It is an unsolved mystery to me why such a woman did not definitely adopt one of either of two courses. The first (and far the best) would, of course, have been to bury her husband’s misdeeds in absolute silence and oblivion, carefully destroying all papers relating to the tragedy of their joint lives. Or, if she had not strength for this, to write exactly what she thought ought to be known by posterity concerning him, and put her account in safe hands with all the needful pièces justificatives before she died. That she did not adopt either one course or the other must be a source of permanent regret to all who recognized her great merits and honoured them as they deserved.
Among our neighbours in South Kensington, whom we were privileged to know were many delightful people, who are still, I am happy to say, living and taking active part in the world. Among them were Mr. Froude, Mr. and Mrs. W. E. H. Lecky, Mr. Leslie Stephen, Mrs. Brookfield, Mrs. Simpson, and Mrs. Richmond Ritchie. But of several others, alas! “the place that knew them knows them no more.” Of these last were Mr. and Mrs. Herman Merivale, Sir Henry Maine, Mrs. Dicey, Lady Monteagle (who had written some of Wordsworth’s poems to his dictation as his amanuensis), and my dear old friend Mrs. de Morgan.
Sir Henry Maine’s interest in the claims of women and his strong statements on the subject, made me regard him with much gratitude. I asked him once a question about St. Paul’s citizenship, to which he was good enough to write so full and interesting a reply that I quote it here in extenso:—
“Athenæum Club, Pall Mall, S.W.,
“April 6th, 1874.
“My dear Miss Cobbe,
“There is no question that for a considerable time before the concession of the Roman citizenship to the whole empire, quite at all events, B.C. 89 or 90,—it could be obtained in various ways by individuals who possessed a lower franchise in virtue of their place of birth or who were even foreigners. The legal writer, Ulpian, mentions several of these modes of acquiring it; and Pliny, more than once solicits the citizenship for protégés of his own. There is no authority for supposing that it could be directly purchased (at least legally), but it could be obtained by various processes which came to the same thing as paying directly, e.g., building a ship of a certain burden to carry corn to Rome.
“I suspect that St. Paul’s ancestor obtained the citizenship by serving in some petty magistracy. The coins of Tarsus are said to show that its citizens in the reign of Augustus, enjoyed one or other of the lower Roman franchises; and this would facilitate the acquisition by individuals of the full Roman citizenship.
“The Roman citizenship was necessarily hereditary. The children of the person who became a Roman citizen came at once under his Patria Potestas, and each of them acquired the capacity for becoming some day a Roman Paterfamilias.
“St. Paul, as a Roman citizen, lived under the Roman Law of Persons, but he remained under the local Law of Property. His allusions to the Patria Potestas and to the Roman Law of Wills and guardianship (which was like the Patria Potestas), are quite unmistakeable, and more numerous than is commonly supposed. In the obscure passage, for example, about women having power over the head, “Power” and “Head” are technical terms from the Roman Law.