Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not “Good-night!” but in some brighter clime
Bid me “Good-morning!”’
And it was in some such mood that death found her in the eighty-second year of her age.
On leaving Church Row, the school—probably on account of her husband’s malady—being given up, Mrs. Barbauld immediately recommenced her literary labours, and compiled a selection of essays from the Spectator, Tatler, and Guardian, with an introductory one of her own. This work appeared the year after her removal from Church Row, and was followed by her ‘Life of Richardson,’ whose correspondence she had edited. Her husband died in 1808, and the ‘widow recorded her feelings in a poetical dirge to his memory,’ a form of diverting feelings with which I have no sympathy, especially as the ebullition appears to have been published! I better understand her seeking relief in other literary occupation. She wrote a poem in 1811 in which she more naturally refers to her husband. She had also edited a collection of the British novelists, published in 1810, with an introductory essay of her own, and biographical and critical notices.
Placidity and cheerfulness continued with her to the last. She died of gradual decay on March 9, 1825. Meanwhile she had had the pleasure of witnessing the literary success of her brother’s daughter, Miss Lucy Aikin,[64] who had written various historical memoirs and a ‘Life of Joseph Addison,’ which Macaulay criticised, and who, because ‘Miss Lucy Aikin’s reputation—which she has so justly earned—stands so high,’ thinks it right to remind her of her lapses, and of ‘the necessity in a future edition for every fact and date, about which there can be the smallest doubt, to be verified.’ Valuable and wise advice, the rigour of which he softened by adding that ‘the immunities of sex were not the only immunities Miss Aikin might rightfully plead ... several of her works, and especially the very pleasing memoirs of the reign of James I., having fully entitled her to the privileges enjoyed by good writers.’ In June, 1822, this lady and her mother took the house in Church Row which the Barbaulds had occupied, and continued to reside there till 1830, when Mrs. Aikin died. Upon the loss of her mother, Miss Aikin removed to No. 18, on the opposite side of the way, where she remained till 1844, when she came to London.
Nearly twenty years later, when verging towards the end of her life, she returned to Hampstead, and died at the house of her relative by marriage, P. H. Le Breton, Esq., John Street, January 24, 1864, while these notes of Hampstead and its neighbourhood were being collected.
At No. 25, not far from the house Miss Aikin had last occupied in Church Row, and which did in my recollection—perhaps does so still—possess a lovely view from the back-windows, was the residence of two well-descended ladies, the Misses Gillies; the one almost as well known as a writer of charming stories for young people as her sister, Miss Margaret Gillies, was as an artist. Her pictures were in the fifties, and long after, familiar to the frequenters of the summer and winter exhibitions of the Old Society of Painters in Water-Colours, of which she had long been a member. In this house I am reminded that the last twenty-eight years of her long life had been passed. I remember her being there in 1859-60, and she may have lived there even at an earlier date. She died July 20, 1887, verging on eighty-four years of age. Previous to her tenancy Miss Meteyard had lived in this house on her first going to Hampstead. It was then a sort of private boarding-house especially affected by literary people, and indirectly brought her acquainted with two or three lady writers of a past period, of whose style, personal and literary, she had some very amusing recollections.
Subsequent to Miss Gillies’ death, I learn from Baines’ ‘Records of Hampstead’ that this house was tenanted for some time by the novelist, Wilkie Collins, son of the painter. The late well-known Mr. Ballantyne, the magistrate, also resided in Church Row; and for a considerable period it was the place of residence of Dr. Garth Wilkinson[65] and his wife. He was the author of a curious and eloquently-written book, which attracted some attention at the time of its appearance. Here also, at a far-off period, and only as a lodger, I believe, Park, the historian of Hampstead, is said to have lived.