Long summer morns, hath for our solace wrought;
So noble work succeeds to noble thought,
So the hand justifies the heart and head,
So the child’s play to earnest close is brought
So piety to poetry is wed.”
By W. M. W. Call.
Eleanor is now the inmate of another home in a distant county, but her name is still cherished and remembered, in connection with that of the husband she mourns, among the survivors of the rural population of Marston Bigot.
The poet in question was a near neighbour, and became a constant visitor both at the Rectory and Millard’s Hill. On the marriage of my brother Charles, and the prolonged absence of Cavendish and his wife in the West Indies, this friend, whom we named “Alastor,” on account of his predilection for solitude, became the almost daily companion in my long walks. In the summer time we would usually take a volume of some favourite author with us, Shelley, Goethe, or Jean Paul being often selected; of the latter we were both ardent admirers. Then, choosing some grassy knoll in one of the pretty fields which surrounded us, or some tempting shade in one of our numerous wayside woods, we would rest and read awhile. We had tastes and thoughts in common, and many were the pleasant hours thus beguiled, which are, I am well assured, forgotten by neither of us.