Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

“23rd June, 1882.

“Dear Madam,

“I most sincerely thank you for your kind letter and for the pamphlets which preceded it. The ‘Address’ seems to me to possess the very rare merit of forcible statement combined with a moderation of judgment which sets a valuable example, not only to our enemies, but to some of our friends. As to the ‘Portrait,’ I feel such a strong universal interest in it that I must not venture on criticism. You have given me exactly what I most wanted for the purpose that I have in view—and you have spared me time and trouble in the best and kindest of ways. If I require further help, you shall see that I am gratefully sensible of the help that has been already given.

“I am writing to a very large public both at home and abroad; and it is quite needless (when I am writing to you) to dwell on the importance of producing the right impression by means which keep clear of terrifying and revolting the ordinary reader. I shall leave the detestable cruelties of the laboratory to be merely inferred, and, in tracing the moral influence of those cruelties on the nature of the man who practices them, and the result as to his social relations with the persons about him, I shall be careful to present him to the reader as a man not infinitely wicked and cruel, and to show the efforts made by his better instincts to resist the inevitable hardening of the heart, the fatal stupefying of all the finer sensibilities, produced by the deliberately merciless occupations of his life. If I can succeed in making him, in some degree, an object of compassion as well as of horror, my experience of readers of fiction tells me that the right effect will be produced by the right means.

“Believe me, very truly yours,

“Wilkie Collins.”

Of another order of acquaintances was that excellent man Mr. James Spedding; also Mr. Babbage, (in whose horror of street music I devoutly sympathised); and Mr. James Fergusson the architect, in whose books and ideas generally I found great interest. He avowed to me his opinion that the ancient Jews were never builders of stone edifices, and that all the relics of stone buildings in Palestine were the work either of Tyrians or of the Idumean Herod, or of other non-Jewish rulers. His conversation was always most instructive to me, and I rejoiced when I had the opportunity of writing a long review (for Fraser I think) of his Tree and Serpent Worship; with which he was so well pleased that he made me a present of the magnificent volume, of which I believe only a hundred copies were printed. Mr. Fergusson taught me to see that the whole civilization of a country has depended historically on the stones with which it happens naturally to be furnished. If these stones be large and hard and durable like those of Egypt, we find grand, everlasting monuments and statues made of them. If they be delicate and beautiful like Pentelic marble, we have the Parthenon. If they be plain limestone or freestone as in our northern climes, richness of form and detail take the place of greater simplicity, and we have the great cathedrals of England, France and Germany. Where there is no good stone, only brick, we may have fine mansions, but not great temples, and where there is neither clay for bricks, nor good stone for building, the natives can erect no durable edifices, and consequently have no places to be adorned with statues and paintings and all the arts which go with them. I do not know whether I do justice to Mr. Fergusson in giving this résumé of his lesson, but it is my recollection of it, and to my thinking worth recording.

One of the friends of whom we saw most in London was Sir William Boxall, whose exquisite artistic taste was specially congenial to my friend, and his varied conversation and love of his poor, dear, old dog “Garry,” to me. After Lord Coleridge’s charming obituary of him nothing need be added in the way of tribute to his character and gifts, or to the refined feeling which inspired him always. I may add, however (what the Lord Chief Justice naturally would not say on his own account), namely, that Boxall, in his latter years of weakness and almost constant confinement to the house, frequently told us when we went to visit him how Lord Coleridge had found time from all his labours to come frequently to sit with him and cheer him; and after a whole day spent in the hot Law Courts would dine on his old friend’s chops, and spend the evening in his dingy rooms in Welbeck Street. Here is a letter from Sir William which I happen to have preserved. It refers to an article I had written in the Echo on the death of Landseer:—

“My dear Miss Cobbe,

“Your sympathetic notice of my old friend Landseer and his friends has delighted me—a grain of such feeling is worth a newspaper load of worn-out criticism. I thank you very sincerely for it.