“Wed. 9th.
“I am interrupted by a perfect bundle of fragrance and fresh colour sent by Miss Cobbe with a note in which I am sorry to say she gives me very little hope of seeing her at all while I am in Dublin. This, as you know, is a real disappointment to me. I had rather fallen in love with her, and wished very much to have had some opportunity of more intercourse with her. Her face when I came to talk to her seemed to me keen and sweet—a charming combination—and I was so grateful to her for not being repelled by my ungracious demeanour at her house, that I had quite looked forward to the pleasure of seeing her again.
“F. A. K.”
I did go to see her in London; and she kept her word, and was my dear and affectionate friend and bore many things from me with perfect good humour, for forty years; including (horrible to recall!) my falling fast asleep while she was reading Shakespeare to Mary Lloyd and me in our drawing-room here at Hengwrt! Among her many kindnesses was the gift of a mass of her Correspondence from the beginning of her theatrical career in 1821 to her last years. She also successively gave me the MSS. of all her Records, but in each case I induced her to take them back and publish them herself. I have now, as a priceless legacy, a large parcel of her own letters, and five thick volumes of autograph letters addressed to her by half the celebrated men and women of her time. They testify uniformly to the admiration, affection and respect wherewith,—her little foibles notwithstanding,—she was regarded by three generations.
CHAPTER
VIII.
UPROOTED.
I draw now to the closing years of my life at Newbridge, after I had published my first book and before my father died. They were happy and peaceful years, though gradually overshadowed by the sense that the long tenure of that beloved home must soon end. It is one of the many perversities of woman’s destiny that she is, not only by hereditary instinct a home-making animal, but is encouraged to the uttermost to centre all her interests in her home; every pursuit which would give her anchorage elsewhere, (always excepting marriage) being more or less under general disapproval. Yet when the young woman takes thoroughly to this natural home-making, when she has, like a plant, sent her roots down into the cellars and her tendrils up into the garrets and every room bears the impress of her personality, when she glories in every good picture on the walls or bit of choice china on the tables and blushes for every stain on the carpets, when, in short, her home is, as it should be, her outer garment, her nest, her shell, fitted to her like that of a murex, then, almost invariably comes to her the order to leave it all, tear herself out of it,—and go to make (if she can) some other home elsewhere. Supposing her to have married early, and that she is spared the late uprooting from her father’s house at his death, she has usually to bear a similar transition when she survives her husband; and in this case often with the failing health and spirits of old age. I do not know how these heartbreaks are to be spared to women of the class of the daughters and wives of country gentlemen or clergymen; but they are hard to bear. Perhaps the most fortunate daughters (harsh as it seems to say so) are those whose fathers die while they are themselves still in full vigour and able to begin a new existence with spirit and make new friends; as was my case. Some of my contemporaries, whose fathers lived till they were fifty, or even older, had a bitterer trial in quitting their homes and were never able to start afresh.
In my last few years at Newbridge my father and I were both cheered by the frequent presence of my dear little niece, Helen, on whom he doted, and towards whom flowed out the tenderness which had scarcely been allowed its free course with his own children. L’Art d’être Grandpère is surely the most beautiful of arts! When all personal pleasures have pretty well died away then begins the reflected pleasure in the fresh, innocent delights of the child; a moonlight of happiness perhaps more sweet and tender than the garish joys of the noontide of life. To me, who had never lived in a house with little children, it brought a whole world of revelations to have this babe and afterwards her little sister, in a nursery under my supervision during their mother’s long illnesses. I understood for the first time all that a child may be in a woman’s life, and how their little hands may pull our heart-strings. My nieces were dear, good, little babes then; they are dear and good women now; the comfort of my age, as they were the darlings of my middle life.
Having received sufficient encouragement from the succès d’estime of my Theory of Intuitive Morals, I proceeded now to write the first of the three books on Practical Morals, with which I designed to complete the work. My volume of Religious Duty, then written, has proved, however, the only one of the series ever published. At a later time I wrote some chapters on Personal and on Social Duty, but was dissatisfied with them, and destroyed the MSS.
As Religious Duty (3rd edition) is still to be had (included by Mr. Fisher Unwin in his late re-issue of my principal works), I need not trouble the reader by any such analysis of it as I have given of the former volume. In writing concerning Religious Duty at the time, I find in a letter of mine to Harriet St. Leger (returned to me when she grew blind), that I spoke of it thus:—
“Newbridge, April 25th, 1857.