Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century Part 13

In the loneliness that followed, the prince amused himself by keeping up a lively correspondence with his feminine acquaintance, for whom, even at seventy, he had not lost his fascinations. His celebrity as an author and a traveller brought him many anonymous correspondents, and he never wearied of reading and answering the sentimental effusions of his unknown admirers. In 1863 he paid a visit incognito to Muskau, the first since he had left it eighteen years before, though Branitz was but a few leagues away. He was recognised at once, and great was the joy in the little town over the return of its old ruler, who was honoured with illuminations, the discharge of cannon, and torchlight processions. The estate had pa.s.sed into the hands of Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, who had carried out all its former master's plans, and added many improvements of his own. Puckler generously admired the splendour that he had had so large a share in creating, and then went contentedly back to his _kleine Branitz_, his only regret being that he could not live to see it, like Muskau, in the fulness of its matured beauty. In 1866, when war broke out between Prussia and Austria, this grand old man of eighty-one volunteered for active service, and begged to be attached to the headquarters' staff. His request was granted, and he went gallantly through the brief campaign, but was bitterly disappointed because he was not able to be present at the battle of Koniggratz, owing to the indisposition of the king, upon whom he was in attendance.

In 1870, when France declared war against Prussia, he again volunteered, and was deeply mortified when the king declined his services on account of his advanced age. For the first time he seems to have realised that he was old, and it is probable that the disappointment preyed upon his spirits, for his strength rapidly declined, his memory failed, and on February 4,1871, after a brief illness, he sank peacefully to rest. He was buried in a tomb that he had built for himself many years before, a pyramid sixty feet high, which stood upon an acre of ground in the centre of an artificial lake. The two inscriptions that the prince chose for his sepulchre ill.u.s.trate, appropriately enough, the sharply contrasting qualities of his strange individuality--his romantic sentimentality, and his callous cynicism. The first inscription was a line from the Koran:

'Graves are the mountain summits of a far-off, fairer world.'

The second, chosen presumably for the sake of the paradox, was the French apothegm:

'Allons Chez Pluto plutot plus tard.'

WILLIAM AND MARY HOWITT

PART I

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mary Howitt From a portrait by Margaret Gillies]

The names of William and Mary Howitt are inextricably a.s.sociated with the England of the early nineteenth century, with the re-discovery of the beauty and interest of their native land, with the renaissance of the national pa.s.sion for country pleasures and country pursuits, and with the slow, painful struggle for a wider freedom, a truer humanity, a fuller, more gracious life. The Howitts had no genius, nor were they pioneers, but, where the unfamiliar was concerned, they were open-minded and receptive to a degree that is unfortunately rare in persons of their perfect uprightness and strong natural piety. If they flashed no new radiance upon the world, they were always among the first to kindle their little torches at the new lamps; and they did good service in handing back the light to those who, but for them, would have had sat in the shadow, and flung stones at the incomprehensible illuminations.

Of the two minds, Mary's was the finer and the more original. It was one of those everyday miracles--the miracles that do happen--that in spite of the severity, the narrowness, the repression of her early training, she should have forced her way through the sh.e.l.l of rigid sectarianism, repudiated her heritage of drab denials, and opened both heart and mind to the new poetry, the new art, and the new knowledge.

In her husband she found a kindred spirit, and during the more than fifty years of their pilgrimage together their eyes were ever turned towards the same goal. Though not equally gifted, they were equally disinterested, equally enlightened, and equally anxious for the advancement of humanity. They took themselves and their vocation seriously, and produced an immense quant.i.ty of careful, conscientious work, the work of honest craftsmen rather than artists, with the quality of a finished piece of cabinet-making, or a strip of fine embroidery.

Mary Howitt was the daughter of Samuel Botham, a land-surveyor at Uttoxeter. His father, the descendant of a long line of Staffordshire yeomen, Quakers by persuasion, loved a roaming life, and having married a maltster's widow with a talent for business management, was left free to indulge his own propensities. He seems to have had a talent for medical science of an empirical kind, for he dabbled in magnetism and electricity, and wandered about the country collecting herbs for headache--snuffs, and healing ointments. Samuel, as soon as he had served his apprenticeship, found plenty of employment in the neighbourhood, the country gentlemen, who had taken alarm at the revolutionary ideas newly introduced from France, being anxious to have their acres measured, and their boundaries accurately defined.

While at work upon Lord Talbot's Welsh estates in 1795, he became attracted by a 'convinced' Friend, named Ann Wood. The interesting discovery that both had a pa.s.sion for nuts, together with the gentle match-making of a Quaker patriarch, led to an engagement, and the couple were married in December, 1796.

Ann Wood was the granddaughter of William Wood, whose contract for supplying Ireland with copper coin (obtained by bribing the d.u.c.h.ess of Kendal) was turned into a national grievance by Swift, and led to the publication of the _Drapier Letters_. Although Wood's half-pence were admitted to be excellent coin, and Ireland was short of copper, the feeling against their circulation was so intense, that Ministers were obliged to withdraw the patent, Wood being compensated for his losses with a grant of 3000 a year for a term of years, and 'places'

for some of his fifteen children. Ann's father, Charles, when very young, was appointed a.s.say-master to Jamaica. After his return to England in middle life he married a lively widow, went into business as an iron-master near Merthyr Tydvil, and distinguished himself by introducing platinum into Europe, having first met with the semi-metal in Jamaica, whither it had been brought from Carthagena in New Spain.

After his death, Ann, the only serious member of a 'worldly' family, found it impossible to remain in the frivolous atmosphere of her home, and determined, in modern fashion, to 'live her own life.' After spending some years as governess or companion in various families, she became converted to Quaker doctrines, and was received into the Society of Friends.

Samuel Botham took his bride to live in the paternal home at Uttoxeter, where the preparation of the old quack doctor's herbal medicines caused her a great deal of discomfort. In the course of the next three years two daughters were born to the couple; Anna in 1797, and Mary on March 12, 1799. At the time of Mary's birth her parents were pa.s.sing through a period of pecuniary distress, owing to a disastrous speculation; but with the opening of the new century a piece of great good fortune befell Samuel Botham. He was one of the two surveyors chosen to enclose and divide the Chase of Needwood in the county of Stafford. In the early years of the nineteenth century there was, unfortunately for England, a mania for enclosing commons, and felling ancient forests. Needwood, which extended for many miles, contained great numbers of magnificent old oaks, limes, and hollies, and no less than twenty thousand head of deer. In after years, Mary Howitt often regretted that her family should have had a hand in the destruction of so vast an extent of solitude and beauty, in a country that was already thickly populated and trimly cultivated. Still, for the nine years that the work of 'disafforesting' lasted, the two little girls got a great deal of enjoyment out of the ruined Chase, spending long summer days in its gra.s.sy glades, while their father parcelled out the land and marked trees for the axe.

In her _Autobiography_ [Footnote: Edited by her daughter Margaret, and published by Messrs. Isbister in 1889.] Mary declares that it is impossible for her to give an adequate idea of the stillness and isolation of her childish life. So intense was the silence of the Quaker household, that, at four years old, Anna had to be sent to a dame's school in order that she might learn to talk; while even after both children had attained the use of speech, their ignorance of the right names for the most ordinary feelings and actions obliged them to coin words of their own. 'My childhood was happy in many respects,' she writes. 'It was so, as far as physical health, the enjoyment of a beautiful country, and the companionship of a dearly loved sister could make it--but oh, there was such a cloud over all from the extreme severity of a so-called religious education, it almost made cowards and hypocrites of us, and made us feel that, if this were religion, it was a thing to be feared and hated.' The family reading consisted chiefly of the writings of Madame Guyon, Thomas a Kempis, and St. Francis de Sales, while for light literature there were Telemachus, Fox's _Book of Martyrs_, and a work on the _Persecution of the Friends_. But it is impossible for even the most pious of Quakers to guard against all the stratagems by which the spirit of evil--or human nature--contrives to gain an entrance into a G.o.dly household. In the case of the Botham children an early knowledge of good and evil was learnt from an apparently respectable nurse, who made her little charges acquainted with most of the scandals of the neighbourhood, accustomed their infant ears to oaths, and--most terrible of all--taught them to play whist, she herself taking dummy, and transforming the nursery tea-tray into a card-table. In that silent household it was easy to keep a secret, and though the little girls often trembled at their nurse's language, they never betrayed her confidence.

In 1806 another daughter, Emma, was born to the Bothams, and in 1808 a son, Charles. In the midst of their joy and amazement at the news that they had a brother, the little girls asked each other anxiously: 'Will our parents like it?' Only a short time before a stranger had inquired if they had any brothers, and they had replied in all seriousness: 'Oh no, our parents do not approve of boys.' Now, much to their relief, they found that their father and mother highly approved of their own boy, who became the spoilt darling of the austere household. A new nurse was engaged for the son and heir, a lady of many love-affairs, who made Mary her confidante, and induced the child, then nine years old, to write an imaginary love-letter. The unlucky letter was laid between the pages of the worthy Madame Guyon, and there discovered by Mr. Botham. Not much was said on the subject of the doc.u.ment, which seems to have been considered too awful to bear discussion; but the children were removed from the influence of the nurse, and allowed to attend a day-school in the neighbourhood, though only on condition that they sat apart from the other children in order to avoid contamination with possible worldlings.

In 1809 the two elder sisters were sent to a Quaker school at Croydon, where they found themselves the youngest, the most provincial, and the worst dressed of the little community. Even in advanced old age, Mary had a keen memory for the costumes of her childhood, and the mortification that these had caused her. On their arrival at school the little girls were attired in brown pelisses, cut plain and straight, without plait or fold, and hooked down the front to obviate the necessity for b.u.t.tons, which, being in the nature of tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, were regarded as an indulgence of the l.u.s.t of the eye. On their heads they wore little drab beaver bonnets, also dest.i.tute of tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and so plain in shape that even the Quaker hatter had to order special blocks for their manufacture. The other girls were busy over various kinds of fashionable fancy-work, but the little Bothams were expected, in their leisure moments, to make half-a-dozen linen shirts for their father, b.u.t.ton-holes and all. They had never learnt to net, to weave coloured paper into baskets, to plait split straw into patterns, nor any of the other amateur handicrafts of the day. But they were clever with their fingers, and could copy almost anything that they had seen done. 'We could buckle flax or spin a rope,' writes Mary. 'We could drive a nail, put in a screw or draw it out. We knew the use of a glue-pot, and how to paper a room. We soon furnished ourselves with coloured paper for plaiting, and straw to split and weave into net; and I shall never forget my admiration of a pattern of diamonds woven with strips of gold paper on a black ground. It was my first attempt at artistic handiwork.'

After a few months at Croydon the girls were recalled to Uttoxeter on account of their mother's illness; and as soon as she recovered they were despatched to another Friends' school at Sheffield. In 1812, when Mary was only thirteen and Anna fifteen, their education was supposed to be completed, and they returned home for good. But Mr. Botham was dissatisfied with his daughters' attainments, and engaged the master of the boys' school to teach them Latin, mathematics, and the use of the globes. The death of this instructor obliged them thenceforward to rely on a system of self-education. 'We retained and perfected our rudimentary knowledge,' Mary writes, 'by instructing others. Our father fitted up a school-room for us in the stable-loft, where, twice a week, we were allowed to teach poor children. In this room, also, we instructed our dear little brother and sister. Our father, in his beautiful handwriting, used to set them copies, texts of Scripture, such as he no doubt had found of a consolatory nature. On one occasion, however, I set the copies, and well remember the tribulation I experienced in consequence. I always warred in my mind against the enforced gloom of our home, and having for my private reading at that time Young's _Night Thoughts_, came upon what seemed to me the very spirit of true religion, a cheerful heart gathering up the joyfulness of surrounding nature; on which the poet says: "'Tis impious in a good man to be sad." How I rejoiced in this!--and thinking it a great fact which ought to be noised abroad, wrote it down in my best hand as a copy. It fell under our father's eye, and sorely grieved he was at such a sentiment, and extremely angry with me as its promulgator.'

The sisters can never have found the time hang heavy on their hands, for in addition to their educational duties, their mother required them to be expert in all household matters; while, in their scanty hours of leisure, they attempted, in the face of every kind of discouragement, to satisfy their strong natural craving for beauty and knowledge. 'We studied poetry, botany, and flower-painting,' Mary writes. 'These pursuits were almost out of the pale of permitted Quaker pleasures, but we pursued them with a perfect pa.s.sion, doing in secret that which we dared not do openly, such as reading Shakespeare, the elder novelists, and translations of the cla.s.sics. We studied French and chemistry, and enabled ourselves to read Latin, storing our minds with a whole ma.s.s of heterogeneous knowledge. This was good as far as it went, but I now deplore the secrecy, the subterfuge, and the fear under which this ill-digested, ill-arranged knowledge was obtained.'

The young Quakeresses picked up ideas and models for their artistic handicraft from the most unlikely sources. A shop-window, full of dusty plaster medallions for mantelpiece decorations, gave them their first notions of cla.s.sic design. The black Wedgwood ware was to be seen in nearly every house in Uttoxeter, while a few of the more prosperous inhabitants possessed vases and jugs in the pale blue ware, ornamented with graceful figures. These precious specimens the Botham sisters used to borrow, and contrived to reproduce the figures by means of moulds made of paper pulp. They also etched flowers and landscapes on panes of gla.s.s, and manufactured 'transparencies' out of different thicknesses of cap-paper. 'I feel a sort of tender pity for Anna and myself,' wrote Mary long afterwards, 'when I remember how we were always seeking and struggling after the beautiful, and after artistic production, though we knew nothing of art. I am thankful that we made no alms-baskets, or hideous abortions of that kind. What we did was from the innate yearnings of our souls for perfection in form and colour; and our accomplished work, though crude and poor, was the genuine outcome of our own individuality.'

It was one of the heaviest crosses of Mary's girlish days that she and Anna were not permitted to exercise their clever fingers, and indulge their taste for the beautiful, in their own dress. But they found a faint vicarious pleasure in making pretty summer gowns, and embroidering elaborate muslin collars for a girl-friend who was allowed to wear fashionable clothes, and even to go to b.a.l.l.s. Even their ultra-plain costumes, however, could not disguise the fact that Anna and Mary Botham were comely damsels, and they had several suitors among the young men-Friends of Uttoxeter. But the sisters held a low opinion of the mental endowments of the average Quaker, an opinion that was only shaken by a report of the marvellous attainments of young William Howitt of Heanor, who was said to be not only a scholar, but a born genius. William's mother, Phoebe, herself a noted amateur healer, was an old friend of Mary's grandfather, the herbal doctor, but the young people had never met. However, in the autumn of 1818, William paid a visit to some relations at Uttoxeter, and there made the acquaintance of the Botham girls, who discovered that this young man-Friend shared nearly all their interests, and was full of sympathy with their studies and pursuits.

Before the end of the year Mary Botham was engaged to William Howitt, he being then six-and-twenty and she nineteen. 'The tastes of my future husband and my own were strongly similar,' she observes, 'so also was our mental culture; but he was in every direction so far in advance of me as to become my teacher and guide. Knowledge in the broadest sense was the aim of our intellectual efforts; poetry and nature were the paths that led to it. Of ballad poetry I was already enamoured, William made me acquainted with the realistic life-pictures of Crabbe; the bits of nature and poetry in the vignettes of Bewick; with the earliest works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Sh.e.l.ley, and the first marvellous prose productions of the author of _Waverley_.'

After an engagement lasting a little more than two years, William and Mary were married on April 16, 1821, the bride wearing her first silk gown--a pretty dove-colour--and a white silk shawl, finery which filled her soul with rapture. The couple spent the honeymoon in the bridegroom's native Derbyshire, visiting every spot of beauty or haunt of old tradition in that country of the romantic and the picturesque.

Incorporated in his wife's _Autobiography _is William Howitt's narrative of his parentage and youthful days, which is supplemented by his _Boys' Country Book_, the true story of his early adventures and experiences. The Howitts, he tells us, were descended from a family named Hewitt, the younger branch of which obtained Wansley Hall, near Nottingham, through marriage with an heiress, and changed the spelling of their name. His ancestors had been, for generations, a rollicking set, all wofully lacking in prudence and sobriety.

About the end of the seventeenth century, one Thomas Howitt, great-great-grandfather of William, married Catherine, heiress of the Charltons of Chilwell. But Thomas so disgusted his father-in-law by his drunken habits that Mr. Charlton disinherited his daughter, who loyally refused to leave her husband, and left his property to a stranger who chanced to bear his name. After this misfortune the Howitts descended somewhat in the social scale, and, having no more substance to waste, reformed their ways and forsook all riotous living. William's father, who held a post as manager of a Derbyshire colliery, married a Quaker lady, Phoebe Tantum of the Fall, Heanor, and was himself received into the Society of Friends in 1783.

William received a good plain education at a Quaker school at Ackworth, and grew up a genuine country lad, scouring the lanes on his famous grey pony, Peter Scroggins, the acknowledged leader of the village lads in bird-nesting and rat-hunting expeditions, and taking his full share of the work on his father's little farm. Long afterwards he used to say that every scene in and about Heanor was photographed with absolute distinctness on his brain, and he loved to recall the long days that he had spent in following the plough, chopping turnips for the cattle, tramping over the snow-covered fields after red-wing and fieldfare, collecting acorns for the swine, or hunting through the barns for eggs. The Howitt family was much less strict than that of the Bothams, for in the winter evenings the boys were allowed to play draughts and dominoes, while at Christmas there were games of forfeits, blind-man's buff, and fishing for the ring in the great posset-pot.

On leaving school at fifteen, William amused himself for a couple of years on the farm, though, curiously enough, he never thought of becoming a farmer in good earnest; indeed, at this time he seems to have had no distinct bias towards any profession. Mr. Howitt had somehow become imbued with Rousseau's doctrine that every boy, whatever his position in life, should learn a mechanical handicraft, in order that, if all else failed, he might be able to earn his own living by the labour of his hands. Having decided that William should learn carpentering, the boy was apprenticed for four years to a carpenter and builder at Mansfield, on the outskirts of Sherwood Forest. The four precious years were practically thrown away, except for the enjoyment obtained from long solitary rambles amid the picturesque a.s.sociations of the Forest, and the knowledge of natural history gained from close observation of the wild life of that romantic district.

It was not until his twenty-first birthday that William's indentures were out, and as he was still unable to make up his mind about a profession--it must be remembered that the law, the church, the army and navy were all closed to a Quaker--he spent the next seven years at home, angling in the streams like his favourite hero, Isaac Walton, and striving, by dint of hard study, to make up the many deficiencies in his education. He taught himself Latin, French, and Italian, besides working at botany, chemistry, and the dispensing of medicines.

It was during these seven years of uncertainty and experiment that William read Washington Irving's _Sketches of Geoffrey Crayon_, which produced a strong impression on his mind. With the inspiration of this book hot upon him, he made a tour on foot through the Peak country, and afterwards wrote an account of his adventures in what he fondly believed to be the style of Geoffrey Crayon. The paper was printed in a local journal under the t.i.tle of _A Pedestrian Pilgrimage through the Peak_, by Wilfrid Wendle. This was not William Howitt's first literary essay, some stanzas of his on Spring, written when he was only thirteen, having been printed in the _Monthly Magazine_, with his name and age attached.

With the prospect of marriage it was thought desirable that William should have some regular calling. Without, so far as appears, pa.s.sing any examinations or obtaining any certificates, he bought the business of a chemist and druggist in Hanley, and thither, though with no intention of settling permanently in the Potteries, he took his bride as soon as the honeymoon was over. Only seven months were spent at Hanley, and in December, 1821, the couple were preparing to move to Nottingham, where William had bought the good-will of another chemist's business. But before settling down in their new home, the Howitts undertook a long pedestrian tour through Scotland and the north of England, in the course of which they explored the Rob Roy country, rambled through Fife, made acquaintance with the beauties of Edinburgh, looked in upon Robert Owen's model factories at New Lanark, got a glimpse of Walter Scott at Melrose, were mistaken for a runaway couple at Gretna Green, gazed reverently on Rydal Mount, and tramped in all no less than five hundred miles. An account of the tour was contributed to a Staffordshire paper under the t.i.tle of _A Scottish Ramble in the Spring of 1822_, by Wilfrid and Wilfreda Wendle.

It was not until August, 1822, that the pair established themselves in a little house at Nottingham. Of the chemist's business we hear practically nothing in Mary's narrative, but a great deal about the literary enterprises in which husband and wife collaborated. They began by collecting the poems, of which each had a large number ready written, and, in fear and trembling, prepared to submit them to the verdict of critics and public. 'It seems strange to me,' wrote Mary, when she informed her sister of this modest venture, 'and I cannot reconcile myself to the thought of seeing my own name staring me in the face in every bookseller's window, or being pointed at and peeped after as a writer of verses.' In April, 1823, _The Forest Minstrel and other Poems_, by William and Mary Howitt, made its appearance in a not particularly appreciative world. The verses were chiefly descriptive of country sights and sounds, and had been produced, as stated in the Preface, 'not for the sake of writing, but for the indulgence of our own overflowing feelings.' The little book created no sensation, but it was kindly noticed, and seems to have attracted a few quiet readers who, like the writers, were lovers of nature and simplicity.

During these early years at Nottingham the Howitts kept up, as far as their opportunities allowed, with the thought and literature of their day, and never relaxed their anxious efforts after 'mental improvement.' William's brother, Richard, himself a budding poet, was at this time an inmate of the little household, which was increased in 1824 by the birth of a daughter, Anna Mary. Although the couple still remained in the Quaker fold, they were gradually discarding the peculiar dress and speech of the 'plain' Friends. They were evidently regarded as terribly 'advanced' young people in their own circle, and shocked many of their old acquaintances by the catholicity of their views, by their admiration of Byron and Sh.e.l.ley, and by the liberal tone of their own productions. Like most of the lesser writers of that day, they found their way into the popular Keepsakes and Annuals, which Mary accurately describes as 'a chaffy, frivolous, and unsatisfactory style of publication, that only serves to keep a young author in the mind of the public, and to bring in a little cash.' In 1826 Mrs. Howitt was preparing for the press a new volume of poems by herself and her husband, _The Desolation of Eyam_, and in a letter to her sister, now transformed into Mrs. Daniel Wilson, she describes her sensations while awaiting the ordeal of critical judgment, and expresses her not very flattering opinion of the contemporary reviewer.

'n.o.body that has not published,' she observes, 'can tell the almost painful excitement which the first opinions occasion. Really, for some days I was quite nervous. William boasted of possessing his mind in wise pa.s.sivity, and truly his imperturbable patience was quite an annoyance; I therefore got Rogers's beautiful poem on Italy to read, and so diverted my thoughts. Everything in the literary world is done by favour and connections. It is a miracle to me how our former volume, when we were quite unknown, got favourably noticed. In many cases a book is reviewed which has never been read, or even seen externally.'

By this time the young authors who, to use Mary's own phrase, hungered and thirsted after acquaintances who were highly gifted in mind or profound in knowledge, had acquired one or two literary friends and correspondents, among them Mrs. Hemans, Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet, and the Alaric Watts's of Keepsake fame. An occasional notice of the Howitts and their little household may be found in contemporary works by forgotten writers. For example, Sir Richard Phillips, in the section devoted to Nottingham of his quaintly-worded _Personal Tour through the United Kingdom _(1828), observes: 'Of Messrs. Howitt, husband and wife, conjugal in love and poetry, it would be vain for me to speak. Their tasteful productions belong to the nation as well as to Nottingham. As a man of taste Mr. Howitt married a lady of taste; and with rare amiability they have jointly cultivated the Muses, and produced some volumes of poetry, consisting of pieces under their separate names. The circ.u.mstance afforded a topic for ridicule to some of those anonymous critics who abuse the press and disgrace literature; but no one ventured to a.s.sail their productions.' Spencer Hall, a fellow-townsman, became acquainted with the Howitts in 1829, and in his _Reminiscences_ describes William as a bright, neat, quick, dapper man of medium height, with a light complexion, blue eyes, and brisk, cheery speech. Mary, he tells us; was always neatly dressed, but with nothing prim or sectarian in her style. 'Her expression was frank and free, yet very modest, and she was blessed with an affectionate, sociable spirit.'

A presentation copy of _The Desolation of Eyam_ was sent to the Howitts' favourite poet, Wordsworth, who, in acknowledging their 'elegant volume,' declared that, though he had only had time to turn over the leaves, he had found several poems which had already afforded him no small gratification. The harmless little book was denounced by the _Eclectic Review_ as 'anti-Quakerish, atheistical, and licentious in style and sentiment, 'but the authors were consoled by a charming little notice of their contributions to the Annuals in the _Noctes Ambrosianae_ for November, 1828. 'Who are these three brothers and sisters, the Howitts, sir?' asks the Shepherd of Christopher North, in the course of a discussion of the Christmas gift-books, 'whose names I see in the advertees.e.m.e.nts?'

_North_. I don't know, James. It runs in my head that they are Quakers. Richard and William seem amiable and ingenious men, and Sister Mary writes beautifully.

_Shepherd_. What do you mean by beautifully? That's vague.

_North_. Her language is chaste and simple, her feelings tender and pure, and her observation of nature accurate and intense. Her 'Sketches from Natural History' in the _Christmas Box_ have much of the moral--nay, rather the religious spirit--that permeates all Wordsworth's smaller poems, however light and slight the subject, and show that Mary Howitt is not only well-read in the book of Bewick, but also in the book from which Bewick has borrowed all--glorious plagiarist--and every other inspired zoologist--

_Shepherd_. The Book o' Natur'.'

The great event of 1829 for the Howitts was a visit to London, where they were the guests of Alaric and Zillah Watts, with whom they had long maintained a paper friendship. 'What wilt thou say, dear Anna,'

writes Mary in December, 'when I tell thee that William and I set out for London the day after to-morrow. I half dread it. I shall wish twenty times for our quiet fireside, where day by day we read and talk by ourselves, and n.o.body looks in upon us. I keep reasoning with myself that the people we shall see in London are but men and women, and perhaps, after all, no better than ourselves. If we could but divest our minds of _self_, as our dear father used to say we should do, it would be better and more comfortable for us. Yet it is one of the faults peculiar to us Bothams that, with all the desire there was to make us regardless of self, we never had confidence and proper self-respect instilled into us, and the want of this gives us a depressing feeling, though I hope it is less seen by others than by ourselves.... We do not intend to stay more than a week, and thou may believe we shall have enough to do. We have to make special calls on the Carter Halls, Dr. Bowring, and the Pringles, and are to be introduced to their ramifications of acquaintance. Allan Cunningham, L. E. L., and Thomas Roscoe we are sure to see.'

