Great Englishwomen Part 9

They travelled abroad a good deal, and then settled in London, where Mary Somerville gave up a good deal of her time to teaching her little children. Here she published a book on Physical Geography, which is very well known and used still. It was a great undertaking for a woman, and made a stir in the world of science.

But she was not entirely given up to science. We find her making with her own hands a quant.i.ty of orange marmalade for a friend, who had brought her back minerals from a foreign land, to take on his next voyage, and she enjoyed an evening at the play as much as anyone.

The long illness and death of their eldest child fell very heavily on Mrs.

Somerville, and for a time she could not even work. Then they moved to Chelsea. Here she was asked to write an account of a French book which she had read on astronomy, a book which only some twenty people in England knew, and _she_ was chosen above all the learned men to write on this difficult subject. It was a vast undertaking; the more so as she still saw and entertained friends, not wis.h.i.+ng to drop society altogether.

Moreover, it was not known what she was writing, as, if it turned out a failure, it was not to be printed. In the middle of some difficult problem a friend would call and say, "I have come to spend a few hours with you, Mrs. Somerville," and papers and problems had to be hidden as quickly as possible.

When it was finished, the ma.n.u.script was sent to the great astronomer Herschel, who was delighted with it.

"Go on thus," he wrote, "and you will leave a memorial of no common kind to posterity."

Mrs. Somerville never wrote for fame, but it was very pleasant to have such praise from one of the greatest men of science living. The success of her book proved its value, and astonished her. Seven hundred and fifty copies were sold at once, and her name and her work were talked of everywhere. Her bust was placed in the Great Hall of the Royal Society; she was elected a member of the Royal Academy in Dublin, and of the Natural History Society at Geneva. A bust of her was made the figurehead of a large vessel in the Royal Navy, which was called "Mary Somerville,"

and lastly, she received a letter from Sir Robert Peel, saying he had asked the king, George IV., to grant her a pension of 200 a year, so that she might work with less anxiety.

Here was success for the self-taught woman, raised by her own efforts higher than any woman before her in any branch of science, and it is pleasant to find her the same modest character after it as she was before.

Her health being broken, she went to Paris. Here she still went on writing; but being very weak and ill, she was obliged to write in bed till one o'clock. The afternoons she gave up to going about Paris and seeing her friends.

Some years after, her husband being ill, they went abroad to Rome, where they made many friends. One friend is mentioned as having won Mrs.

Somerville's heart by his love for birds. The Italians eat nightingales, robins, and other singing birds, and when the friend heard this, he cried:

"What! robins! our household birds! I would as soon eat a child!"

In 1860 her husband died in Florence. To occupy her mind, Mrs. Somerville began to write another book. She was now over eighty, and her hand was not so steady as it used to be, but she had her eyesight and all her faculties, and with her pet mountain-sparrow sitting on her arm, she wrote daily from eight in the morning till twelve.

Five years later she had the energy to go all over an ironclad s.h.i.+p, which she was very curious to see.

"I was not even hoisted on board," she wrote to her son, but mounted the ladder bravely, and examined everything in detail "except the stoke-hole!"

At the age of ninety she still studied in bed all the morning, but "I am left solitary," she says, with pathos, "for I have lost my little bird, who was my constant companion for eight years."

One morning her daughter came into the room, and being surprised that the little bird did not fly to greet her as usual, she searched for it, and found the poor little creature drowned in the jug!

In 1870 an eclipse of the sun interested Mrs. Somerville very much; it came after a huge thunder-storm, and was only visible now and then between dense ma.s.ses of clouds. The following year there was a brilliant Aurora lighting up the whole sky; many ignorant people were very frightened, because it had been said the world was coming to an end, and they thought that a bright piece of the Aurora was a slice of the moon that had "already tumbled down!"

Though at the age of ninety-two her memory for names and people failed, she could still read mathematics, solve problems, and enjoy reading about new discoveries and theories in the world of science.

Some months before her death, she was awakened one night at Naples to behold Mount Vesuvius in splendid eruption. It was a wonderful sight.

A fiery stream of lava was flowing down in all directions; a column of dense black smoke rose to more than four times the height of the mountain, while bursts of fiery matter shot high up into the smoke, and the roaring and thundering never ceased for one single moment.

Three days later extreme darkness surprised everyone; Mrs. Somerville saw men walking along the streets with umbrellas up, and found that Vesuvius was sending out an immense quant.i.ty of ashes like fine sand, and neither land, sea, nor sky were visible.

In the summer Mrs. Somerville and her daughters went out of Naples, and took a pleasant little house near the sea.

She still took a keen interest in pa.s.sing events; she knew she could not live much longer, and she worked on to the actual day of her death, which took place in the autumn of 1872.

Mrs. Somerville stands alone as the greatest woman in the world of science; she was entirely self-taught, and it was by her own efforts she rose to be what she was--a woman of untiring energy, with wonderful power of thought and clearness of mind, a woman in advance of her times.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1809-1861).

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the greatest "woman poet" England has ever had. Though some of her poetry is difficult to understand, owing to her depth of thought and great reading, yet many of her prettiest and most touching poems have been written about little children; she with her pitiful heart felt for the sorrows they could not express, and has told us about them; she has told us about little Lily, who died when she was "no taller than the flowers," of the little factory children, who only cried in their playtime, and only cared for the fields and meadows just to "drop down in them and sleep," of little Ellie sitting alone by the stream dipping her feet into the clear cool water and dreaming the hours away.

Elizabeth Barrett always looked on Malvern as her native place, though she was not actually born there, but in Durham, in 1809.

