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 shore. |
| 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 passes, 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 passage 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.'