In Miss Landon's now forgotten novel, _Romance and Reality_, there is a little sketch of Mary Howitt as she appeared at a literary _soiree_, during her brief visit to London. The heroine, Miss Arundel, is being initiated into the mysteries of the writing world by her friend, Mrs. Sullivan, when her attention is arrested by the sight of 'a female in a Quaker's dress--the quiet, dark silk dress--the hair simply parted on the forehead--the small, close cap--the placid, subdued expression of the face, were all in strong contrast to the crimsons, yellows, and blues around. The general character of the large, soft eyes seemed sweetness; but they were now lighted up with an expression of intelligent observation--that clear, animated, and comprehensive glance which shows it a.n.a.lyses what it observes. You looked at her with something of the sensation with which, while travelling along a dusty road, the eye fixes on some green field, where the hour flings its sunshine and the tree its shadow, as if its pure fresh beauty was a thing apart from the soil and tumult of the highway. "You see," said Mrs. Sullivan, "one who, in a brief interview, gave me more the idea of a poet than most of our modern votaries of the lute.... She is as creative in her imaginary poems as she is touching and true in her simpler ones."'

Though there were still giants upon the earth in those far-off days, the general standard of literary taste was by no means exalted, a fact which Mary Howitt could hardly be expected to realise. She seems to have taken the praises lavished on her simple verses over-seriously, and to have imagined herself in very truth a poet. She was more clear-sighted where the work of her fellow-scribes was concerned, and in a letter written about this time, she descants upon the dearth of good literature in a somewhat disillusioned vein. After expressing her desire that some mighty spirit would rise up and give an impulse to poetry, she continues: 'I am tired of Sir Walter Scott and his imitators, and I am sickened of Mrs. Hemans's luscious poetry, and all her tribe of copyists. The libraries set in array one school against another, and hurry out the trashy volumes before the ink of the ma.n.u.script is fairly dry. Dost thou remember the days when Byron's poems first came out, now one and then another, at sufficient intervals to allow of digesting them? And dost thou remember our first reading of _Lalla Rookh_? It was on a washing-day. We read and clapped our clear-starching, read and clapped, and read again, and all the time our souls were not on this earth.'

There was one book then in course of preparation which Mary thought worthy to have been read, even in those literary clear-starching days.

'Thou hast no idea,' she a.s.sures her sister, 'how very interesting William's work, now called _A Book of the Seasons_, has become.

It contains original sketches on every month, with every characteristic of the season, and a garden department which will fill thy heart brimful of all garden delights, greenness, and boweriness.

Mountain scenery and lake scenery, meadows and woods, hamlets, farms, halls, storm and sunshine--all are in this most delicious book, grouped into a most harmonious whole.' Unfortunately, publishers were hard to convince of the merits of the new work, the first of William Howitt's rural series, and it was declined by four houses in turn. The author at last suggested that a stone should be tied to the unlucky ma.n.u.script, and that it should be flung over London Bridge; but his wife was not so easily disheartened. She was certain that the book was a worthy book, and only needed to be made a little more 'personable'

to find favour in the eyes of a publisher. Accordingly, blotted sheets were hastily re-copied, new articles introduced, and pa.s.sages of dubious interest omitted, husband and wife working together at this remodelling until their fingers ached and their eyes were as dim as an owl's in sunshine. Their labours were rewarded by the acceptance of the work by Bentley and Colburn, and its triumphant success with both critics and public, seven editions being called for in the first few months of its career.

'Prig it and pocket it,' says Christopher North, alluding to the _Book of the Seasons_ in the _Noctes_ for April, 1831. ''Tis a jewel.'

'Is Nottingham far intil England, sir?' asks the simple Shepherd, to whom the above advice is given. 'For I would really like to pay the Hooits a visit this simmer. Thae Quakers are what we micht scarcely opine frae first principles, a maist poetical Christian seck.... The twa married Hooits I love just excessively, sir. What they write canna fail o' being poetry, even the most middlin' o't, for it's aye wi'

them the ebullition o' their ain feeling and their ain fancy, and whenever that's the case, a bonny word or twa will drap itself intil ilka stanzy, and a sweet stanzy or twa intil ilka pome, and sae they touch, and sae they win a body's heart.'