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

by Frances Power Cobbe

The first time I went to see her after her return, I found her standing in front of an immense chart which was spread out on a table, studying the successions of Egyptian dynasties. The address she had given in Clifton at the ladies’ club was about to be printed in the Contemporary Review, and she wanted to verify a statement she had made in it about an Egyptian queen. She told me that this elaborate chronological and genealogical chart had been made by her, when a girl of 18, on her own plan. “How happy I was doing it,” she said, “with my mother on her sofa watching me, and taking such interest in it!” It was very delightful to find the old woman of 80 consulting the work of the girl of 18.

Alas! the improvement in her health did not continue long. From that time till the end, I hardly received a letter from Miss Cobbe without some reference to the cheerless, gloomy weather. She was very sensitive to the influences of the weather; and as one of her greatest pleasures had always been to pass much time out of doors, it became a serious deprivation to her when rain and cold made it impossible to take her daily drive, or to walk and sit in her beloved garden. She thought that some real and permanent change had come over our climate, and the want of sunshine, during the last winter especially, terribly depressed her spirits and health. I spent two or three happy days with her in the spring, and one drive on an exquisite morning at the end of May will long live in my memory. No one ever loved trees and flowers, mountain and river, more than she, or took more delight in the pleasure they gave to others.

Gradually, as the year went on, serious symptoms showed themselves—and she knew them to be serious. Attacks of faintness and complete exhaustion often prevented her from enjoying the society of even her dearest friends, though in spite of increasing weakness she struggled on with all the weight of private correspondence and the business of her new society; and sometimes, when strangers went to see her, they would find her so bright and animated that they came away thinking our fears for her unfounded.

A visit from two American friends in the summer gave her much pleasure; but all last year her anxieties and disappointments were great, and wore down her strength. The Bayliss v. Coleridge case tried her grievously, and the adverse verdict was a severe blow. The evident animus of the public made her almost despair of ever obtaining that justice for animals which had been the object of her efforts for so many years. Hope deferred, and the growing opposition of principalities and powers, made even her brave heart quail at times. One result of the trial, however, gave her real satisfaction. The Daily News opened its columns to a correspondence on the subject of Vivisection, and the wide-spread sympathy expressed with those who oppose it was, Miss Cobbe said, “the greatest cheer she had known in this sad cause for years.” The two young Swedish ladies who had been the principal witnesses at the trial, visited her at Hengwrt in November, and I met them there one afternoon at, I think, the last of her pleasant receptions. I have never seen her more interested, more graciously hospitable, than on that day. She listened to the account of the trial, sometimes with a smile of approval, sometimes with tears in her eyes; and when we went into the hall for tea, where the blazing wood fire lighted up the dark panelling, and gleamed upon pictures, flowers, and curtains, and she moved about talking to one and another with her sweet smile and kindly, earnest words, some one present said to me, “How young she looks!” I think it was the simplicity, the perfect naturalness of her manner and speech that gave an aspect of almost childlikeness to the dear old face at times. Every thought found expression in her countenance and voice. The eyes, laughing or tearful, the gestures of her beautifully shaped hands, were, to the last, full of animation.

There was indeed a perennial flow of vitality which seemed to overcome all physical weakness in Miss Cobbe. But if others were deceived as to her health, she was not. As the dark, dreary winter went on, she grew more and more depressed. Four days before the end came, I received the following sad letter. Illness and other causes had made it impossible for me to go to Hengwrt for some weeks. The day after her death I was to have gone.

“It is very sad how the weeks go by, and we, living almost within sight of each other, fail to meet. It is most horribly cold to-day, and I would not have had you come for anything.... I think our best plan by far will be to settle that whenever you make your proposed start abroad, you come to me for three or four days on your way. This will let us have a little peaceful confab. I really want very much to do what I have been thinking of so long, but have never done yet, and give you advice about your future editorship of my poor books. To tell you my own conviction, even if I should be living when you return, I do not think I shall be up to this sort of business. I am getting into a wretched state of inability to give attention to things, and now the chances are all for a speedy collapse. This winter has been too great a trial for my old worn brains, and now the cold returning is killing.”

Happily for her, she was spared the pain of any protracted period of mental or bodily weakness. On Monday, April 4th, she drove out as usual, wrote her letters (one to me, received after she was dead), and in the afternoon enjoyed the visit of a neighbour, who took tea with her. It was a better day with her than many had been of late, and she went to bed cheerful and well. In the morning, having opened her shutters to let in the blessed daylight, and to look her last upon the familiar scene of mountain, valley, river, and wood, with the grey headstone visible in the churchyard where her friend rested, she passed swiftly away, and was found dead, with a smile of peace upon her face. A short time before, she had written to me:—

“I am touched by your affectionate words, dear Blanche, but nobody must be sorry when that time comes, least of all those who love me.”

We can obey her request not to sorrow for her; but for all those—and they are more than she ever realised—who loved her, the loss is beyond words to tell.

Miss Cobbe’s personality breathes through all her writings. Yet there was a charm about her which not even her autobiography is able to convey. It was the charm of an intensely sympathetic nature, quickly moved to laughter or to tears, passionately indignant at cruelty and cowardice, tender to suffering, touched to a generous delight at any story of heroism. As an instance of this, I may recall that in the spring of 1899 Miss Cobbe started a memorial to Mrs. Rogers, stewardess of the Stella, by the gift of £25. The closing words of the inscription she wrote for the beautiful drinking fountain which was erected to that brave woman’s memory are worth recording here: