing that the object of it was unique. I take it that, after the birth of her child, I came second in her heart. But I was not jealous of little Bice.

I do not think that she would have quite subscribed to the opinion of Garibaldi on the subject of the priesthood, which I mentioned in a former chapter—that they ought all to be forthwith put to death. But all her feelings and opinions were bitterly antagonistic to them. She was so deeply convinced of the magnitude of the evil inflicted by them and their Church on the character of the Italians, for whom she ever felt a great affection, that she was bitter on the subject. And it is the only subject on which I ever knew her to feel in any degree bitterly. Many of her verses written during her latter years are fiercely denunciatory or humorously satirical of the Italian priesthood, and especially of the Pontifical Government. I wish that my space permitted me to give further specimens of them here. But I must content myself with giving one line, which haunts my memory, and appears to me excessively happy In the accurate truthfulness of its simile. She is writing of the journey which Pius the Ninth made, and describing his equipment, says that he started "with strings of cheap blessings, like glass beads for savages."

With the exception of this strong sentiment my wife was one of the most tolerant people I ever knew. What she most avoided in those with whom she associated was, not so much ignorance, or even vulgarity of manner, as pure native stupidity. But even of that, when the need arose, she was tolerant. I never knew her in the selection of an acquaintance, or even of a friend, to be influenced to the extent of even a hair's-breadth, by station, rank, wealth, fashion, or any consideration whatever, save personal liking and sympathy, which was, in her case, perfectly compatible with the widest divergence of views and opinions on nearly any of the great subjects which most divide mankind, and even with divergence of rules of conduct. Her own opinions were the honest results of original thinking, and her conduct the outcome of the dictates of her own heart—of her heart rather than of her reasoning powers, or of any code of law—a condition of mind which might be dangerous to individuals with less native purity of heart than hers.

As a wife, as a daughter, as a daughter-in-law, as a mother, she was absolutely irreproachable. In the first relationship she was all in all to me for seventeen years. She brought sweetness and light into my life and into my dwelling. She was the angel in the house, if ever human being was.

Her father became an inmate of our house after the death of his wife at a great age at Torquay, whither they had returned after the death of my wife's half-sister, Harriet Fisher. He was a jealously affectionate, but very exacting father; and few daughters, I think, could have been more admirable in her affection for him, her attention to him, her care of him. And I may very safely say that very few mothers of sons have the fortune of finding such a daughter-in-law. My mother had been very fond of her before our marriage, and became afterwards as devotedly attached to her as she was to me, of whom she knew her to be an indivisible part, while she was to my mother simply perfect. Her own mother she had always been in the habit of calling by that name. She always spoke to and of my mother as "mammy." What she was to her own daughter I have already said. There was somewhat of the tendency towards "spoiling," which is mostly inseparable from the adoration which a young mother, of the right sort, feels for her firstborn child, but she never made any attempt to avert or counteract my endeavours to prevent such spoiling. When little Bice had to be punished by solitary confinement for half an hour, she only watched anxiously for the expiration of the sentence.[1]

[Footnote 1: I do not remember that little Bice ever consoled herself under the disgrace of such captivity as my present wife has confessed to me that she did when suffering under the same condemnation. Her method of combining the maintenance of personal dignity with revenge on the oppressor, was to say to the first person who came to take her out of prison: "No! you can't come into my parlour!"]

But that her worth, her talent, her social qualities, were recognised by a wider world than that of her own family, or her own circle of friends, is testified by the recording stone, which the Municipality placed on my house at the corner of the Piazza dell' Independenza, where it may still be seen. Indeed the honour was not undeserved. For during the whole of her residence in Italy, which nearly synchronised with the struggle of Italy for her independence and unity, she had adopted the Italian cause heart and soul, and done what was in her to do, for its advancement. The honour was rendered the more signal, and the more acceptable, from the fact that the same had recently been rendered by the same body to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.



CHAPTER XIX.

The house in the Piazza dell' Independenza, which was known in the city as "Villino Trollope," and of which I have spoken at the close of the last chapter, was my property, and I had lived in it nearly the whole of my married life. During that time four deaths had occurred among its inmates.

The first to happen was that of the old and highly valued servant of whom I had occasion to speak when upon the subject of Mr. Hume's spiritualistic experiences at my house. She had been for many years a much trusted and beloved servant in the family of Mr. Garrow at Torquay, and had accompanied them abroad. Her name was Elizabeth Shinner. Her death was felt by all of us as that of a member of our family, and she lies in the Protestant cemetery at Florence by the side of her former master, and of the young mistress whom she had loved as a child of her own.

The next to go was Mr. Garrow. His death was a very sudden and unexpected one. He was a robust and apparently perfectly healthy man. I was absent from home when he died. I had gone with a Cornishman, a Mr. Trewhella, who was desirous of visiting Mr. Sloane's copper mine, in the neighbourhood of Volterra, of which I have before spoken. We had accomplished our visit, and were returning over the Apennine about six o'clock in the morning in a little bagherino, as the country cart-gigs are called, when we were hailed by a man in a similar carriage meeting us, whom I recognised as the foreman of a carpenter we employed. He had been sent to find me, and bring me home with all speed, in consequence of the sudden illness of Mr. Garrow. As far as I could learn from him there was little probability of finding my father-in-law alive. I made the best of my way to Florence. But he had been dead several hours when I arrived. He had waked with a paralytic attack on him, which deprived him of the power of moving on the left side, and drawing his face awry, made speech almost impossible to him. He assured his servant—who was almost immediately with him—speaking with much difficulty, that it was nothing of any importance, and that he should soon get over it. But these were the last words he ever spoke, and in two or three hours afterwards he breathed his last.

Then in a few years more the crescendo wave of trouble took my mother from me at the age of eighty-three. For the last two or three years she had entirely lost her memory, and for the last few months the use of her mental faculties. And she did not suffer much. The last words she uttered were "Poor Cecilia!"—her mind reverting in her latest moments to the child whose loss had been the most recent. She had for years entertained a great horror and dread of the possibility of being buried alive, in consequence of the very short time allowed by the law for a body to remain unburied after death; and she had exacted from me a promise that I would in any case cause a vein to be opened in her arm after death. In her case there could be no possible room for the shadow of doubt as to the certainty of death; but I was bound by my promise, and found some difficulty in the performance of it. The medical man in attendance, declaring the absolute absurdity of any doubt on the subject, refused to perform an operation which, he said, was wholly uncalled for, and argued that my promise could only be understood to apply to a case of possible doubt. I had none; but was none the less determined to be faithful to my promise. But it was not till I declared that I would myself sever a vein, in however butcher-like a manner, that I induced him to accompany me to the death-chamber and perform under my eyes the necessary operation.

My mother, the inseparable companion of so many wanderings in so many lands, the indefatigable labourer of so many years, found her rest near to the two who had gone from my house before, in the beautiful little cemetery on which the Apennine looks down.

But it was not long before this sorrow was followed by a very much sorer one—by the worst of all that could have happened to me! After what I have written in the last chapter it is needless to say anything of the blank despair that fell upon me when my wife died, on the 13th of April, 1865. She also lies near the others.

My house was indeed left unto me desolate, and I thought that life and all its sweetness was over for me!

I immediately took measures for disposing of the house in the Piazza dell' Independenza, and before long found a purchaser for it. I had bought it when the speculator, who had become the owner of the ground at the corner of the space which was beginning to assume the semblance of a "square" or "piazza," had put in the foundations but had not proceeded much further with his work. I completed it, improving largely, as I thought, on his plan; adapted it for a single residence, instead of its division into sundry dwellings; obtained possession of additional ground between the house and the city wall, sufficient for a large garden; built around it, looking to the south, the largest and handsomest "stanzone"[1] for orange and lemon plants in Florence, and gathered together a collection of very fine trees, the profits from which (much smaller in my hands than would have been the case in those of a Florentine to the manner born) nevertheless abundantly sufficed to defray the expenses of the garden and gardeners. In a word, I made the place a very complete and comfortable residence. Nearly the whole of my first married life was spent in it. And much of the literary work of my life has been done in it.

[Footnote 1: "Stanzone" is the term used in Tuscany to signify the buildings destined to shelter the "Agrumi," as the orange and lemon plants are called generically, in the winter; which in Florence is too severe to permit of their being left in the open air.]

I used in those days, and for very many years afterwards, to do all my writing standing; and I strongly recommend the practice to brother quill-drivers. Pauses, often considerable intervals, occur for thought while the pen is in the hand. And if one is seated at a table, one remains sitting during these intervals. But if one is standing, it becomes natural to one, during even a small pause, to take a turn up and down the room, or even, as I often used to do, in the garden. And such change and movement I consider eminently salutary both for mind and body.

I had specially contrived a little window immediately above the desk at which I stood, fixed to the wall. The room looking on the "loggia," which was the scene of the little poem transcribed in the preceding chapter, was abundantly lighted, but I liked some extra light close to my desk.

In that room my Bice was born. For it was subsequently to her birth that the destination of it was changed from a bedroom to a study.

Few men have passed years of more unchequered happiness than I did in that house. And I was very fond of it.

But, as may be readily imagined, it became all the more odious and intolerable to me when the "angel in the house" had been taken from me.



CHAPTER XX.

CONCLUSION.

Assuredly it seemed to me that all was over; and the future a dead blank. And for a time I was as a man stunned.

But in truth it was very far otherwise! I was fifty-five; but I was in good health, young for my years, strong and vigorous in constitution, and before a year had passed it began to seem to me that a future, and life and its prospects, might open to me afresh; that the curtain might be dropped on the drama that was passed, and a new phase of life begun.

I had had, and vividly enjoyed an entire life, according to the measure that is meted out to many, perhaps I may say to most men. But I felt myself ready for another! And—thanks this time also to a woman—I have had another, in no wise less happy, in some respects, as less chequered by sorrows—more happy than the first! I am in better health too, having outgrown apparently several of the maladies which young people are subject to!

Of this second life I am not now going to tell my readers anything. "What I remember" of my first life may be, and I hope has been, told frankly without giving offence or annoyance to any human being. I don't know that the telling of the story of my second life would necessarily lead me to say anything which could hurt anybody. But mixed up as its incidents and interests and associations have been with a great multitude of men and women still living and moving and talking and writing round about me, I should not feel myself so comfortably at liberty to write whatever offered itself to my memory.

Ten years hence, perhaps ("Please God, the public lives!" as a speculative showman said), I may tell the reader, if he cares to hear it, the story of my second life. For the present we will break off here.

But not without some words of parting kindness—and shall we say, wisdom!—from an old man to readers, most of whom probably might be his sons, and many doubtless his grandsons.

Especially, my young friends, don't pay overmuch attention to what the Psalmist says about "the years of man." I knew dans le temps a fine old octo-and-nearly-nonogenarian, one Graberg de Hemsoe, a Swede (a man with a singular history, who passed ten years of his early life in the British navy, and was, when I knew him, librarian at the Pitti Palace in Florence), who used to complain of the Florentine doctors that "Dey doosen't know what de nordern constitooshions is!" and I take it the same may be said of the Psalmist. The years beyond three score and ten need not be all sorrow and trouble. Depend upon it kindly nature—prudens, as that jolly fellow, fine gentleman, and true philosopher, Horace, says in a similar connection—kindly nature knows how to make the closing decade of life every whit as delightful as any of the preceding, if only you don't baulk her purposes. Don't weigh down your souls, and pin your particles of divine essence to earth by your yesterday's vices; be sure that when you cannot jump over the chairs so featly as you can now, you will not want to do so; tell the girls with genial old Anacreon, when the time comes, that whether the hairs on your forehead be many or few, you know not, but do know well that it behoves an old man to be cheery in proportion to the propinquity of his exit, and go on your way rejoicing through this beautiful world, which not even the Radicals have quite spoilt yet.

And so a rivederci—au revoir—auf Wiedersehn—why have we no English equivalent better than "Here's to our next pleasant meeting!"



INDEX.

A.

Abbey, Reading, Mary Mitford's project concerning Aberdeen, Lord, and Lord Cowley Abrams, the Misses Absolute, Sir A., my representation of Ackland, Captain Adam, Sir Frederick Adam the forger, Dante's Adams, John Quincy, Grattan on Affinities Elective Age not counted by years Aladdin's lamp, G. Eliot wishes for Albani, Margherita Alberi, Signor Albertazzi in 1840 Alinari, photographer at Florence All the Year Round, contributions to American lady at Tuileries Americans at the Pitti Palace anecdote of meeting Lewes at an America, my brother's book on criticised by Lewes Irish in, Grattan on Amiens, excursion to Ampere, his eloge at the Academy by Arago Amphytrion, Venice as Anacreon on old age Antagonism with G. Eliot, subject of Antagonist, G. Eliot as an Antiboini, the Antiques, modern, in Our Village Antonelli, Cardinal Apennines, Grand Duke crossing the figure representing the, by Michael Angelo scenery among the Apoplexy, man dying of, anecdote of Appony, Comte d', his receptions in Paris April fool, Grattan an Arago, M., at the Academy Archduchesses, sweetness of Archduchess Sophie Arezzo, marshes near Pulszky at G. Eliot wishes to see Aristotle's Natural Science Army, Tuscan attitude of at the Revolution Arnaldo da Brescia, Niccolini's Arno river in flood the Articulation, George Eliot's Ashley, Lord, letter from Aspirates, Landor used to drop them Aspirations, early Athenaeum, my wife's letters in the Atlantic Monthly on Landor Aubrey, Miss Aumale, Duke of Aunt, Dante's Aural circulation, Lewes on Aurora Leigh, Mrs. Browning's Austen, Miss, Mary Mitford's idol Austin, Alfred Austrian troops in Florence officers, anecdote of Austria, Mary Mitford on Napoleon III.'s negotiations with Autobiography, G. Eliot on Autograph collectors Autolycus, his song Auvergne, pedestrianising in dialect of Aylmer, Admiral Lord Azeglio d'Massimo, anecdote of

B.

Baby Beatrice Backwoodsman, Young, Mary Mitford asks about Baden in Switzerland Bagni Caldi at Lucca Baths Baiae, excursion to, G. Eliot's Balzac's suppressed play Bamberg, Baroness Zandt at Banagher, my brother at Bancroft, the Historian, Grattan on his anti-Whig politics Bandi, the family at Florence Barbaras, Hermolaus Bargello, at Florence, Dante's portrait in Baritone of our way, Lewes Barrett, Elizabeth, at Torquay Theodosia Garrow's appreciation of her affection for Isa Blagden Landor on Mary Mitford's admiration for Bartley, Mrs., and Mary Mitford Bartolomei, Marchese Bath, and W.S. Landor Bavaria, ramble in Bay tree, Wordsworth's Beacon Terrace, Torquay, Mrs. Browning at Beata, La, my novel, Lewes and G. Eliot on Mrs. Carlyle on Beatrice, my daughter, George Eliot on Beaufort, Duke of Belial, Bishop, Landor calls Philpotts a Bellosguardo, at Florence Benjamin, my mother's Ben Jonson's superstition, Mary Mitford on Bereavements, different Berkeley, Grantley, and Landor Berington's Middle Ages Berti Palazzo, in Florence, Bezzi, Signor A. and Landor Bible, persecution for reading the Bier, open, used in Florence Biglow Papers, Lowell's Biographies, G. Eliot on Birmingham, my return from Blackbird, Song of the Black Down, Tennyson's house at Black Forest, Leweses in the Blackwood's Magazine, Mary Mitford on Blagden, Isa, Miss her poems her death note from Lewes inquires after and George Eliot Blandford Square, Leweses at Blaze de Bury, Madame Blessington, Lady Bob Acres, my representation of Boboli Gardens, the, at Florence anecdote of Lady Bulwer in Bohemia, Grand Duke's estates in Bologna, Grand Duke on way to Austrians at Bologna, "la Grassa" Boodh, Landor on Book of Beauty, Lady Blessington's Booksellers, Landor eschews all Bordeaux, Conversations at Borgo, San Sepolcro, Pulszky at Boston Consulate, Grattan on leave from Society of, Grattan on the "Boto," Florentine for "Voto" Bourbonnais, travels in Boutourlin family Braddons, the, at Torquay Brahman Princess, my wife's grandmother Brest Bretons, changes in character of Brightness, my mother's value for Brittany, book on costume in Broons in Brittany, costume of innkeeper's daughter, at Brougham Castle Browning, Oscar Browning, Robert at Florence his care for Landor in Florence Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, specialties of her character letters from her absolute truthfulness on Napoleon III and Theodosia Garrow her handwriting her death, Lewes on on Theodosia Trollope's faculty Bull, Rev. Mr., of Bradford Bullock, Reuben Bully, an Irish Bulwer, Lord, Landor on Bulwer, Henry, at Paris Bulwer, Lady, at Florence her character anecdote of in Boboli gardens letters from her Burial, manner of, in Florence Burial, premature fear of Burridge, Landor's landlady at Torquay Butcher's wife, anecdote of the Butter, not used by Tuscans Byron

C

Cadogan, Lady Honoria Calais, crossing to, Lewes on Camaldoli, with George Eliot to Padre forestieraio at Cambridge, near Boston, notable men there Canada Cancellieri, Francesco, his mode of writing Canigiani family at Florence Canino, Prince is marched off to the frontier his sale of his title his personal appearance Capstone Hill, at Ilfracombe Caravan, summum bonum Carlo, San, theatre at Naples, G. Eliot at Carlsruhe Carlton Hill at Penrith Carlyle, Thomas, his description of Dickens's person Landor on and Anthony Trollope Carlyle, Mrs., her description of Dickens's personal appearance on my novel La Beata Carnival at Rome at Florence Carey, translator of Dante, with Miss Mitford "Casa Colonica," Tuscan Casentino, the Casino dei Nobili at Florence Cathedral in Florence and Mr. Sloane burial of priest in, anecdote of Cavour, my wife's account of his death, George Eliot on Cemetery, Protestant, at Florence Champion, the, at the Pitti, anecdote of Charming, Dr., of Boston, Grattan on Chappell, Mr. Arthur, dinner with Chateaubriand Cheapness at the Baths of Lucca Chelsea, tea at Chiaja at Naples, G. Eliot on the Chiana, draining marshes of Chianti wine, price of Chiusi, marshes near Chorley, Henry, and Mary Mitford, at Heckfield Church, the, Landor on Church, English, Dickens on the Citta di Castello, Pulszky at Clarke, Miss (Mme. Mohl) Clemow, Mr. and Mrs., of the Royal Hotel, Ilfracombe Clergy, French, in 1840 Guizot on the Clericalism at Florence Clifden, Turbot at Cobler, Northern, The, read by Tennyson Coins in use at Florence Coker, Mrs. Colburn, Mr. and Lady Bulwer Colico on Lake Como Collins, Wilkie, story by dinner with Colloquial use of a language must be learned young Cologne Colonna Vittoria Commons, House of, Dickens on Commonwealth of Florence, my history of the Como, Lake of George Eliot at "Compagnatico." Tuscan Composition, George Eliot's difficulty in Composition, literary, Grattan on Confessor's Manual Congress, member of Congresses, Italian Scientific Conservatism forced on me Consolation, child's, in confinement Consul, British, at Boston, Grattan Mr. Grattan addressed as Consulship at Boston, Grattan on the Consultations and plans, my mother's and mine "Contadini," Tuscan Convocation, Dickens on Copper mine near Volterra Coquerel, Athanase, his preaching Corinne, a new Cornhill Magazine Cornish jury, verdict of Correggio, book on, by Signor Mignaty Correspondence of London paper Country Stories, Mary Mitford's Court Supreme, American judge, story of the Cousin, his philosophy obsolete Covent Garden Theatre, Mary Mitford's play at Cowley, Lord, ambassador in Paris Cowley, Lady, as ambassadress Cowper's home at Olney, Mary Mitford on Cramer, John Crazy Jane, authoress of Crime almost unknown in Grandducal Florence Croce, Santa, church of, in Florence and Mr. Sloane Cross, Mr., his Life of George Eliot Cruikshank and Lady Bulwer Curwen, Mr., flooding of his mine

