My love to my dear Mary. I expect to find you together, but do not assume to know how things may be.
Jeannie’s love with mine, and also Charlotte’s, and a great many others which I cannot call to mind.
Dearest, I long to see and be with you, whether together or separate.
Your husband, very affectionate,
M. Faraday
THE WIFE AND THE QUEEN.
In 1858 the Queen, at the suggestion of Prince Albert, who much esteemed and valued Faraday’s genius, placed at his disposal for life a comfortable house on the green near Hampton Court. Faraday’s only hesitation in accepting the offer was a doubt whether he could afford the needful repairs. On a hint of this reaching the Queen, she at once directed that it should be put into thorough repair inside and out. He still kept his rooms at the Royal Institution, and continued to live there occasionally.
With the increasing infirmities of age, his anxieties for his wife seemed to be the only trouble that marred the serenity of his thought. Lady Pollock’s narrative gives the following particulars:—
Sometimes he was depressed by the idea of his wife left without kin—of the partner of his hopes and cares deprived of him. She had been the first love of his ardent soul; she was the last; she had been the brightest dream of his youth, and she was the dearest comfort of his age; he never ceased for an instant to feel himself happy with her; and he never for one hour ceased to care for her happiness. It was no wonder, then, that he felt anxiety about her. But he would rally from such a trouble with his great religious trust, and looking at her with moist eyes, he would say, “I must not be afraid; you will be cared for, my wife; you will be cared for.”
There are some who remember how tenderly he used to lead her to her seat at the Royal Institution when she was suffering from lameness; how carefully he used to support her; how watchfully he used to attend all her steps. It did the heart good to see his devotion, and to think what the man was and what he had been.
