A Book of Sibyls Part 2

Not very many years ago I was struck on one occasion when a n.o.ble old lady, now gone to her rest, exclaimed in my hearing that people of this generation had all sorts of merits and charitable intentions, but that there was one thing she missed which had certainly existed in her youth, and which no longer seemed to be of the same account: that public spirit which used to animate the young as well as the old.

It is possible that philanthropy, and the love of the beautiful, and the gratuitous diffusion of wall-papers may be the modern rendering of the good old-fashioned sentiment. Mrs. Barbauld lived in very stirring days, when private people shared in the excitements and catastrophes of public affairs. To her the fortunes of England, its loyalty, its success, were a part of her daily bread. By her early a.s.sociations she belonged to a party representing opposition, and for that very reason she was the more keenly struck by the differences of the conduct of affairs and the opinions of those she trusted. Her friend Dr. Priestley had emigrated to America for his convictions' sake; Howard was giving his n.o.ble life for his work; Wakefield had gone to prison. Now the very questions are forgotten for which they struggled and suffered, or the answers have come while the questions are forgotten, in this their future which is our present, and to which some unborn historian may point back with a moral finger.

Dr. Aikin, whose estimate of his sister was very different from Horace Walpole's, occasionally reproached her for not writing more constantly.

He wrote a copy of verses on this theme:--

Thus speaks the Muse, and bends her brows severe: Did I, Laet.i.tia, lend my choicest lays, And crown thy youthful head with freshest bays, That all the expectance of thy full-grown year, Should lie inert and fruitless? O revere Those sacred gifts whose meed is deathless praise, Whose potent charm the enraptured soul can raise Far from the vapours of this earthly sphere, Seize, seize the lyre, resume the lofty strain.

She seems to have willingly left the lyre for Dr. Aikin's use. A few hymns, some graceful odes, and stanzas, and _jeux d'esprit_, a certain number of well-written and original essays, and several political pamphlets, represent the best of her work. Her more ambitious poems are those by which she is the least remembered. It was at Hampstead that Mrs. Barbauld wrote her contributions to her brother's volume of 'Evenings at Home,' among which the transmigrations of Indur may be quoted as a model of style and delightful matter. One of the best of her _jeux d'esprit_ is the 'Groans of the Tankard,' which was written in early days, with much spirit and real humour. It begins with a cla.s.sic incantation, and then goes on:--

'Twas at the solemn silent noontide hour When hunger rages with despotic power, When the lean student quits his Hebrew roots For the gross nourishment of English fruits, And throws unfinished airy systems by For solid pudding and substantial pie.

The tankard now,

Replenished to the brink, With the cool beverage blue-eyed maidens drink,

but, accustomed to very different libations, is endowed with voice and utters its bitter reproaches:--

Unblest the day, and luckless was the hour Which doomed me to a Presbyterian's power, Fated to serve a Puritanic race, Whose slender meal is shorter than their grace.

VI.

Thumbkin, of fairy celebrity, used to mark his way by flinging crumbs of bread and scattering stones as he went along; and in like manner authors trace the course of their life's peregrinations by the pamphlets and articles they cast down as they go. Sometimes they throw stones, sometimes they throw bread. In '92 and '93 Mrs. Barbauld must have been occupied with party polemics and with the political miseries of the time. A pamphlet on Gilbert Wakefield's views, and another on 'Sins of the Government and Sins of the People,' show in what direction her thoughts were bent. Then came a period of comparative calm again and of literary work and interest. She seems to have turned to Akenside and Collins, and each had an essay to himself. These were followed by certain selections from the _Spectator_, _Tatler_, &c., preceded by one of those admirable essays for which she is really remarkable. She also published a memoir of Richardson prefixed to his correspondence. Sir James Mackintosh, writing at a later and sadder time of her life, says of her observations on the moral of Clarissa that they are as fine a piece of mitigated and rational stoicism as our language can boast of.

