But, in truth, much of Cobbett’s wonderful staying-power lay in his splendid mental and physical health. An active and temperate existence, in which nothing was allowed to run to waste, warded-off the approaches of senility. Excepting only a tumour which gave some trouble for a few months[4] during 1824, he had known nothing of illness; beyond those trifling matters to which even the best constitutions are liable under given circumstances. After reaching his threescore-and-ten, he could still boast of riding over the country with the youngest; or doing a day’s work against any one of his labourers.
This was an astonishingly active, fully-worked life; in which nothing of the morbid could possibly find entrance. An early riser, and no lingerer at meals, Cobbett never confessed to having any leisure time. Social pleasures, as such, would seem to have been almost unheeded, if not despised. Yet his hospitality was unbounded, and overflowing with good nature; and he was always at the service of persons who applied to him for advice, or, even, of those nondescript individuals who would claim the privileges of half-acquaintanceship, and call upon him to indulge a sort of curiosity.
And, of all this vigour, and heartiness, and true daily purpose, nothing failed, in the green old age of William Cobbett.
Very difficult as it is to point to a date, at which Cobbett’s name will be forgotten—it is easy to understand why the popular estimate of the man, at the period of his death, still holds good, in the Anglo-Saxon breast: why his character, falling so far short of perfection, is still counted worthy of the lasting honour of Englishmen. For, his faults were the faults of his race: so often virtues in disguise. Coming from the pure Saxon peasant stock, he caused a healthful infusion of fresh blood into the spirit of his age, and so brought his fellow-countrymen to see, once more, the native energy, and pugnacity, and honesty of purpose, which had so often won the battle of freedom, now brought to bear upon new conditions and new circumstances. Thus it is, that the thoughtful and unbiased student looks upon Cobbett’s character and career. Full of faults, it is no incoherent jumble of a character, without principles and without light; but one having brave and high aims. A special lot in life; which must, by its very nature, bring upon the man some measure of contumely: in which a false step or two would count against him a thousandfold. A special career; pursued with a single eye, an honest purpose, and a persevering heart. A life, that needs no Apologist: but presenting a consistent story; worthy of all that has given us renown, and enabled us to dictate the principles of freedom to the whole world.
The last uneventful years of Mr. Cobbett’s domestic life were spent, at least as far as the public demands upon his time would allow, among the scenes and the occupations which he loved so well: those of his earliest recollections. The garden at Kensington becoming too small for his ambitious seed-farming experiments, the well-known manor-farm of Barn Elm was occupied for three or four years. But, in the summer of 1832, this was relinquished; and Mr. Cobbett retired farther into Surrey, to a locality not many miles from his birthplace, in the adjoining parish of Ash. Normandy farm (contiguous to that of Wanborough, whence Mr. Birkbeck had departed for the golden west) lies in a lonely, unfrequented district, with a poor, wet soil; and it was one that required a great deal of money expended upon it. But it suited Cobbett’s seed-farming tastes:—
“I took a farm,” he says, in his characteristic way, “for several purposes: 1. To please myself, and to live at the end of my days, in those scenes in which I began them; 2. To make the life as long as nature, unthwarted by smoke and confinement, would let it be; 3. To make a complete Tullian farm; 4. To make a Locust coppice; 5. To raise garden seeds in the best possible manner.”
But nothing could ward off the perils incident to late hours in London. After his first parliamentary session, there were evident signs of his constitution failing him; and, although revived somewhat in summer, each new winter brought back a cough, which forbade rest at night, and gradually helped to bring the end nearer. A visit to Ireland, in 1834, seemed to be undertaken with all his old powers; his writing and his humour were as good as ever. But the following winter proved to be the last, and the early months of the year 1835 were a constant struggle to keep up to the post at which he meant to die.
Not that he meant to die, yet. There were new plans, only a month before Cobbett’s death, which exhibited anything but the lapse of mental or physical power. There was to be a new Cobbett’s Evening Journal, a special feature of which was the full publication of important discussions in parliament, which were not elsewhere faithfully reported: those affairs, viz., in which Hume, and the other economists beside himself, had the leading share.
Also, the Register was to be dropped, “in full blaze,” on his next birthday, the 9th of March, 1836:—