D.

Dalling, Lord, at Paris at Florence Dall' Ongaro, the Poet Dante, his portrait at Florence Deak, Pulszky's visits to Deans, cousins of Mary Mitford Death in the street at Florence, anecdote of Death of Lewes's son Deathbeds, taste for, George Eliot's Decade of Italian Women, my book on Decade, last of life how to enjoy the Decision, a momentous D'Henin Mdlle her letters to my mother, et seq. at Tuileries ball her death "Dehors Trompeurs, les;" Mdlle. Mars in Democrat Le, French newspaper anecdote of Departure of the Duke from Florence Deputies, Chamber of, opening of in 1840 at the Desk, writing, standing at Devonshire farmer, a De Whelpdale, Lord of Manor Penrith Dexter, Arthur, of Boston Dialect, Florentine anecdote of lady speaking Dialect, provincial, as read by Tennyson Dialect, George Eliot on use of Dibden, Dr. his preaching Dickens, Charles, first meeting with personal appearance of in early youth subsequently was near-sighted his manner his so-called exaggerations his character his opinions on Italy on public schools letters from on conversation on Gibson the sculptor on Italian political situation on Louis Napoleon on Home the Medium introduces me to my first wife on the general elections on the House of Commons on the English Church on my brothers standing for Beverley last letter from Dinner, going with glee to Director of Museum, Pesth Disaffection in Tuscany, beginning of Doherty, John, Doney's coffee-house at Florence Don Giovanni, Protestant, Douarnenez, sardine fishing, etc Doubt of death Doyle, Sir F., his reminiscences Dramatic College, Royal, Dickens at Dresden as a residence Drinking-song, sung by Mr. Du Maurier Duel at Baths of Lucca, Du Maurier, Mrs. Du Maurier, Mr. and Mrs. Dupin, at the Chamber Dupin and Lady Bulwer Dyer, Lady Sir Thomas Dymock, Champion, at Florence

E.

Easter devotions Edenhall in Cumberland Luck of Election in Ireland General, Dickens on in Hungary, cost of Hungarian Elm Court, Temple, Sergeant Talfourd's address English Government and Tuscany English language, George Eliot on the Enunciation, George Eliot's Eotvoes, Baron, and Pulszky Eremo, Sagro at Camaldoli rule there ride up to inmates of Error in post-mark, singular Erysipelas, attack of, cured by Homoeopathy Esterhazy, his picture gallery Eternal City, French hated in Everett, Ed, Grattan on Examiner, the, criticism of, on my first wife's letters Exchange of portraits Ex-governor, pompous, and Grattan