My mother's loss in the death of her father was a great grief, which fell upon her at this time. She wrote to my aunt:—
DEAR ELIZABETH,—If anything could have softened such a blow, it would have been the divine way in which my husband told me. If a seraph can look more radiant with love—a flaming love, veiled with most tender, sorrowing sympathy—than he did, I am sure I cannot conceive of it, and am quite contented not to. I saw and felt in a moment how beyond computation and desert I was still rich,—richest. Father's sincerity, his childlike guilelessness, his good sense and rectitude, his unaffected piety,—all and each of his qualities made him interesting to my husband. I really do not believe any one else ever listened to his stories and his conversation with as much love and interest. Whatever is real and simple and true attracts my husband both as a poet and as a man. Genuine nature he always springs to. Father was entirely unspoiled by the world—as pure of it as a dewdrop. This indeed made him a rare person. He seems to stand meekly in the presence of God. Where more arch-angelic intellect—divine genius—would tremble and faint, simple goodness will feel quite at home, with its one talent become two talents, and its faith and hope blossomed into reality. By and by I shall perhaps have a vivid sense of his presence, as I did of mother's, six weeks after her departure.
We have been out, for the first time, walking in the garden. The morning was beautiful. The budding shrubbery was on every side, and daisies and wallflowers and auriculas blooming even while a thin veil of snow lay in some places.
Una, in writing home to America, portrays the family peace, and the little landscapes of the quieter corners of our "Old Home:"—
"We have got to England at last. It does not seem as if we were in England, but in Boston or Salem. There is not so much noise here as there was in Boston.
"Mamma has told you about Mr. Rathbone's place, but I do not think she has told you about one place by the wall. The wall is run over with all sorts of vines, and there are summer-houses close up by the wall, and a little brook rippling in front, and a great many mighty trees in front, so that not a ray of the sun could peep through.
"On Sunday, the great Easter Sunday, we went to the Chapel of the Blind, and stayed through the Communion service. Mamma received the sacrament. The sermon was very tiresome. It was about the skins that Adam and Eve wore. . . . I was very much interested in Chester, and all the old things I saw there, especially the Cathedral. As we walked round the cloisters you could almost fancy you saw the monks pacing slowly round, and looking now and then on the beautiful dewy green grass which is in the middle of the cloisters. On Monday my dear godpapa [Mr. O'Sullivan] went to London. Mamma got up at half past four and set on the table some chicken-pie, some oranges, and what she thought to be stout, and some flowers which I had gathered in the morning, and gave all these to him.
"Rose is sitting on papa's knee, and through her golden hair I can see her little contented face. She has got down now, and is engaged in a lively discussion with Julian about her name. Julian has been dancing round with the heat, for he thought dancing round would keep him cool. Rose is sitting in mamma's lap now, and she looks so jolly. Her very rosy round face and her waving flowing hair make her look so pretty. She is very sharp, and she has a great deal of fun in her. She has learnt 'Hark, the lark,' 'The Cuckoo,' and 'Where the bee sucks, there suck I.' She says them very prettily, and she has a sweet, simple way of saying what she knows."
Thoughts of her own country recall the joys of Lenox:—
"I have been nutting a great many times in Berkshire. Papa and mamma, Julian and I, all took large baskets and went into the woods, and there we would stay sometimes all day, picking walnuts and chestnuts. Perhaps where we were there were mostly walnuts; but still there were a good many chestnuts. We had a very large oven in which we put as many of our nuts as we could, and the rest we put into large bags. We, and the rats and mice, had nice feasts on them every winter.