Blanche Atkinson.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
My life has been an interesting one to live and I hope that this record of it may not prove too dull to read. The days are past when biographers thought it necessary to apologize for the paucity of the adventures which they could recall and the obscurity of the achievements which their heroes might accomplish. We have gone far in the opposite direction, and are wont to relate in extenso details decidedly trivial, and to reproduce in imposing type correspondence which was scarcely worth the postage of the original manuscript. Our sense of the intrinsic interest of Humanity, as depicted either in biography or fiction,—that is, of the character of the personages of the drama going on upon our little stage,—has continually risen, while that of the action of the piece,—the “incidents” which our fathers chiefly regarded,—has fallen into the second plane. I fear I have been guilty in this book of recording many trifling memories and of reproducing some letters of little importance; but only through small touches could a happy childhood and youth be possibly depicted: and all the Letters have, I think, a certain value as relics and tokens of friendship, if not as expressions (as many of them are) of opinions carrying the weight of honoured names.
As regards these Letters (exclusively, of course, those of friends and correspondents now dead), I earnestly beg the heirs of the writers to pardon me if I have not asked their permission for the publication of them. To have ascertained, in the first place, who such representatives are and where they might be addressed, would, in many cases, have been a task presenting prohibitive difficulties; and as the contents of the Letters are wholly honourable to the heads and hearts of their authors, I may fairly hope that surviving relatives will be pleased that they should see the light, and will not grudge the testimony they bear to kindly sentiments entertained towards myself.[[1]]
There is in this book of mine a good deal of “Old Woman’s Gossip,” (I hope of a harmless sort), concerning many interesting men and women with whom it was my high privilege to associate freely twenty, thirty and forty years ago. But if it correspond at all to my design, it is not only, or chiefly, a collection of social sketches and friendly correspondence. I have tried to make it the true and complete history of a woman’s existence as seen from within; a real Life, which he who reads may take as representing fairly the joys, sorrows and interests, the powers and limitations, of one of my sex and class in the era which is now drawing to a close. The world when I entered it was a very different place from the world I must shortly quit, most markedly so as regards the position in it of women and of persons like myself holding heterodox opinions, and my experience practically bridges the gulf which divides the English ancien régime from the new.
Whether my readers will think at the end of these volumes that such a life as mine was worth recording I cannot foretell; but that it has been a “Life Worth Living” I distinctly affirm; so well worth it, that,—though I entirely believe in a higher existence hereafter, both for myself and for those whose less happy lives on earth entitle them far more to expect it from eternal love and justice,—I would gladly accept the permission to run my earthly race once more from beginning to end, taking sunshine and shade just as they have flickered over the long vista of my seventy years. Even the retrospect of my life in these volumes has been a pleasure; a chewing of the cud of memories,—mostly sweet, none very bitter,—while I lie still a little while in the sunshine, ere the soon-closing night.
F. P. C.
CONTENTS.
| CHAP. | PAGE | |
|---|---|---|
| INTRODUCTION | [v] | |
| PREFACE | [xxvii] | |
| I. | FAMILY AND HOME | [1] |
| II. | CHILDHOOD | [29] |
| III. | SCHOOL AND AFTER | [55] |
| IV. | RELIGION | [79] |
| V. | MY FIRST BOOK | [107] |
| VI. | IRELAND IN THE FORTIES. THE PEASANTRY | [135] |
| VII. | IRELAND IN THE FORTIES. THE GENTRY | [163] |
| VIII. | UPROOTED | [201] |
| IX. | LONG JOURNEY | [217] |
| X. | BRISTOL. REFORMATORIES AND RAGGED SCHOOLS | [273] |
| XI. | BRISTOL. THE SICK IN THE WORKHOUSE | [301] |
| XII. | BRISTOL. WORKHOUSE GIRLS | [325] |
| XIII. | BRISTOL FRIENDS | [341] |
| XIV. | ITALY. 1857–1879 | [363] |
| XV. | MY LITERARY LIFE IN LONDON | [397] |
| XVI. | MY JOURNALIST LIFE IN LONDON | [427] |
| XVII. | MY SOCIAL LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES | [441] |
| XVIII. | MY SOCIAL LIFE IN LONDON IN THE SEVENTIES AND EIGHTIES | [517] |
| XIX. | THE CLAIMS OF WOMEN | [581] |
| XX. | THE CLAIMS OF BRUTES | [613] |
| XXI. | MY HOME IN WALES | [693] |
| INDEX | [713] |