“Mrs. Somerville thinks no one can be eloquent who has not studied the Bible. We discussed the character of Christ. She agreed to all I said, adding she thought it clear the Apostles never thought he was God, only the image of the perfection of God. She kissed me tenderly when I rose to go and bade me come back at any hour—at three in the morning if I liked!—May 18th. Mrs. Somerville gave me her photograph. She says she always feels a regret thinking of the next life that we shall see no more the flowers of this world. I said we should no doubt see others still fairer. “Ah! yes,” she said, “but our own roses and mignonette! I shall miss them. The dear animals I believe we shall meet. They suffer so often here, they must live again.”—June 3rd. Wished farewell to Mrs. Somerville. She said kissing me with many tears, “We shall meet in Heaven! I shall claim you there.”
I saw Mrs. Somerville again on my other visits to Italy, at Genoa, Spezzia and Naples; of course making it a great object of my plans to be for some weeks near her. In my last journey, in 1879, I saw at Naples the noble monument erected over her grave by her daughter. It represents her (heroic size) reclining on a classic chair,—in somewhat the attitude of the statue of Agrippina in the Vatican.
Mrs. Somerville ought to have been buried in Westminster Abbey. When I saw her death announced on the posters of the newspapers in the streets in London, I hurried as soon as I could recover myself, to ask Dean Stanley to arrange for her interment in the Abbey. The Dean consented freely and with hearty approval to my proposition, and Mrs. Somerville’s nephew, Sir William Fairfax, promised at once to defray all expenses. There was only one thing further needed, and that was the usual formal request from some public body or official persons to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. Dean Stanley had immediately written to the Astronomer Royal to suggest that he and the President of the Royal Society, as the representatives of the sciences with which Mrs. Somerville’s fame was connected, should address to him the demand which would authorize his proceeding with the matter. But that gentleman refused to do it—on the ground that he had never read Mrs. Somerville’s books! Whether he had read one in which she took the opposite side from his in the sharp and angry Adams-Le Verrier controversy, it is not for me to say. Any way, jealousy, either scientific or masculine, declined to admit Mary Somerville’s claims to a place in the national Valhalla, wherein so many men neither intellectually nor morally her equals have been welcomed.
From the time of our first meeting till her death in 1872, Mrs. Somerville maintained a close correspondence with me. I have had all her beautifully-written letters bound together, and they form a considerable volume. Of course it was a delight to me to send her everything which might interest her, and among other things I sent her a volume of Theodore Parker’s Prayers; edited by myself. In October, 1863, I spent a long time at Spezzia to enjoy the immense pleasure of her society. I was then a cripple and unable to walk to her house, and wrote of her visits as follows to Miss Elliot:
“Mrs. Somerville comes to me every day. She is looking younger than three years ago and she talked to me for three hours yesterday, pouring out such stores of recent science as I never heard before. Then we talked a little heresy, and she thanked me with tears in her eyes for Parker’s Prayers, saying she had found them the greatest comfort and the most perfect expression of religious feeling of any prayers she has known.”
Another time I sent her my Hopes of the Human Race. She wrote, three weeks before her death, “God bless you dearest friend for your irresistible argument for our Immortality! Not that I ever doubted of it, but as I shall soon enter my ninety-third year, your words are an inexpressible comfort.”
Mary Somerville was the living refutation of all the idle, foolish things which have been said of intellectual women. There never existed a more womanly woman. Her Life, edited by her eldest daughter Martha Somerville (her son by her first marriage, Mr. Woronzow Greig, died long before her), has been much read and liked. I reviewed it in the Quarterly (January, 1874), and am tempted to enclose a letter which Martha Somerville (then and always my good friend) wrote about it:
“From Miss Somerville to F. P. C.
“22nd January, Naples.
“My dear Frances,