Story of My Life Part 74

"_July 18._--'I had such a sweet dream of your Aunt Lucy last night. I thought we were together again, and I said, "How I do miss you!" and she said she was near me. I suppose I had been thinking of--

"Saints in glory perfect made Wait thine escort through the shade."

I think perhaps I had been thinking of that. Dear Aunt Lucy, how she would have grieved to see me now!'"

"_July 19._--'Yes, I know the psalms; many in your Uncle Julius's version too. Many a time it keeps me quiet for hours to know and repeat them. I should never have got through my journey if I had not had so many to repeat and to still the impatience.'"

_To_ MISS WRIGHT.

"_Holmhurst, July 31, 1870._--I continue to work on steadily at my book in the sick-room. I have just got Murray's Roman Handbook, and am amazed to see how much better it is than I expected; but I am glad I have not seen it before, as, though I have already given even all his newest information, I have told it so _oddly_ differently.

"The sweet Mother continues much the same. She is carried out each fine afternoon to sit for an hour near the weeping ash-tree on the lawn, and enjoys the suns.h.i.+ne and flowers.... In this quiet garden, and never going beyond the gates, everything seems very _far_ off, and I am beginning to have quite a sympathy with the hermits, and to wonder the race does not continue: it is certainly more reasonable than that of the monks. A great peace seems to have fallen upon us. As I see my helpless Mother's quiet happiness, and share it, I think of Richard Crashaw's lines--

'How many unknown worlds there are Of comforts, which Thou hast in keeping!

How many thousand mercies there In Pity's soft lap lie a-sleeping!

Happy she who has the art To awake them And to take them Home, and lodge them in her heart.'"

_From my_ JOURNAL (The Green Book).

"_August 8._--It is inexpressibly touching to me how Mother now seems to have an insight into my past feelings which she never had before, and to understand and sympathise with childish sufferings which she never perceived at the time, or from which she would have turned aside if she had perceived them. To-day, after her dinner, she said most touchingly, watching till every one went away and calling me close to her pillow--'I want to make my confession to you, darling. I often feel I have never been half tender enough to you. I feel it now, and I should like you to know it. You are such a comfort and blessing to me, dearest, and I thought perhaps I might die suddenly, and never have told you so. I cannot bear your being tied here, and yet I do not know how I could do without you, you are so great a blessing to me.'

"And oh! in the desolate future what a comfort these few words will contain! But I said--'No, darling, I am not tied: you know it is just what I like. I know you could not do without me, but then I could not do without you, so it is just the same for both of us.'"

"_August 26._--To-day is the anniversary of my adoption, what Mother used to call my Hurstmonceaux birthday. She remembered it when I went to her, and said touchingly--'G.o.d be thanked for having given me my child, for having preserved him, for having strengthened him. May he live to His glory, and may I die to His praise.... Pray that He may forgive the past, watch over the present, and guide the future.' Later she said--'It is very seldom that a woman's future is settled at thirty-five, as mine was. I was not only a widow, but my adopting a child showed to all the world that I should never marry again.... I can only make a meditation,'

she said; 'I have no strength to make a prayer.... I have long been obliged to pray in s.n.a.t.c.hes--in moments.... I am so glad that I know so many psalms, hymns, and collects; they are such a comfort to me now. I could think of nothing more, but these I dwell upon.... Sometimes when I can think of nothing else I take the Lord's Prayer, and lie still to make a meditation upon each separate clause.' When I left her at night she said fervently--'Good-night, my own dear love, my blessing: may I be your blessing, as you are mine.'"

In our quiet life, the news of the war in France, the siege of Paris, &c., reached us like far-off echoes. My mother cared little to hear of it, but shared with me in anxiety as to the fate of the excellent people we had so lately left at Montbard and Fontenay, which were overrun by the Prussians. On September 8 the Empress Eugenie took refuge at Hastings, and two days after walked up the hill past our gate. She was joined at Hastings by the Prince Imperial. I little thought then that I should afterwards know him so well.

JOURNAL.

"_Sept. 10, 1870._--Lea has just been saying, 'You may go and count the trees to-day, for I've nothing for you for dinner. The butcher's never been, good-for-nothing fellow! he's gone gawking after that Empress, I'll be bound.'"

Almost all my Mother's nieces and many old friends came to see her in the summer, generally staying only two or three days, but her dear cousin, Charlotte Leycester, came for the whole of September. While she was here at Holmhurst I was persuaded to go away for two days, and went to see Dean Alford at his cottage of Vine's Gate in the Kentish Hills.

He was more charming than ever, and more eccentric, never wearing stockings, and shoes only when he went out. I was miserable, in my short absence, with anxiety, which cost me far more than the refreshment of change could replace; but I was led to go to see the Dean by one of those strange presentiments for which I have never been able to account.

It was my last sight of this dear friend, with whom I have been more really intimate than with perhaps any one else, in spite of the great difference of age and position. Dean Alford died in the following winter, but it was at a time when, in my own intense desolation, all minor sorrows fell dumb and dead. But his grave, in St. Martin's Churchyard at Canterbury, is always a very sacred spot to me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. MARTIN'S, CANTERBURY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Henry Alford

Dean of Canterbury.]

I must record a visit which we received soon after my return home, as it led to a friends.h.i.+p which was one of the great pleasures of many following years. One morning, as I was sitting in my Mother's room as usual, a card with "Mrs. Grove, Oakhurst," was brought up to me, and, as I opened the drawing-room door, I saw an old lady with the very sweetest and dearest face I ever set eyes upon, in a primitive-looking hat and ap.r.o.n, and with a basket on her arm, and I fell in love with her at once. She came often afterwards to see my Mother, who greatly appreciated her; and after my Mother's sweet life pa.s.sed away, it is difficult to say how much of my home interest was a.s.sociated with Oakhurst, with the ready sympathy and old-fas.h.i.+oned knowledge of this dear Mrs. Grove, and with her daughter, Mrs. Baillie Hamilton, and her two grand-daughters, now Mrs. Spencer Smith and Mrs. Hamilton Seymour.

Alas! as I write this,[424] the dear Mrs. Grove, in her great age, is herself rapidly fading heavenwards--but so gently, so surrounded by the love which her own loving-kindness has called forth, that death is indeed coming as a friend, gently and tenderly leading her into the visible presence of the Saviour, in whose invisible presence she has so long lived and served.

JOURNAL (The Green Book).

"_Holmhurst, Oct. 20, 1870._--Mother said to-day, 'I always think that walking through the Roman picture-galleries is like walking through the Old and New Testament with the blessed company of apostles and martyrs beside one.... I am so fond of that prayer "for all sorts and conditions of men," not only for my invalid state, but it is _all_ so appropriate to the present time--the pet.i.tion for peace and unity, &c.'"

"_Oct. 23, Sunday._--'Alas! another Sunday in bed,' said Mother this morning.

"'But, darling, you need not regret it; all the days are Sundays to you.'

"'Yes; but to-day I woke early, and have said all my little Sunday hymns and psalms.'

"Truly with her, 'Les pri?res de la nuit font la s?r?nit? du jour.'"[425]

"_Oct. 26._--'My dear child is never cross to me, _never_; and always appears just at the very moment I want anything.'"

_To_ MISS WRIGHT.

"_Holmhurst, Oct. 28, 1870._--I am so glad you have been here, and can fancy our perfectly quiet, eventless life, the coming and going in the Mother's sick-room, and her gentle happiness in all the little pleasures which are spared to her. Since you were here she has been not so well, from the wet and cold, I suppose, the sight dimmer and the other powers weaker; but the symptoms are ever varying, and, when it is thus, I almost never leave her--watch her sleeping and try to amuse her waking.

"To-day my absent hour was sadly engaged in attending the funeral of my dear old friend, Mrs. Dixon,[426] who died quite peacefully last Sat.u.r.day, a long illness ending in two days of merciful unconsciousness. She was buried at Ore, in Emma Simpkinson's grave.

Many deeply mourn her, for few were more sincere and cordial, more affectionate and sympathising."

JOURNAL (The Green Book).

"_Nov. 1, 1870._--My darling has had two months of comparative freedom from pain, with many hours of real pleasure, in which she was often carried down and sat out in her bath-chair amongst the flower-beds in the suns.h.i.+ne. Sitting under the ash-tree shade, she has been able to see many friends--Mrs. Wagner, Mrs. Grove, old Mrs. Vansittart Neale at ninety, and Lady Waldegrave. Charlotte Leycester was here for six weeks, and the Mother was then so far better that it was a great source of enjoyment to both the cousins.

Since then she has ailed more frequently, and has had occasional recurrence of the old pain in her arm. I have sat constantly writing in her room, laying aside 'Walks in Rome' for a time, and devoting myself to writing the Family Memorials. For the dear Mother has wished me to continue the work she began long ago of writing the life of Augustus and Julius Hare. I represented that, as one of these died before I was born, and I had never appreciated the other as she had done, it would be impossible for me to do this, unless she would permit me to make her, who had been the suns.h.i.+ne of my own life, the central figure of the picture. At first she laughed at the idea, but, after a day or two, she said that, as, with the sole exception of Charlotte Leycester, all who had shared her earlier life had pa.s.sed away, she could not oppose my wish that the simple experience of her own life, and G.o.d's guidance in her case, might, if I thought it could be so, be made useful for others. And, as she has accustomed herself to this thought, she has lately taken real pleasure in it. She laughs at what she calls my 'building her mausoleum in her lifetime,' but has almost grown, I think, to look upon her own life and her own experience as if it were that of another in whom she was interested, and to read it and hear it in the same way. She has given me many journals and letters of various kinds which I might use, and has directed the arrangement of others. I have already written the two earliest chapters of her married life, and read most of them to her, but she stopped me at last, saying that they interested her too deeply. She frequently asks now--'Are you writing the Memorials, or only "Walks in Rome"?' and it is a proof how clear her understanding still is, that some weeks ago she wisely directed me, if the work was ever carried out, to evade all wearying discussion by consulting no one, and that I should on no account show it to any one of the family, especially the Stanleys, till it was finished, when they might judge of it as a _whole_.

"Sometimes the dear Mother has herself been able to write some of her 'Ricordi,' as she calls them, and, with her trembling hand, has filled a whole little volume with the recollections of her youth, but this has often been too much for her.... After her tea at four o'clock, I have generally read some story to her till she has gone to bed, and after that a chapter and some hymns. There is a pa.s.sage in one of George Eliot's autobiographical sonnets, in which, referring to her mother, she speaks of 'the benediction of her gaze'; how often have I experienced this!"

"_Nov. 4._--Last night I read to the Mother Luke xvii. and a hymn on 'Rest' which she asked for. When I was going to wish her good-night she said--'I do hope, darling, I am not like the ungrateful lepers. I try to be always praising G.o.d, but I know that I can never praise Him enough for His many, many mercies to me.' I could not but feel, in the alarm afterwards, if my dearest Mother never spoke to me again, what beautiful last words those would have been, and how characteristic of her. Oh, goodness in life brings us near to G.o.d: not death! not death!

"At 2 P.M. I was awakened by the dreadful sound which has haunted me ever since the night of March 12 in the Via Gregoriana--of Lea rus.h.i.+ng along the pa.s.sage and flinging open the door--'Come directly'--no time for more words--and of running through the dark gallery and finding the terrible change--another paralytic seizure--calling up John and sending him off to Battle for the doctor, and kneeling by the bedside, consoling her if possibly conscious, and watching for the faint dawn of visible life, that the first words might be tender ones, the first look one of love, ... and it was so--that my darling's first words were something tender, indefinite, but spoken to me. The entire unconsciousness was not long. When the doctor arrived the face was almost natural, but he saw that it had been a regular seizure. By 8 A.M. she was nearly herself again, and anxious to know what could have happened.

She had been frightened by seeing the doctor. She appeared to have no pain, and there is no additional injury to the powers. To-day has been a constant watching, rather a warding off from her of any possible excitement than anything else.... In all the anguish of anxiety, I cannot be thankful enough for what we have, especially the freedom from pain."

"_Nov. 9._--No great change--a happy painless state, the mind very feeble, its power gone, but peaceful, loving, full of patience, faith, and thankfulness."

"_Nov. 16._--And since I wrote last, the great, the most unutterable desolation, so long looked for, so often warded off, has come upon me. Oh! while they can still be attained, let me gather up the precious fragments that remain.

"On Thursday the 10th my darling was much better, though her mind was a little feeble. I felt then, as I feel a thousand times now, how extraordinary people were who spoke of the trial my darling's mental feebleness would be to me. It only endeared her to me a thousandfold--her gentle confidence, her sweet clinging to me to supply the words and ideas which no longer came unsought, made her only more unspeakably lovable. On that day I remember that my darling mentioned several times that she heard beautiful music.

This made no impression on me _then_.

"Friday the 11th, I sat, as usual, all morning in her room correcting my book. I forget whether it was that morning or the next that my darling on waking from sleep said that she had had such a pleasant dream of her childhood and Adderley and 'old Lady Corbet,' who first taught her to 'love what was beautiful.'[427] At 2 P.M. Mother was up, and sat in her arm-chair by the fire. She was partly dressed, and wore her pretty old-fas.h.i.+oned cap with the strings tied in a bow on the top of the head, and a little red cloak which Miss Wright had given her: I remember thinking she looked so pretty, and telling her so. I was out at first, while she wrote a little letter to f.a.n.n.y Tatton,[428] and talked to Lea about the texts she had been reading. At four, she had her tea, and then I sat at her feet, and my darling talked most sweetly about all the places she had admired most in her life--of Llangollen in her childhood, and of Capel Curig, of her visit to Rhianva, and of many places abroad, Narni with its woods and river, and more especially Villar in the Vaudois, of which I had been making a drawing, which she had desired to have set up that she might look at it. Then she asked to have one of her old journals read, and I read one of Rome, and she spoke of how much happiness, how many blessings, she had connected with Rome also, though much of suffering. She was especially bright and sunny. I remember saying to her playfully, 'Take a little notice of me, darling; you do not take enough notice of me,' and her stroking my head and saying, 'You dear child,' and laughing.

"At six o'clock my sweetest one was put to bed.