At the end of November I returned to England. Two years after, when we were in Paris on our way to Italy, I went to the Rue des Saints-Pères. Madame Barraud was dead then, and her daughter, left alone, was lamenting her so bitterly that she was quite unable to attend to her work, and sat all day in tears. She never rallied. When I inquired, as we returned through Paris, Mademoiselle Barraud had followed her mother to the grave; constantly as she had been scolded by her, wearisome as her life seemed to have been made, the grief for her loss had literally broken her heart.
During the winter we were absent at Rome, our house of Lime was lent to Aunt Esther (Mrs. Julius Hare) and Mrs. Alexander. Two cabinets contained all our family MSS., which Aunt Esther knew that I valued beyond everything else. Therefore, she forced both the cabinets open and destroyed the whole—all Lady Jones's journals and letters from India, all Bishop Shipley's letters—every letter, in fact, relating to any member of the Hare family. She replaced the letters to my adopted mother from the members of her own family in the front of the cabinets, and thus the fact they had nothing behind them was never discovered till we left Hurstmonceaux, two years after. When asked about it, Aunt Esther only said, "Yes, I did it: I saw fit to destroy them." It was a strange and lasting legacy of injustice to bequeath, and I think I cannot be harsh in saying that only a very peculiar temperament could construe such an act into "right-doing."
IX
WORK IN SOUTHERN COUNTIES
"How can a man learn to know himself? By reflection never, only by action. In the measure in which thou seekest to do thy duty shalt thou know what is in thee. But what is one's duty? The demand of the hour."—GOETHE.
"Il est donné, de nos jours, à un bien petit nombre, même parmi les plus délicats et ceux qui les apprécient le mieux, de recueillir, d'ordonner sa vie selon ses admirations et selon ses goûts, avec suite, avec noblesse."—Sainte-Beuve.
"Every man has a separate calling, an end peculiar to himself."—Frederick Schlegel.
"The old lord-treasurer Burleigh, if any one came to the Lords of the Council for a licence to travel, he would first examine him of England: if he found him ignorant, he would bid him stay at home and know his own country first."—HENRY PEACHAM, 1622, The Compleat Gentleman.
UPON returning to England in the winter of 1858, I felt more bitterly that ever the want of sympathy which had formerly oppressed me. Though I had the most idolatrous love for my dearest mother, and the most over-anxious wish to please her, there was then none of the perfect friendship between us, the easy interchange of every thought, which there was in later years; for she was still so entirely governed by her sisters-in-law as scarcely to have any individuality of her own. Often, often, did she pain me bitterly by suspecting my motives and questioning my actions, even when I was most desirous of doing right; and from the long habit of being told that I was idle and ignorant, that I cared for nothing useful, and that I frittered away my life, she had grown to believe it, and constantly assumed that it was so. Thus all my studies were embittered to me. I was quite sure that nothing I did would be appreciated, so that it never seemed worth while to do anything, and I became utterly deficient in that cheerfulness of disposition which is the most important element in all private success.
As I write this, and remember the number of delightful intimates by whom my after years have been surrounded, I find it difficult to realise that I had at this time no friends who, by mutual confidence, could help or cheer me. The best of them, Milligan, was now settled in London, being in full work in the Ecclesiastical Commission Office, and though always very kind to me, he had now fallen into a new set of acquaintances and surroundings, and had no time to bestow upon me individually. George Sheffield I seldom saw; and I had no other friends worth speaking of.