BIRTH AND PARENTAGE; HER FATHER; HER MOTHER’S FAMILY; HER MOTHER; SONNET TO HER MOTHER’S MEMORY; EARLY REMINISCENCES; EARLY TERRORS AND THEIR CURE; THE BLACK MAN; CRAZY WOMEN; BEDLAM; VISITS TO THE INMATES; EARLY TRAINING; THE FEMALE SAILOR; ABRUPT CONCLUSION.

Amelia Opie, the only child of James Alderson, M.D., and of Amelia, his wife, was born the 12th of November, 1769, in the parish of St. George, Norwich; she was baptized by the Rev. Samuel Bourn, then the Presbyterian Minister of the Octagon chapel, in that city. Her father was one of a numerous family, the children of the Rev. Mr. Alderson, of Lowestoft, of whom some account is given in Gillingwater’s History of that “ancient town.” From this we gather that “Mr. Alderson was a very worthy, well-disposed man, of an exceeding affable and peaceable disposition, much esteemed by the whole circle of his acquaintance, and, as he lived much respected, so he died universally lamented.” His death happened in 1760. In a note the following account of his family is added: “Four sons and two daughters survive him; the sons are all distinguished for their industry and ability, and are eminent in their several professions; James, an eminent surgeon, at Norwich; John, a physician, at Hull, Thomas, a merchant, at Newcastle; and Robert, a barrister, at Norwich. Of the two daughters, Judith is married to Mr. Woodhouse, and Elizabeth unmarried.”

This was written in 1790. Were the historian now to add a supplementary notice, with how much satisfaction would he record, that, in the third generation, this family numbered among its descendants, Amelia Opie and Sir E. H. Alderson; the former the child of the eldest brother, the latter the son of the youngest.

The tender attachment borne by Mrs. Opie to her father was perhaps her most prominent characteristic. They were companions and friends through life; and when, at length, in a good old age, he was taken from her, she wept with a sorrow which no time could obliterate, and for which there was no solace but in the hope of rejoining him in a better world. Deeply touching are the evidences of the love which prompted her pen in its most successful efforts, influenced her in all the steps she took throughout her career, and rendered her indefatigable in cheering and soothing him through the long years of his declining age. Best of all, she was enabled to direct his mind towards those great truths of the gospel, which she had learned to love, and in which she found her support, when the arm of her earthly friend was about to relax its hold, and leave her alone to pursue in solitude the remainder of her pilgrimage.

Probably the early loss of the wife and mother was one cause which drew more close the bond of union between the “Father and Daughter.” It naturally followed that when, at the age of fifteen, she took the head of her father’s table, and the management of his domestic arrangements, she should endeavour, as much as possible, to supply the place which had been left vacant, and that her young affections should cling more fondly around her remaining parent. There was also much in the father calculated to draw to him the love of his child. He was of fine person and attractive manners, and to these external advantages was joined something better and more enduring—a kind-hearted and generous sympathy for the sufferers whom his skill relieved, and a charity to the poor, which induced him freely to give them his valuable advice and assistance. His daughter says, “He prescribed for about four or five hundred persons at his house every week. The forms in our large hall in a morning were so full from half-past eight till eleven, that I could scarcely pass; and this he did till the end of the year 1820, or rather perhaps to the beginning of 1821, when, unable to go down-stairs, he received the people, at my earnest desire, in my little drawing-room, till he said he could receive no one again. Oh! it was the most bitter trial he or I ever experienced, when he was forced to give up this truly Christian duty; and I was obliged to tell the afflicted poor people that their kind physician was no longer well enough to open his house to receive them, and try to heal their diseases again. He wept, and so did I; and they were bitter tears, for I feared he would not long survive the loss of his usefulness.” Those acts of kindness are not yet forgotten in his native city; an aged woman, being told the other day of the death of Mrs. Opie, recalled to mind the days of her father, “the doctor,” and the time when he was “very good to the poor folks, that is, he gaw’n ’em his advice for nothing; and that was a true charity, lady.”

Mrs. Opie’s mother, Amelia, was the daughter of Joseph Briggs, of Cossambaza, up the Ganges, (eldest son of Dr. Henry Briggs, rector of Holt, Norfolk, and Grace, his wife,) and of Mary, daughter of Captain Worrell, of St. Helena. In an old pocket book, Mrs. Opie has entered the following memoranda concerning this branch of her maternal ancestors.