The early years of her life seem to have been very happy; we hear of her as a little girl with cl.u.s.ters of golden curls, large tender eyes, and a sweet smile. She herself has not told us much about her early years, but the glimpses she has given us are very bright. Her father had a country house near Malvern, and over the Malvern Hills the child loved to roam.

She liked to be out all day with the flowers and the bees and the sun.

"If the rain fell, there was sorrow," she says, and she laid her curly head against the window, while her little finger followed the "long, trailing drops" down the pane, and, like other children, she would gently sing, "Rain, rain, come to-morrow," to try and drive it away. When she went out, it was not along the sheep paths over the hills that she cared to go, but to wander into the little woods, where the sheep could not stray. Now and then, she tells us, one of them would venture in, but its wool caught in the thickets, and with a "silly thorn-p.r.i.c.ked nose" it would bleat back into the sun, while the little poet-girl went on, tearing aside the p.r.i.c.kly branches with her struggling fingers, and tripping up over the brambles which lay across her way.

At eight years old and earlier she began to write little verses, and at eleven she wrote a long "epic" poem in four books called the "Battle of Marathon," of which fifty copies were printed, because, she tells us, her father was bent on spoiling her. She spent most of her time reading Greek, either alone or with her brother; she so loved the old Greek heroes, and would dream about them at night; she loved the old Greek stories, she "ate and drank Greek," and her poetry is mixed with Greek ideas and thoughts and names, even from a child.

She had one favourite brother; with him she read, with him she talked; they understood one another, and entered into one another's thoughts and fancies. He called her by a pet name, when they were little children together, because the name Elizabeth seemed so "hard to utter," and "he calls me by it still," she adds pathetically in later life, when that life was no longer all suns.h.i.+ne and laughter, and when the brother had been taken from her. But these were happy days, these days of childhood, never forgotten by Elizabeth Barrett, who looked back to them afterwards, and remembered how she sat at her father's knee, and how lovingly he would look down at the little poet and reward her with kisses.

When she was older the family moved to London, and there Elizabeth Barrett became very ill. She had always been fragile and delicate, and now she was obliged to lie all day in one room in the London house. When she grew a little stronger, and the cold weather was coming on, the doctor ordered a milder climate, and she was moved to Torquay, her favourite brother going with her. She had been there a year, and the mild sea-breezes of Devons.h.i.+re had done her good, when fresh trouble came to her.

One fine summer morning her brother with a few friends started in a little sailing-vessel for a few hours' trip. They were all good sailors, and knowing the coast well, they sent back the boatmen, and undertook the management of the boat themselves. The idea of danger never seems to have occurred to them. They had not got far out, when suddenly, just as they were crossing the bar, in sight of the very windows, the boat went down, and the little crew perished--among them Elizabeth Barrett's favourite brother. He was drowned before her very eyes, and, already ill and weak, she nearly sank under the weight of the blow.

The house she lived in at Torquay was at the bottom of the cliffs close to the sea, but now the sound of the waves no longer soothed her; they sounded like moanings from the sea. She struggled back to life, but all was changed for her. Still she clung to Greek and literature, and she would pore over her books till the doctor would remonstrate, and urge some lighter reading. He did not know that her books were no hard study to her; reading was no exertion, but a delight and comfort to her, changing the current of her thoughts from the sad past, and helping her to wile away the long hours of sickness. However, to make others happy about her, she had her little edition of Plato bound so that it looked like a novel, and then she could read it without being disturbed or interfered with at all.

She tried to forget her ill health and weariness, and some of her letters at this time were so bright and amusing, that we see how well she succeeded in throwing herself into the lives of those around her. At last she was well enough to be moved in an invalid carriage with "a thousand springs" to London, in short journeys of twenty miles a day. There for seven long years she lived in one large, but partly darkened room, seeing only her own family and a few special friends.

Her poems were sad, beautiful, and very tender; never once does she allude in words to the terrible blow which had swept so much suns.h.i.+ne and happiness from her young life, but her writings are full now of wild utterances and pa.s.sionate cries, now calming down into sleepy lullabies for the little children she had such sympathy with. She did not put her name to many of her works, but readers were startled from time to time by the wonderful new poems, until at last they were traced to the sick room of Elizabeth Barrett. In her sick room lived "Flush," a little dog given her by a friend; he was dark brown with long silken ears and hazel eyes, but, better than these, such a faithful heart, and

"... of _thee_ it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary; Watched within a curtained room, Where no sunbeam brake the gloom Round the sick and dreary."

He would push his nose into her pale, thin hand, and lie content for hours, till the quick tears of his mistress would sometimes drop on to his glossy head, and he would spring up eagerly, as if to share the trouble if he only could.

Here is a story about Flush which shows his devotion. The little terrier was stolen, and his mistress shed many tears for her lost favourite. She was accused of being "childish," but she could not help it.

"Flus.h.i.+e is my friend, my companion, and loves me better than he loves the suns.h.i.+ne without," she cried.

At last the thief was found, and he gave up the dog for some money, saying, "You had better give your dog something to eat, for he has tasted nothing for three days!"

But Flush was too happy to eat; he shrank away from the plate of food which was given him, and laid down his head on his mistress's shoulder.

"He is worth loving, is he not?" asked Elizabeth Barrett, when she had told this story to a friend.

One of her best-known poems is "The Cry of the Children." For the little overworked children in the large factories her human heart was stirred.

She knew what a life they led from early morning till late at night, amid the rus.h.i.+ng of the great iron wheels, or working underground in the damp and dark, and she could not be silent.

"Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And _that_ cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing towards the west-- But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly!