DECEMBER 30, 1894.
I resume this from the old book which contains my recollections up to 1859, when I came home from Rome with my three children, Cecco a baby of two months old. I stayed for some months, as I have said, with my brother in Birkenhead, and then went to Scotland — to Fife — for the summer, taking a small house in Elie. The Milligans (Mrs. Milligan was Anne Mary Moir, a daughter of Delta, one of the girl friends whom I liked to have to stay with me in the early days of my married life in London) were at Kilconquhar, where Mr. Milligan was minister, a man afterwards distinguished in his way, a well-known Biblical scholar and professor at Aberdeen. I was still only thirty-one, and in full convalescence of sorrow, and feeling myself unaccountably young notwithstanding my burdened life and my widow’s cap, which, by the way, I put off a year or two afterwards for the curious reason that I found it too becoming! That did not seem to me at all suitable for the spirit of my mourning: it certainly was, as my excellent London dressmaker made it for me, a very pretty head-dress, and an expensive luxury withal.
The Blackwoods were at Gibleston for the summer, a place quite near, so that I had friends within reach. I had not seen very much of John Blackwood, but he was already a friend, with that curious kind of intimacy which is created by a publisher’s knowledge of all one’s affairs, especially when these affairs mean struggles to keep afloat and a constant need of money. He had bidden me draw upon him when my husband died, and I was very grateful and apt to boast of it, as I have or had a way of doing; so that people who have served me in this way, even when, as sometimes happened, the balance changed a little, have always conceived themselves to be my benefactors. But he was a genial benefactor, and he and his wife used to come to see me; so that, though lonely and a stranger, I was not entirely out of a kind of society. I must, however, have been very lonely, except for the sweet company of my three little children and my good Jane, my factotum, who had gone with me to Rome as their nurse, and helped me in my trouble, and stood faithfully by me through all. I always remember, immediately after we came home, one dreadful night when my dear baby was very ill, and was laid upon her capacious shoulder as on a feather-bed, while I watched in anguish, thinking the night would never be done or that he would not live through it, when suddenly, with one of those rapid turns peculiar to infants, he got almost well in a moment! And this picture got itself hung up upon the walls of my mind, full of a roseate glow of happiness and deliverance instead of the black despair which had seemed to be closing round me.
That winter we went to Edinburgh, where I got a droll little house in Fettes Row, down at the bottom of the hill, the lower floor and the basement with a front door, in truly Edinburgh style — for “flats” were not known in England in those days. It was a very severe winter, 1860-61, and it was severe on me too. I have told the story of one incident in it in my other book, but I may repeat it here. I had not been doing very well with my writing. I had sent several articles, though of what nature I don’t remember, to ‘Blackwood,’ and they had been rejected. Why, this being the case, I should have gone to them (John Blackwood and the Major were the firm at that moment) to offer them, or rather to suggest to them that they should take a novel from me for serial publication, I can’t tell, — they so jealous of the Magazine, and inclined to think nothing was good enough for it, and I just then so little successful. But I was in their debt, and had very little to go on with. They shook their heads of course, and thought it would not be possible to take such a story, — both very kind and truly sorry for me, I have no doubt. I think I see their figures now against the light, standing up, John with his shoulders hunched up, the Major with his soldierly air, and myself all blackness and whiteness in my widow’s dress, taking leave of them as if it didn’t matter, and oh! so much afraid that they would see the tears in my eyes. I went home to my little ones, running to the door to meet me with “flichterin’ noise and glee”; and that night, as soon as I had got them all to bed, I sat down and wrote a story which I think was something about a lawyer, John Brownlow, and which formed the first of the Carlingford series, — a series pretty well forgotten now, which made a considerable stir at the time, and almost made me one of the popularities of literature. Almost, never quite, though ‘Salem Chapel’ really went very near it, I believe. I sat up nearly all night in a passion of composition, stirred to the very bottom of my mind. The story was successful, and my fortune, comparatively speaking, was made. It has never been very much, never anything like what many of my contemporaries attained, and yet I have done very well for a woman, and a friendless woman with no one to make the best of me, and quite unable to do that for myself. I never could fight for a higher price or do anything but trust to the honour of those I had to deal with. Whether this was the reason why, though I did very well on the whole, I never did anything like so well as others, I can’t tell, or whether it was really inferiority on my part. Anthony Trollope must have made at least three times as much as ever I did, and even Miss Mulock. As for such fabulous successes as that of Mrs. Humphry Ward, which we poorer writers are all so whimsically and so ruefully unable to explain, nobody thought of them in these days.
I did not see many people in Edinburgh. I was still in deep mourning, and shy, and not clever about society — constantly forgetting to return calls, and avoiding invitations. I met a few people at the Blackwoods’, and I remember in the dearth of incidents an amusing evening (which I think, however, came a few years later) when Professor Aytoun dined at Miss Blackwood’s, he and I being the only guests. Miss Blackwood was one of the elders of the Blackwood family, and at this period a comely, black-haired, dark-complexioned person, large, and much occupied with her dress, and full of amusing peculiarities, with a genuine drollery and sense of fun, in which all the family were strong. She was sometimes the most intolerable person that could be conceived, and insulted her friends without compunction; but the effect upon me at least was always this — that before the end of one of her tirades she would strike, half consciously, a comical note, and my exasperation would explode into laughter. She was full of recollections of all sorts of people, and of her own youthful successes, which, though stout and elderly, she never outgrew, — still remembering the days when she was called a sylph, and never quite sure that she was not making a triumphant impression even in these changed circumstances. She was very fond of conversation, and truly exceedingly queer in the remarks she would make, sometimes so totally out of all sequence that the absurdity had as good an effect as wit, and often truly droll and amusing, after the fashion of her family. I remember when some people were discussing the respective merits of Rome and Florence, Miss Blackwood gave her vote for Rome. “Ah,” she said with an ecstatic look, “when you have read the ‘Iliad’ in your youth, it all comes back!” Another favourite story of her was, that when one of her brothers asked her, on mischief bent, no doubt, “Isabella, what are filbert nails?” she held out her hand towards him, where he was sitting a little behind her, without a word. She had a beautiful hand, and was proud of it.
But I have not told my story of Aytoun. Miss Blackwood had asked him to dine with us alone, and he came, and we flattered him to the top of his bent, she half sincerely, with that quaint mixture of enthusiasm and ridicule which I used to say was the Blackwood attitude towards that droll, partly absurd, yet more or less effective thing called an author; and I, I fear, backing her up in pure fun, for I was no particular admirer of Aytoun, who was then an ugly man in middle age, with the air of being one of the old lights, but without either warmth or radiancy. We got him between us to the pitch of flattered fatuity which all women recognise, when a man looks like the famous scene painter, “I am so sick, I am so clevare”; his eyes bemused and his features blunted with a sort of bewildered beatitude, till suddenly he burst forth without any warning with “Come hither, Evan Cameron” — and repeated the poem to us. Miss Blackwood, ecstatic, keeping a sort of time with flourishes of her hand, and I, I am afraid, overwhelmed with secret laughter. I am not sure that he did not come to himself with a horrified sense of imbecility before he reached the end.
I got rather intimate with old Mrs. Wilson, a very dear old lady, the mother of my sister-in-law, Jeanie, and of Dr. George Wilson and Sir Daniel Wilson — who lived at quite a great distance from me, a very long walk which I used to take every Sunday afternoon, with a complacent sense that it was a fine thing to do. She had a lonely day on Sunday, being very deaf, and unable to go to church, and her daughter much occupied by Sunday classes, &c. Although deaf, she was an amusing and good talker, and used to give me all sorts of good advice, and tell me stories of her life. Her advice was chiefly about my children, whom she wished me to bring up on Museums and the broken bread of Science, which I loathed, pointing out to me with triumph how this system had succeeded with her own sons. It was a very long walk to Elm Cottage. I don’t know Edinburgh well enough to say exactly where it was, but I had to mount the hill to Princes Street, and then go somehow by Bruntsfield Links, I think, past a Roman Catholic Convent (St Margaret’s?), and a long solitary way beyond that. I was rather proud of myself for resisting all temptations to take a cab, though the dark road by the Nunnery, which was very lonely, used to frighten me considerably.
It was then I first became acquainted with the Storys, Mr, afterwards Dr, Story coming to see me in respect to my proposed Memoir of Edward Irving, which he had by some means heard about. My article in ‘Blackwood’ on Irving must have been published that winter: no, no, it was published much before we went to Italy, and I had been to Albury to see Mr. Drummond,7 my husband accompanying me, which was the first beginning of that project. Mr. Story told me of his father’s long intimacy with Irving, and promised me many letters if I would go to the manse of Roseneath to see them. I went accordingly, rather unwillingly in cold February weather, grudging the absence from my children for a few days very much. I did not know anything about the West of Scotland, and, winter as it was, the lovely little loch was a revelation to me, with the wonderful line of hills called the Duke’s Bowling Green, which I afterwards came to know so well. The family at the manse was a very interesting one. The handsome young minister, quite young, though already beginning to grow grey — a very piquant combination (I was so myself, though older by several years than he) — and his mother, a handsome old lady full of strong character, and then a handsome sister with her baby, the most interesting of all, with a shade of mystery about her. They were, as people say, like a household in a novel, and attracted my curiosity very much. But when I was sent to my room with a huge packet of letters, and the family all retired for the night, and the deep darkness and silence of a winter night in the country closed down upon me, things were less delightful. The bed in my room was a gloomy creation, with dark-red moreen curtains, afterwards, as I found, called by Mr. Story — witty and profane— “a field to bury strangers in.” I had a pair of candles, which burned out, and a fire, which got low, while I agonised over the letters, not one of which I could make out. The despairing puzzle of that diabolical handwriting, which was not Irving’s after all (who wrote a beautiful hand), but only letters addressed to him, and the chill that grew upon me, and the gradual sense of utter stupidity that came over me, I can’t attempt to describe. I sat up half the night, but in vain. Next day Mr. Campbell of Row came specially to see me, a little shocked, I am afraid, to find the future biographer of Irving a young person, rather apt to be led astray and laugh with the young people in the midst of his serious talk. Mr. Campbell had been a very notable character in these parts, and was at that time reverenced and admired as an apostle, though perhaps to me a little too much disposed, like everybody else, to tell me of himself instead of telling me of Irving, on whom my soul was bent. I never have had, I fear, a strong theological turn, and his exposition at family prayers, though I did my best to think it very interesting, confounded me, especially next morning when I had to catch the boat at a certain hour in order to catch the train and get home to my babies. All these details, however, gave a whimsical mixture of fun, to which, a sort of convalescent as I was from such trouble and sorrow, and long deprived of cheerful society, my mind yielded, in spite of a little resistance on the part of my graver side, which had honestly expected never to laugh again. This visit laid the foundation of a long friendship and much and generally very lively intercourse.
How strange it is to me to write all this, with the effort of making light reading of it, and putting in anecdotes that will do to quote in the papers and make the book sell! It is a sober narrative enough, heaven knows! and when I wrote it for my Cecco to read it was all very different, but now that I am doing it consciously for the public, with the aim (no evil aim) of leaving a little more money, I feel all this to be so vulgar, so common, so unnecessary, as if I were making pennyworths of myself. Well! what does it matter? Will my boys ever see it? Do they ever see me? Have they the power, as some one says, of being present when they desire to be by a mere process of thought? I would rather it were not so. I should not like to fix them to earth, to an old mother, an old woman, when they are both young men in the very height of life. But why should I turn back here to this continual strain of my thoughts? There is too much of this already. I got a letter from Dr. Story the other day, from Taymouth, about which we had wandered once together in a little holiday expedition full of talk and frolic, more than thirty years ago. It was a very kind letter. I could see that his heart swelled with pity for the lonely woman, bereaved of all things, whom he had known so different. Good friend, though we have drifted so far apart since then. But I must try to begin again.
I saw various other people besides Mr. Campbell and the Storys, in pursuit of information about Irving, and came across some amusing scenes, though they have passed out of my recollection for the most part. I remember making the discovery already noted — which, of course, I promulgated to all my friends — that every one I saw on this subject displayed the utmost willingness to tell me all about themselves, with quite a secondary interest in Irving. One gentleman in Edinburgh told me the whole story of his own wife’s illness and death, and that he had reflected on the evening of her death that his children were almost more to be pitied than himself, since it was possible that he might get a new wife, while they could never have a new mother. Not an original thought, perhaps, but curious as occurring at such a moment. This was told me apropos of the fact that Irving, I think, had once dined in the house during the reign of that poor lady. She had more than one successor, if I remember rightly.
One of my people whom I went to see on this subject was Dr. Carlyle, whom I found surrounded with huge books, — books of a kind with which I was afterwards well acquainted — the ‘Acta Sanctorum’ and the like. He was writing a life of Adamnan, the successor of Columba. My recollection of him is of a small, rather spruce man, not at all like his great brother. (Mrs. Carlyle used to say of Dr. John that he was one of the people who seemed to have been born in creaking shoes.) It must have been he who told me to go and see Carlyle himself, who could tell me a great deal more than he could about Irving. I fancy that I must have made a run up to London from Edinburgh in the summer of 1861, and stayed with Mrs. Powell in Palace Gardens — a sister of Mr. Maurice, who had been very kind and friendly to me for a year or two before my husband’s death. This must have been my first visit to her after, for I remember that she questioned me as to how I was “left,” and that I answered her cheerfully, “With my head and my hands to provide for my children,” and was truly surprised by her strange look and dumb amazement at my cheerfulness. I suppose now, but never thought then, that it was something to be amazed at. I don’t remember that I ever thought it anything the least out of the way, or was either discouraged or frightened, provided only that the children were all well.
It was on this occasion that, shy as I always was, yet with the courage that comes to one when one is about one’s lawful work, and not seeking acquaintance or social favour, I bearded the lion in his den, and went to see Mr. Carlyle in the old house in Cheyne Row, which people are now trying, I think very unwisely, to make a shrine or museum of, which I should myself hate to see. He received me (I suppose I must have had an introduction from his brother) with that perfect courtesy and kindness which I always found in him, telling me, I remember, that he could tell me little himself, but that “the wife” could tell me a great deal, if I saw her. I forget whether he took any steps to acquaint me with “the wife,” for I remember that I left Cheyne Row with a flutter of disappointment, feeling that though I had seen the great man, which was no small matter, I was not much the wiser. I remember his tall, thin, stooping figure between the two rooms of the library on the ground floor, in the pleasant shadow of the books, and subdued light and quiet in the place which seemed to supply a very appropriate atmosphere. I did not even know, and certainly never should have learned from any look or tone of his, that I had run the risk of being devoured alive by thus intruding on him. But though I was fluttered by the pride of having seen him, and that people might say “II vous a parle, grand’mere,” I felt that my hopes were ended and that this, was to be all. However, I was mistaken. A day or two after I was told (being still at Mrs. Powell’s) that a lady whose carriage was at the door begged me to go out and speak to her, Mrs. Carlyle. I went, wondering, and found in a homely little brougham a lady with bright eyes and very hollow cheeks, who told me she had to be out in the open air for certain hours every day, and asked me to come and drive with her that we might talk about Irving, whom her husband had told her I wanted to hear about. She must have been over sixty at this time, but she was one of those women whom one never thinks of calling old; her hair was black without a grey hair in it (mine at half the age was already quite grey), her features and her aspect very keen, perhaps a little alarming. When we set off together she began by asking me if I did not come from East Lothian; she had recognised many things in my books which could only come from that district. I had to answer, as I have done on various occasions, that my mother had lived for years in East Lothian, and that I had been so constantly with her that I could never tell whether it was I myself who remembered things or she. This made us friends on the moment; for she too had had a mother, whom, however, she did not regard with all the respect I had for mine. What warmed my heart to her was that she was in many things like my mother; not outwardly, for my mother was a fair radiant woman with a beautiful complexion, and Mrs. Carlyle was very dark, with a darkness which was, however, more her meagreness and the wearing of her eager spirit than from nature, or, at least, so I thought, — but in her wonderful talk, the power of narration which I never heard equalled except in my mother, the flashes of keen wit and sarcasm, occasionally even a little sharpness, and always the modifying sense of humour under all. She told me that day, while we drove round and round the Park, the story of her childhood and of her tutor, the big young Annandale student who set her up on a table and taught her Latin, she six years old and he twenty (“perhaps the prettiest little fairy that ever was born,” her old husband said to me, describing this same childhood in his deep broken-hearted voice the first time I saw him after she was gone). I felt a little as I had felt with my mother’s stories, that I myself remembered the little girl seated on the table to be on his level, repeating her Latin verbs to young Edward Irving, and all the wonderful life and hope that were about them, — the childhood and the youth and aspiration never to be measured. We jogged along with the old horse in the old fly and the steady old coachman going at his habitual jog, and we might have been going on so until now for anything either of us cared, — she had so much to say and I was so eager to hear.
I have one gift that I know of, and I am a little proud of it. It is that of making people talk — at least, of making some people talk. My dear Lady Cloncurry says that it is like the art of driving a hoop, — that I give a little touch now and then, and my victim rolls on and on. But my people who pour forth to me are not my victims, for I love to hear them talk and they take pleasure in it, for the dear talk’s sake on both sides, not for anything else; for I have never, I am glad to say, been “a student of human nature” or any such odious thing, nor practised the art of observation, nor spied upon my friends in any way. My own opinion has always been that I was very unobservant, — whatever I have marked or noted has been done quite unaware; and also, that to study human nature was the greatest impertinence, to be resented whenever encountered.
My friendship with Mrs. Carlyle was never broken from this time — it must have been the summer either of 1860 or 1861 — till her death. She came to see me frequently, and I spent some (but few) memorable evenings in her house, but at that time did not see her husband again.
January 22.
I have been reading the life of Mr. Symonds, and it makes me almost laugh (though little laughing is in my heart) to think of the strange difference between this prosaic little narrative, all about the facts of a life so simple as mine, and his elaborate self-discussions. I suppose that to many people the other will be the more interesting way, just as the movements of the mind are more interesting than those of the body, or rather of the external life. I might well give myself up to introspection at this sad postscript of my life, when all is over for me but the one event to come, which will, I hope and believe, do away with all the suffering past and carry me back, a happy woman, to my family, to a home; though whether it will be like the home on earth who can tell? Nothing can be more sad than the home on earth in which I am now, — the once happy home that rang with my boys’ voices and their steps, where everything is full of them, and everything empty, empty, cold, and silent! I don’t know whether it is more hard for me to be here with all these associations, or to be in some other place which might not be so overwhelming in its connection with what is past. But it is not a question I need discuss here. Indeed I must not discuss here any question of the kind at all, for any attempt at discussing myself like Mr. Symonds, if I were likely to make it, only would end in outlines of trouble, in the deep, deep sorrow that covers me like a mantle. I feel myself like the sufferers in Dante, those of whom we have been reading, who are bent under the weight of stones, though I think I may say with them that invidiosa non fui; but this is not to put myself under a microscope and watch what goes on in so paltry a thing, but only the continual appeal I am always making to heaven and earth, consciously or unconsciously, saying often, I know, as I have no right to say, “Is this fair, — is it right that I should be so bowed down to the earth and everything taken from me?” This makes of itself so curious a change even in this quite innocent little narrative of my life. It is so strange to think that when I go it will be touched and arranged by strange hands, — no child of mine to read with tenderness, to hide some things, to cast perhaps an interpretation of love upon others, and to turn over all my papers with the consciousness of a full right to do so, and that theirs is by nature all that was mine. Good Mr. Symonds, a pleasant, frank, hearty man, as one saw him from outside! God bless him! for he was kindly to Cecco, who in his tender kindliness made a little pilgrimage to Davos the year after Mr. S. died to see his family and offer his sympathy — one of the many unrevealed impulses of kindness he had which they never probably guessed at all. But it is vain for me to go on in this strain. I have fallen back into my own way of self-comment, — and that is such a different thing.
In the beginning of the winter of 1861 I went to Ealing, and settled down there in a tiny house on the Uxbridge Road. It had a small drawing-room opening on a rather nice garden, a long strip of ground truly suburban, with a pretty plot of grass, a hedge of lilacs and syringas, and vegetables beyond that, — very humble, but I had no pretensions. I think by moments I must have been quite happy here. I remember the cluster of us on the grass, my little Maggie, a little mother in her way, and the two boys. We kept pigeons for the first and only time, and the pretty creatures were fluttering about, and the house standing all open doors and windows, and the sunshine and peace over all. I wrote a few verses, I remember, called “In the Eaves,” and had a pang of conscious happiness, always touched with foreboding.
I had gone to Ealing to be near the Blacketts, who, much better off than I and in a much bigger house as became a publisher, lived also in the village, which was not half the size it is now. I had got very intimate with them somehow, I can scarcely tell how. Mrs. Blackett was about my age, and a fine creature, very much more clever than her husband, though treated by him in any serious matter as if she had been a little girl, — a thing quite new to me, and which I could not understand. I remember later by some years, at a time when she had got to be very anxious about the education of her boys and he had been somehow moved — a little, perhaps, by myself, impelled in secret by her — to think of sending Arthur to Eton, that while talking it over with me, he suddenly turned to her and said, “Come, Nell, tell me what you think — let us hear your opinion.” I remember the frightened look that came on her face, the same look which came over it when she flew before the cow for which she was frightened, and she cried, “Oh, Henry, whatever you think best,” and morally ran away, though it was indeed her movement through another which was in reality setting him agoing. Now, why was she afraid of him? He was as good to her as a rather good-humoured but self-important man could be, very fond of her and very proud of her. She was a pretty woman, bright and full of spirit, and much his superior, knowing nothing about books, indeed, but neither did he, — why was she frightened to express an opinion while privately moved very strongly, much more strongly than he was, with the desire to get that important matter decided, and secretly working upon him by all the means at her command? Through their house — planned like so many houses of the same kind, on the system of having everything as expensive as could be got, and making as little show as possible for the money, the latter not, perhaps, intentional, but from preference for the humdrum — there fluttered a confused drift from time to time of literary persons, somewhat small beer like myself, novel-writers and suchlike. These were all very literary: our hosts were not literary at all, but with a business interest in us, along with a certain kindly contempt, such as publishers generally entertain for the queer genus writer. It was kindly at least on the part of the good Blacketts, who were the kindest folk, he always very brotherly to me, and she most affectionate. I was very fond of Ellen Blackett, admired her and thought much of her. Their house was full of big noisy boys, some of them just the same ages as mine — a great bond between young mothers; handsome boys, wild and troublesome in later life, but with that stout commercial thread in them which brings men back to a life which is profitable when they have sown their wild oats, — not the highest motive, perhaps, but a recuperative force, such as it was.
I had introduced Mr. Blackett by his desire to Miss Mulock in London, — he, apparently with some business gift or instinct imperceptible to me, having made out that there were elements of special success in her. Probably, however, this instinct was no more than an appreciation in himself of the sentimentalism in which she was so strong. He had at once made an arrangement with her, of which ‘John Halifax’ was the result, the most popular of all her books, and one which raised her at once to a high position, I will not say in literature, but among the novel-writers of one species. She made a spring thus quite over my head with the helping hand of my particular friend, leaving me a little rueful, — I did not at all understand the means nor think very highly of the work, which is a thing that has happened several times, I fear, in my experience. Success as measured by money never came to my share. Miss Mulock in this way attained more with a few books, and these of very thin quality, than I with my many. I don’t know why. I don’t pretend to think that it was because of their superior quality. I had, however, my little success too, while I lived in Ealing. I began in ‘Blackwood’ the Carlingford series, beginning with a story called ‘The Doctor’s Family,’ which I myself liked, and then ‘Salem Chapel.’ This last made a kind of commotion, the utmost I have ever attained to. John Blackwood wrote to me pointing out how I had just missed doing something that would have been made worth the while; and I believe he was right, but the chapel atmosphere was new and pleased people. As a matter of fact I knew nothing about chapels, but took the sentiment and a few details from our old church in Liverpool, which was Free Church of Scotland, and where there were a few grocers and other such good folk whose ways with the minister were wonderful to behold. The saving grace of their Scotchness being withdrawn, they became still more wonderful as Dissenting deacons, and the truth of the picture was applauded to all the echoes. I don’t know that I cared for it much myself, though Tozer and the rest amused me well enough. Then came ‘The Perpetual Curate’ and ‘Miss Marjoribanks.’ I never got so much praise, and a not unfair share of pudding too. I was amused lately to hear the comments of Mr. David Stott of Oxford Street, the bookseller, on this. He told me that he had been in the Blackwoods’ establishment at the time, and of the awe and horror of Mr. Simpson at the prodigal extravagance of John Blackwood in giving me the price he did, £1500, for ‘The Perpetual Curate.’ One could see old Simpson, pale, with the hair of his wig standing up on his head, remonstrating, and John Blackwood, magnanimous, head of the house of Blackwood, and feeling rather like a feudal suzerain, as he always did, declaring that the labourer was worthy of his hire. Stott had the air too of thinking it was sinful extravagance on the editor’s part. As for me, I took what was given me and was very grateful, and no doubt sang praises to John. On the other side, it was Henry Blackett who turned pale at Miss Mulock’s sturdy business-like stand for her money. He used to talk of his encounters with her with affright, very grave, not able to laugh.
This was also the time when I wrote the ‘Edward Irving.’ It must have been my good time, the little boat going very smoothly and all promising well, and, always my burden of happiness, the children all well. They had the measles, I remember, and were all a little ill the day of the Prince of Wales’s marriage, Cyril least ill of all, but feverish one day, when, as I stood over him, putting back his hair from his little hot forehead, he said to me with a pretty mixture of baby metaphor, which I was very proud of and never forgot, “Oh, mamma, your hand is as soft as snow.” How like him that was, the poetry and the perception and the tenderness! Cecco too had a momentary illness, — a little convulsion fit which frightened me terribly, one of the few times when I quite lost my head. I remember holding him in his hot bath, and all the while going on calling for hot water and hearing myself do so, and unable to stop it. It was a day on which Mrs. Carlyle was coming for the afternoon. When she arrived I was sitting before the fire (though it was summer), with my baby wrapped in a blanket, just out of his bath, and humming softly to him, and he had just startled me out of my misery and made my heart leap for joy, by pulling my face to him with a way he had and saying, all himself again, “Why you singing hum-bum? Sing ‘Froggy he would a-wooing go.’” He was only two and a-half. Mrs. Carlyle sat by me, so kind and tender and full of encouragement, as if she had known all about babies, but did not stay very long. I think I can see her by the side of the fire, telling me all kinds of comforting things; and by the first post possible that same evening, I got a letter from her telling me that Mr. Carlyle had made her sit down at once and write to tell me that a sister of his had once had just such an attack, which never was repeated. God bless them, that much maligned, much misunderstood pair! That was not much like the old ogre his false friends have made him out to be.
Here is a pretty thing. I should like if I could to write what people like about my books, being just then, as I have said, at my high tide, and instead of that all I have to say is a couple of baby stories. I am afraid I can’t take the books au grand serieux. Occasionally they pleased me, very often they did not. I always took pleasure in a little bit of fine writing (afterwards called in the family language a “trot”), which, to do myself justice, was only done when I got moved by my subject, and began to feel my heart beat, and perhaps a little water in my eyes, and ever more really satisfied by some little conscious felicity of words than by anything else. I have always had my sing-song, guided by no sort of law, but by my ear, which was in its way fastidious to the cadence and measure that pleased me; but it is bewildering to me in my perfectly artless art, if I may use the word at all, to hear of the elaborate ways of forming and enhancing style, and all the studies for that end.
A good deal went on during that short time at Ealing. I had visitors, Miss Blackwood for two months, and much driving up and down to London to the Exhibition of 1862, which I loathed; but she enjoyed and dragged me, if not at her chariot wheels yet in the “rusty fly,” which added very much to my expenses and wasted my time, with the result of being set down by her as very extravagant, — a reproach which has come up against me at various periods of my life. Dr. Story came with her, or at least at the same time, and afterwards Principal Tulloch and his wife, whose acquaintance I had made at Edinburgh, St Andrews, and Roseneath in the intervening summer of these two years, which I spent at Roseneath, for which I had taken a great fancy — the beautiful little loch and the hills. I must have gone then to Willowburn, a small house on a high bank, with a lovely view of the loch and the opposite shore, all scattered with houses among the trees, with the steamboat bustling up and down, and a good deal of boating and singing and Highland expeditions, — all very amusing, almost gay, as I had seldom been in my life before. There was always a youthful party in the manse, and the Tullochs generally for a time, and various visitors coming and going, — from the high respectability of Mr. Edward Caird, now Master of Balliol, and Mr. Moir, to all sorts of jocular and light-minded people. I remember coming home from some wildish expedition, sunburnt and laden with flowers, — a small group full of fun and laughter sitting together on deck, — when suddenly the handsome serious form of Mrs. M., always tiree a quatre epingles, always looking propriety itself, was seen slowly ascending up the cabin stairs, to the confusion and sudden pallor of myself in particular, to whom she was coming on a visit, I doubt if I had ever been so gay. I was still young, and all was well with the children. My heart had come up with a great bound from all the strain of previous trouble and hard labour and the valley of the shadow of death. There was some wit, or at least a good deal of humour, in the party, and plenty of excellent talk. The Principal talked very well in those days — indeed he always did, but never so well as at that time; and Mr. Story, too, was an excellent talker, and his sister very clever and bright; and my dear padrona,8 if she never said very much, always quick to see everything, and never able to resist a laugh. We got to have a crowd of allusions and mutual recollections after all our boatings and drivings and ludicrous little adventures on the loch and the hills, which produced a great deal of laughter even when they were not witty — Jack Tulloch’s appetite, for instance, when he was taken with us on one occasion, and looked on with exquisite contempt at our admiring raptures over the scenery, but came to life whenever lunch was going, and was devotedly attended by the Highland waiters, who entered into the joke and plied him with dish after dish. He was only about eleven, poor boy. We were like Farmer Flamborough and his daughters, just as much amused by all these small matters as if they had been the most amusing things in the world. Miss Blackwood continued to make part occasionally of our expeditions, and always an amusing part. She was full of the humour and drollery of her family, gifts in which they were all strong, with many little eccentricities of her own, fits of temper almost always redeemed at the end by a flash of fun which made the incipient quarrel end in a burst of laughter.
I worked very hard all the time, I scarcely know how, for I was always subject to an irruption of merry neighbours bent on some ramble, whom, when they came in the evening, my big Jane, now more cook than nurse and general factotum, fed with great dishes of maccaroni, which she had learned to make in Italy, and which was our social distinction: everything was extremely primitive at Willowburn. We had one cab in the place, which took me solemnly now and then to dinner at the manse and other places, and which was driven by a certain Andie Chalmers who was our delight, who spoke in a soft, half-articulate murmur, all vowels, very tolerant of the pouring rain through which he drove us occasionally through many a wet mile of road, allowing with a smile that it was a “wee saft” when there was a deluge, and who used to come to the cab door at the foot of a hill with mild insistence, inaccessible to remonstrance, till we one by one unwillingly, yet with merry jests, got out to ease the horse.
I suppose after all that I only went for two summers to Roseneath, but it seems to have bulked very largely in my life: there was a third later, but that was in another age, as will be seen, and I was not quite three years in Ealing. Here I had often with me, as I had a fancy for having, a young lady on a long visit. It would be cruel to name by name the dear good girl, who was brought by her mother to join us one time where we were living, the whole party of us, — myself, big Jane, and the three children. The girl was very tearful and pale, and her mother whispered to me to take no notice, that she had been praying for strength to pay me this visit, in which, however, she enjoyed herself very much, I believe. This was, I fear, too good a joke to be kept from my friends.
It was in the summer of 1863 that Geraldine Macpherson came to spend some time with me at Ealing. She was much shattered with Roman fever, and she had a very bad illness of another kind, almost fatal, in my house. The high-spirited creature never gave in, kept her courage and composure through everything, but was as near as possible gone. How one wonders vainly whether, if some one thing like this had not happened, the tenor of one’s entire life might have been changed. It was she who persuaded me to go back to Rome when she returned. She persuaded the Tullochs also, to my great surprise, and I daresay their own. The Principal had been ill. It was the first of those mysterious illnesses of his when he fell under the terrible influence of a depression for which there was no apparent cause. He was in the depths of this when he and his wife were with me in 1862, and he told me the whole story of it. It originated (or he thought it did) in (of all things in the world) a false quantity he had made in some Latin passage he had quoted in a speech at some Presbytery or Assembly meeting. He told it with such impassioned seriousness, with his countenance so full of sorrow and trouble, his big blue eyes full of moisture, that I was much impressed, and, I remember, gave him out of my sympathy and emotion the equally inconceivable advice to call the men together to whom that speech had been made, and make a clean breast of it to them. I remember he was staggered in the extravagance of his talk by this queer insane suggestion, and perhaps a touch more would have awakened the man’s wholesome humour and driven the strange delusion away in a shout of laughter; but I was deadly serious, as was he. He was beginning to mend, and had been ordered a sea-voyage, and somebody offered him a passage in a Levant steamboat to Greece. And now, what with Geddie’s persuasions and a spring of eager planning on my part how and when to go, Mrs. Tulloch made up her mind to come to Rome to meet her husband, then on his way back, bringing her two eldest girls while he took his eldest boy. There was a crowd of little children left at home, and I have no doubt if I heard of such a proceeding now I should think it the wildest plan. But we carried it out notwithstanding, with a delightful indifference to ways and means which makes me shudder when I look back upon it. We set out the merriest party, ready to enjoy everything, the padrona, as I soon began to call her, with her daughters Sara and Fanny, Geddie, myself, my Jane, and the children, all so small, so happy, so bright, my three little things — Maggie approaching eleven. We took out a French governess with us for the sake of the children, a Mdlle. Coquelin, I think, who soon dropped out of my life after the great calamity came. But in the meantime we were all gay, fearing nothing. I remember very distinctly our journey from Paris to Marseilles, because it was a cheap journey, second class, and monstrous in length, twenty-seven hours, I think; but we were all very economical to start with. The endless journey it was! We were all dead-tired when we arrived, but when we reached our hotel and got round a table, and well warmed and refreshed with an innocent champagne, St. Peray, which I made them all drink, our spirits recovered. I was always great in the way of feeding my party, — would not hear of teas or coffee meals, but insisted upon meat and wine, to the horror but comfort of my companions. That, I believe, was one reason why there were never any breakdowns among us while travelling. I think with pleasure of the pleasant tumult of that arrival, — the delight of rest, the happy sleepy children all got to bed, the little party of women, all of us about the same age, all with the sense of holiday, a little outburst of freedom, no man interfering, keeping us to rule or formality. I don’t know why it should present itself to me under so pleasant a light, for I never liked second-class journeys, nor discomforts of that kind. How often have I travelled that road since, but never so free or light of heart! Heavy and sad are its recollections now, but it is a blessing of God that a happy moment (which is so much rarer) is more conspicuous in life, lighting up the long dreary lane like a lamp, than the sad ones. Oh, the bonnie little dear faces! the rapture of their wellbeing and their happiness, all clinging round mamma with innumerable appeals, — the “bundle of boys,” as my Maggie said with sweet scorn, who left no room for her arms to get round me, but only mine round her. I am old and desolate and alone, but I seem to see myself a young mother, the two little fellows in the big fauteuil behind me, clinging round my neck, and their sister at my knee. God bless them, and God bless them, — are they all together now?
We went next day, I think, in the great Messageries steamboat, by Genoa and Leghorn, to Civita Vecchia, and got to Rome in three days, with time enough in Genoa to get a glimpse of the town, and in Pisa next day, making a run from Leghorn. All was well when we got to Rome, where my poor brother William was with Robert Macpherson, helping him to sell his photographs, and pouring out his stores of knowledge upon all the visitors, to good Robert’s great admiration. The Tullochs and I got a joint-house in Capo le Case. We had two servants — a delightful donna da facienda, called Leonilda, and the only detestable Italian servant I ever saw, Antonio; but the two did everything for us somehow. We had our dinner, I think, from the Trattoria. And we had a month, or a little more, of pleasant life together. The Principal arrived from Greece — or was it Constantinople? — and all was well.
Ah me, alas! pain ever, for ever. This has been the ower-word of my life. And now it burst into the murmur of pain again.
I did not know when I wrote the last words that I was coming to lay my sweetest hope, my brightest anticipations for the future, with my darling, in her father’s grave. Oh this terrible, fatal, miserable Rome! I came here rich and happy, with my blooming daughter, my dear bright child, whose smiles and brightness everybody noticed, and who was sweet as a little mother to her brothers. There was not an omen of evil in any way. Our leaving of home, our journey, our life here, have all been among the brightest passages of my life; and my Maggie looked the healthiest and happiest of all the children, and ailed nothing and feared nothing, — nor I for her.
Four short days made all the difference, and now here I am with my boys thrown back again out of the light into the darkness, into the valley of the shadow of death. My dearest love never knew nor imagined that she was dying; no shadow of dread ever came upon her sweet spirit. She got into heaven without knowing it, and God have pity upon me, who have thus parted with the sweetest companion, on whom unconsciously, more than on any other hope of life, I have been calculating. I feared from the first moment her illness began, and yet I had a kind of underlying conviction that God would not take my ewe-lamb, my woman-child from me.
The hardest moment in my present sad life is the morning, when I must wake up and begin the dreary world again. I can sleep during the night, and I sleep as long as I can; but when it is no longer possible, when the light can no longer be gainsaid, and life is going on everywhere, then I, too, rise up to bear my burden. How different it used to be! When I was a girl I remember the feeling I had when the fresh morning light came round. Whatever grief there had been the night before, the new day triumphed over it. Things must be better than one thought, must be well, in a world which woke up to that new light, to the sweet dews and sweet air which renewed one’s soul. Now I am thankful for the night and the darkness, and shudder to see the light and the day returning.
The Principal calls “In Memorian” an embodiment of the spirit of this age, which he says does not know what to think, yet thinks and wonders and stops itself, and thinks again; which believes and does not believe, and perhaps, I think, carries the human yearning and longing farther than it was ever carried before. Perhaps my own thoughts are much of the same kind. I try to realise heaven to myself, and I cannot do it. The more I think of it, the less I am able to feel that those who have left us can start up at once into a heartless beatitude without caring for our sorrow. Do they sleep until the great day? Or does time so cease for them that it seems but a matter of hours and minutes till we meet again? God who is Love cannot give immortality and annihilate affection; that surely, at least, we must take for granted — as sure as they live they live to love us. Human nature in the flesh cannot be more faithful, more tender, than the purified human soul in heaven. Where, then, are they, those who have gone before us? Some people say around us, still knowing all that occupies us; but that is an idea I cannot entertain either. It would not be happiness but to be beside those we love yet unable to communicate with them, unable to make ourselves known.
* * * * *
The world is changed, and my life is darkened; and all that I can do is to take desperate hold of this one certainty, that God cannot have done it without reason. I can get no farther. Sometimes such a longing comes upon me to go and seek somebody, as I used to go to Frank to the studio in the old times. But I have nobody now: my friends are very sorry for me; but there is nobody in the world who has a right to share my grief, to whom my grief belongs, as it does to myself — and that is what one longs for. Sympathy is sweet, but sympathy is for lighter troubles. When it is a grief that rends one asunder, one’s longing is for the other — the only other whose heart is rent asunder by the same stroke. For me, I have all the burden to bear myself. My brother Frank writes very kindly, speaking as if it were his sorrow too; but oh, do I not know he will go back among his unbroken family, and feel all the more glad in his heart for the contrast of my affliction, and thank God the more! I don’t blame him. I would, perhaps, have done the same. Here is the end of all. I am alone. I am a woman. I have nobody to stand between me and the roughest edge of grief. All the terrible details have to come to me. I have to bear the loss, the pang unshared. My boys are too little to feel it, and there is nobody else in the world to divide it with me. O Lord, Thou wouldest not have done it but for good reason! Stand by the forlorn creature who fainteth under Thy hand, but whom Thou sufferest not to die.