One pleasant thing has happened lately. I longed for money for a public object [repeal of the acts in question], and, unable to do better, worked a chair, and had it beautifully made up. It was produced at a great evening party in, London, and seized upon and vehemently competed for, and it has actually brought fifty guineas! In the middle of the night it occurs to me what a thing it is to give fifty guineas—so much as I had longed for money to give that fund. I was asked for a letter of explanation and statement to go with the chair, and, of course, did it by that post.
Work for this cause formed the most keen and active interest of her latest years. In this she thought and labored constantly. She gave her name and support to other objects, but only quietly. Amongst other things she was a member of the Women's Suffrage Society; and she was a subscriber to the movement for the medical education of women.
In all public affairs, indeed, her interest remained keen and unabated to the very last, as the letters for which I am indebted to Mr. Atkinson, and which I am to quote, will abundantly show. These letters will indicate, too, something of the quiet course of her now uneventful daily life. Sick and weary as she was, it will be seen that literature and politics, the public welfare, and the concerns of her household's inmates, still occupied her thoughts and her pen.
Letters to Mr. Atkinson.
August 24, 1870.
… I am as careful as possible to prevent anyone losing sleep on my account, and being disturbed at meals, or failing in air, exercise and pleasure. If these regular healthy habits of my household become difficult, we are to have a trained nurse at once. This is settled. I am disposed to think, myself, that the last stage will be short, probably the end sudden.
The tone of this last sentence is no affectation. "She used to talk about her death as if it meant no more than going into the next room," said one who knew her in these years.
September 10, 1870.
… I am not sure whether you have read Dr. Bence Jones's Life and Letters of Faraday. I have been thankful, this last week, for the strong interest of that book, which puts Continental affairs out of my head for hours together. The first half volume is rather tiresome—giving us four times as much as necessary of the uncultivated youth's early prosing on crude moralities, etc. It is quite right to give us some of this, to show from how low a point of thought and style he rose up to his perfection of expression as a lecturer and writer; but a quarter of the early stuff would have been enough for that. The succeeding part, for hundreds of pages, is the richest treat I have had for many a day. I can only distantly and dimly follow the scientific lectures and writings; but I understand enough of sympathy; and the disclosures of the moral nature of the man is perfectly exquisite. I have never known, and have scarcely dreamed of, a spirit and temper so thoroughly uniting the best attributes of the sage and the child.
October 18, 1870.