Account of my great, great, great grandfather, Augustine Briggs, M.P., for Norwich. (From the pedigree of the Briggs’ in Blomefield’s “History of Norfolk.”) An ancient family of Salle, in Norfolk, who before the reign of Edward the First assumed the surname of De Ponte, or Pontibus, i.e. at Brigge or Brigges; as the ancient family of the Fountaines of the same place assumed theirs, of De Fonte or Fontibus, much about the same time, one we presume dwelling by the bridge or bridges, the other by the springs or fountains’ heads. The eldest branch of both families continued in Salle till they united in one. William Atte Brigge, of Salle, called in some deeds W. de Fonte de Salle, was living at Salle in 1334. John Atte Brigge, his second son, was alive in 1385. Thomas Brigge, of Holt, the fourth brother, was alive in 1400; and, in 1392, went to the Holy Sepulchre of our Lord, an account of which pilgrimage written by himself is still extant, in a manuscript in Caius College Library. Augustine Briggs, mayor, alderman, and member for Norwich in four Parliaments, was turned out of the Corporation by the rebels, and restored at the king’s restoration. He joined the Earl of Newcastle’s forces at the siege of Lynn, in 1643. There is a long sword in the family, with a label in Augustine Briggs’ own hand writing tied to it. “This I wore at the siege of Linn, in the servis of the royal martyr, K. Charles ye First, A. Briggs.” He lies buried in a vault in the church of St. Peter’s Mancroft, built by himself, but he alone of the family lies there. It has been since appropriated by the Dean and Chapter to another family, as it was supposed no one was alive to claim it; but I, A. Opie, am the lineal descendant and representative of this excellent man, and the vault was my property. The following is a translation of part of the Latin inscription on his mural monument in St. Peter’s church:—“He was indeed highly loyal to his king, and yet a studious preserver of the ancient privileges of his country; was also firm and resolute for upholding the Church of England, and assiduous and punctual in all the important trusts committed to him, whether in the august assembly of Parliament, his honourable commands in the militia, or his justiciary affairs on the bench: gaining the affections of the people by his hospitality and repeated acts of kindness, which he continued beyond his death, leaving the following charities by his will, as a more certain remembrance to posterity, than this perishing monument erected by his friends, which his posterity endeavours by this plate to continue to further ages.” He died in 1684, aged 67. He lived in the Briggs’ Lane, called after him, which lane is now (1839) widening, and is to be called D’Oyley Street, a proper tribute of respect to the public spirited individual who subscribed £1600 to further this improvement.[[1]]

Augustine Briggs was also a public benefactor to this, his native city, for he left “estates and monies to increase the revenue of the Boys’ and Girls’ Hospital, and for putting out two poor boys to trades every year, as can read and write, and have neither father nor mother to put them forth to such trades.” My cousin, Henry Perronet Briggs, R.A.,[[2]] his male representative, has a very fine picture of him, a half-length, in his military dress, painted, he believes, by a pupil of Vandyke. I have a tolerably good three-quarter picture of him,[[3]]—Amelia Opie. I have also a portrait of his daughter-in-law, Hannah Hobart, heiress of Edmund Hobart, son of the Lord Chief Justice Hobart, afterwards ennobled, and wife of Dr. W. Briggs, M.D., of the University of Cambridge, a man of great science and learning, and an eminent physician.

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Of the mother of Mrs. Opie but few memorials remain. She was of a delicate constitution, and appears to have cherished the habits of retirement, so naturally preferred by an invalid. Her early death bereaved her daughter of a mother’s care and guidance at the most critical period of woman’s life; and we may perhaps trace some features of Mrs. Opie’s character to this event. From the occasional glimpses we catch of the mother in her daughter’s short record of her own early days, it is evident that she was possessed of firm purpose and high principle; a true-hearted woman, and somewhat of a disciplinarian. Her steady hand would have curbed the high spirit of her child, and softened those ebullitions of youthful glee, which made the young Amelia such an impetuous, mirthful creature: she would have been more demure and decorous had her mother lived, but perhaps less charming and attractive. Speedily as the mother’s influence was withdrawn, it left, notwithstanding, some indelible traces in the memory of her daughter, who frequently referred to her, even in her latter days, and usually with reference to some bad habit from which she had warned her, or some good one which she had inculcated. Mrs. Alderson died on the 31st of December, 1784, in the 39th year of her age.