In 1802 another congregation seems to have made signs from Stoke Newington, and Mrs. Barbauld persuaded her husband to leave his flock at Hampstead and to buy a house near her brother's at Stoke Newington. This was her last migration, and here she remained until her death in 1825.

One of her letters to Mrs. Kenrick gives a description of what might have been a happy home:--'We have a pretty little back parlour that looks into our little spot of a garden,' she says, 'and catches every gleam of sunshine. We have pulled down the ivy, except what covers the coach-house We have planted a vine and a pa.s.sion-flower, with abundance of jessamine against the window, and we have scattered roses and honeysuckle all over the garden. You may smile at me for parading so over my house and domains.' In May she writes a pleasant letter, in good spirits, comparing her correspondence with her friend to the flower of an aloe, which sleeps for a hundred years, and on a sudden pushes out when least expected. 'But take notice, the life is in the aloe all the while, and sorry should I be if the life were not in our friendship all the while, though it so rarely diffuses itself over a sheet of paper.'

She seems to have been no less sociable and friendly at Stoke Newington than at Hampstead. People used to come up to see her from London. Her letters, quiet and intimate as they are, give glimpses of most of the literary people of the day, not in memoirs then, but alive and drinking tea at one another's houses, or walking all the way to Stoke Newington to pay their respects to the old lady.

Charles Lamb used to talk of his two _bald_ auth.o.r.esses, Mrs. Barbauld being one and Mrs. Inchbald being the other. Crabb Robinson and Rogers were two faithful links with the outer world. 'Crabb Robinson corresponds with Madame de Stael, is quite intimate,' she writes, 'has received I don't know how many letters,' she adds, not without some slight amus.e.m.e.nt. Miss Lucy Aikin tells a pretty story of Scott meeting Mrs.

Barbauld at dinner, and telling her that it was to her that he owed his poetic gift. Some translations of Burger by Mr. Taylor, of Norwich, which she had read out at Edinburgh, had struck him so much that they had determined him to try his own powers in that line.

She often had inmates under her roof. One of them was a beautiful and charming young girl, the daughter of Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh, whose early death is recorded in her mother's life. Besides company at home, Mrs. Barbauld went to visit her friends from time to time--the Estlins at Bristol, the Edgeworths, whose acquaintance Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld made about this time, and who seem to have been invaluable friends, bringing as they did a bright new element of interest and cheerful friendship into her sad and dimming life. A man must have extraordinarily good spirits to embark upon four matrimonial ventures as Mr. Edgeworth did; and as for Miss Edgeworth, appreciative, effusive, and warm-hearted, she seems to have more than returned Mrs. Barbauld's sympathy.

Miss Lucy Aikin, Dr. Aikin's daughter, was now also making her own mark in the literary world, and had inherited the bright intelligence and interest for which her family was so remarkable. Much of Miss Aikin's work is more sustained than her aunt's desultory productions, but it lacks that touch of nature which has preserved Mrs. Barbauld's memory where more important people are forgotten.

Our auth.o.r.ess seems to have had a natural affection for sister auth.o.r.esses. Hannah More and Mrs. Montague were both her friends, so were Madame d'Arblay and Mrs. Chapone in a different degree; she must have known Mrs. Opie; she loved Joanna Baillie. The latter is described by her as the young lady at Hampstead who came to Mr. Barbauld's meeting with as demure a face as if she had never written a line. And Miss Aikin, in her memoirs, describes in Johnsonian language how the two Miss Baillies came to call one morning upon Mrs. Barbauld:--'My aunt immediately introduced the topic of the anonymous tragedies, and gave utterance to her admiration with the generous delight in the manifestation of kindred genius which distinguished her.' But it seems that Miss Baillie sat, nothing moved, and did not betray herself. Mrs.

Barbauld herself gives a pretty description of the sisters in their home, in that old house on Windmill Hill, which stands untouched, with its green windows looking out upon so much of sky and heath and sun, with the wainscoted parlours where Walter Scott used to come, and the low wooden staircase leading to the old rooms above. It is in one of her letters to Mrs. Kenrick that Mrs. Barbauld gives a pleasant glimpse of the poetess Walter Scott admired. 'I have not been abroad since I was at Norwich, except a day or two at Hampstead with the Miss Baillies. One should be, as I was, beneath their roof to know all their merit. Their house is one of the best ordered I know. They have all manner of attentions for their friends, and not only Miss B., but Joanna, is as clever in furnishing a room or in arranging a party as in writing plays, of which, by the way, she has a volume ready for the press, but she will not give it to the public till next winter. The subject is to be the pa.s.sion of fear. I do not know what sort of a hero that pa.s.sion can afford!' Fear was, indeed, a pa.s.sion alien to her nature, and she did not know the meaning of the word.

Mrs. Barbauld's description of Hannah More and her sisters living on their special hill-top was written after Mr. Barbauld's death, and thirty years after Miss More's verses which are quoted by Mrs. Ellis in her excellent memoir of Mrs. Barbauld:--

Nor, Barbauld, shall my glowing heart refuse A tribute to thy virtues or thy muse; This humble merit shall at least be mine, The poet's chaplet for thy brows to twine; My verse thy talents to the world shall teach, And praise the graces it despairs to reach.

Then, after philosophically questioning the power of genius to confer true happiness, she concludes:--

Can all the boasted powers of wit and song Of life one pang remove, one hour prolong?

Fallacious hope which daily truths deride-- For you, alas! have wept and Garrick died.

Meanwhile, whatever genius might not be able to achieve, the five Miss Mores had been living on peacefully together in the very comfortable cottage which had been raised and thatched by the poetess's earnings.

'Barley Wood is equally the seat of taste and hospitality,' says Mrs.

Barbauld to a friend.

'Nothing could be more friendly than their reception,' she writes to her brother, 'and nothing more charming than their situation. An extensive view over the Mendip Hills is in front of their house, with a pretty view of Wrington. Their home--cottage, because it is thatched--stands on the declivity of a rising ground, which they have planted and made quite a little paradise. The five sisters, all good old maids, have lived together these fifty years. Hannah More is a good deal broken, but possesses fully her powers of conversation, and her vivacity. We exchanged riddles like the wise men of old; I was given to understand she was writing something.'

There is another allusion to Mrs. Hannah More in a sensible letter from Mrs. Barbauld, written to Miss Edgeworth about this time, declining to join in an alarming enterprise suggested by the vivacious Mr. Edgeworth, 'a _Feminiad_, a literary paper to be entirely contributed to by ladies, and where all articles are to be accepted.' 'There is no bond of union,'

Mrs. Barbauld says, 'among literary women any more than among literary men; different sentiments and connections separate them much more than the joint interest of their s.e.x would unite them. Mrs. Hannah More would not write along with you or me, and we should possibly hesitate at joining Miss Hays or--if she were living--Mrs. G.o.dwin.' Then she suggests the names of Miss Baillie, Mrs. Opie, her own niece Miss Lucy Aikin, and Mr. S. Rogers, who would not, she thinks, be averse to joining the scheme.

VII.

How strangely unnatural it seems when Fate's heavy hand falls upon quiet and common-place lives, changing the tranquil routine of every day into the solemnities and excitements of terror and tragedy! It was after their removal to Stoke Newington that the saddest of all blows fell upon this true-hearted woman. Her husband's hypochondria deepened and changed, and the attacks became so serious that her brother and his family urged her anxiously to leave him to other care than her own. It was no longer safe for poor Mr. Barbauld to remain alone with his wife, and her life, says Mrs. Le Breton, was more than once in peril. But, at first, she would not hear of leaving him; although on more than one occasion she had to fly for protection to her brother close by.

There is something very touching in the patient fidelity with which Mrs.

Barbauld tried to soothe the later sad disastrous years of her husband's life. She must have been a woman of singular nerve and courage to endure as she did the excitement and cruel aberrations of her once gentle and devoted companion. She only gave in after long resistance.

'An alienation from me has taken possession of his mind,' she says, in a letter to Mrs. Kenrick; 'my presence seems to irritate him, and I must resign myself to a separation from him who has been for thirty years the partner of my heart, my faithful friend, my inseparable companion.' With her habitual reticence, she dwells no more on that painful topic, but goes on to make plans for them both, asks her old friend to come and cheer her in her loneliness; and the faithful Betsy, now a widow with grown-up step-children, ill herself, troubled by deafness and other infirmities, responds with a warm heart, and promises to come, bringing the comfort with her of old companionship and familiar sympathy. There is something very affecting in the loyalty of the two aged women stretching out their hands to each other across a whole lifetime. After her visit Mrs. Barbauld writes again:--

'He is now at Norwich, and I hear very favourable accounts of his health and spirits; he seems to enjoy himself very much amongst his old friends there, and converses among them with his usual animation. There are no symptoms of violence or of depression; so far is favourable; but this cruel alienation from me, in which my brother is included, still remains deep-rooted, and whether he will ever change in this point Heaven only knows. The medical men fear he will not: if so, my dear friend, what remains for me but to resign myself to the will of Heaven, and to think with pleasure that every day brings me nearer a period which naturally cannot be very far off, and at which this as well as every temporal affliction must terminate?

'"Anything but this!" is the cry of weak mortals when afflicted; and sometimes I own I am inclined to make it mine; but I will check myself.'

But while she was hoping still, a fresh outbreak of the malady occurred.

He, poor soul, weary of his existence, put an end to his sufferings: he was found lifeless in the New River. Lucy Aikin quotes a Dirge found among her aunt's papers after her death:--

Pure Spirit, O where art thou now?

O whisper to my soul, O let some soothening thought of thee This bitter grief control.

'Tis not for thee the tears I shed, Thy sufferings now are o'er.

The sea is calm, the tempest past, On that eternal sh.o.r.e.

No more the storms that wrecked thy peace Shall tear that gentle breast, Nor summer's rage, nor winter's cold That poor, poor frame molest.

Farewell! With honour, peace, and love, Be that dear memory blest, Thou hast no tears for me to shed, When I too am at rest.

But her time of rest was not yet come, and she lived for seventeen years after her husband. She was very brave, she did not turn from the sympathy of her friends, she endured her loneliness with courage, she worked to distract her mind. Here is a touching letter addressed to Mrs.

Taylor, of Norwich, in which she says:--'A thousand thanks for your kind letter, still more for the very short visit that preceded it. Though short--too short--it has left indelible impressions on my mind. My heart has truly had communion with yours; your sympathy has been balm to it; and I feel that there is _now_ no one on earth to whom I could pour out that heart more readily.... I am now sitting alone again, and feel like a person who has been sitting by a cheerful fire, not sensible at the time of the temperature of the air; but the fire removed, he finds the season is still winter. Day after day pa.s.ses, and I do not know what to do with my time; my mind has no energy nor power of application.'

How much she felt her loneliness appears again and again from one pa.s.sage and another. Then she struggled against discouragement; she took to her pen again. To Mrs. Kenrick she writes:--'I intend to pay my letter debts; not much troubling my head whether I have anything to say or not; yet to you my heart has always something to say: it always recognises you as among the dearest of its friends; and while it feels that new impressions are made with difficulty and early effaced, retains, and ever will retain, I trust beyond this world, those of our early and long-tried affection.'

She set to work again, trying to forget her heavy trials. It was during the first years of her widowhood that she published her edition of the British novelists in some fifty volumes. There is an opening chapter to this edition upon novels and novel-writing, which is an admirable and most interesting essay upon fiction, beginning from the very earliest times.

In 1811 she wrote her poem on the King's illness, and also the longer poem which provoked such indignant comments at the time. It describes Britain's rise and luxury, warns her of the dangers of her unbounded ambition and unjustifiable wars:--