What I Remember, Volume 2

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

The verses which Landor praised with enthusiasm so excessive were most, or I think all of them, published in the annual edited by his friend Lady Blessington, and were all written before our marriage. I have many long letters addressed to her by that lady, and several by her niece Miss Power, respecting them. They always in every instance ask for "more."

Many of her verses she set to music, especially one little poemlet, which I remember to this day the tune of, which she called the Song of the Blackbird, and which was, if I remember rightly, made to consist wholly of the notes uttered by the bird.

Another instance of her "multiform faculty" was her learning landscape sketching. I have spoken of her figure drawing. And this, I take it, was the real bent of her talent in that line. But unable to compass the likeness of a haystack myself, I was desirous of possessing some record of the many journeys which I designed to take, and eventually did take with her. And wholly to please me she forthwith made the attempt, and though her landscape was never equal to her figure drawing, I possess some couple of hundred of water-colour sketches done by her from nature on the spot.

I used to say that if I wanted a Sanscrit dictionary, I had only to put her head straight at it, and let her feel the spur, and it would have been done!

We lived together seventeen happy years. During the five first, I think I may say that she lived wholly and solely in, by, and for me. That she should live for somebody other than herself was an absolute indefeasible necessity of her nature. During the last twelve years I shared her heart with her daughter. Her intense worship for her "Baby Beatrice" was equalled only by—that of all the silliest and all the wisest women, who have true womanly hearts in their bosoms, for their children. The worship was, of course, all the more absorbing that the object of it was unique. I take it that, after the birth of her child, I came second in her heart. But I was not jealous of little Bice.

I do not think that she would have quite subscribed to the opinion of Garibaldi on the subject of the priesthood, which I mentioned in a former chapter—that they ought all to be forthwith put to death. But all her feelings and opinions were bitterly antagonistic to them. She was so deeply convinced of the magnitude of the evil inflicted by them and their Church on the character of the Italians, for whom she ever felt a great affection, that she was bitter on the subject. And it is the only subject on which I ever knew her to feel in any degree bitterly. Many of her verses written during her latter years are fiercely denunciatory or humorously satirical of the Italian priesthood, and especially of the Pontifical Government. I wish that my space permitted me to give further specimens of them here. But I must content myself with giving one line, which haunts my memory, and appears to me excessively happy In the accurate truthfulness of its simile. She is writing of the journey which Pius the Ninth made, and describing his equipment, says that he started "with strings of cheap blessings, like glass beads for savages."

With the exception of this strong sentiment my wife was one of the most tolerant people I ever knew. What she most avoided in those with whom she associated was, not so much ignorance, or even vulgarity of manner, as pure native stupidity. But even of that, when the need arose, she was tolerant. I never knew her in the selection of an acquaintance, or even of a friend, to be influenced to the extent of even a hair's-breadth, by station, rank, wealth, fashion, or any consideration whatever, save personal liking and sympathy, which was, in her case, perfectly compatible with the widest divergence of views and opinions on nearly any of the great subjects which most divide mankind, and even with divergence of rules of conduct. Her own opinions were the honest results of original thinking, and her conduct the outcome of the dictates of her own heart—of her heart rather than of her reasoning powers, or of any code of law—a condition of mind which might be dangerous to individuals with less native purity of heart than hers.

As a wife, as a daughter, as a daughter-in-law, as a mother, she was absolutely irreproachable. In the first relationship she was all in all to me for seventeen years. She brought sweetness and light into my life and into my dwelling. She was the angel in the house, if ever human being was.

Her father became an inmate of our house after the death of his wife at a great age at Torquay, whither they had returned after the death of my wife's half-sister, Harriet Fisher. He was a jealously affectionate, but very exacting father; and few daughters, I think, could have been more admirable in her affection for him, her attention to him, her care of him. And I may very safely say that very few mothers of sons have the fortune of finding such a daughter-in-law. My mother had been very fond of her before our marriage, and became afterwards as devotedly attached to her as she was to me, of whom she knew her to be an indivisible part, while she was to my mother simply perfect. Her own mother she had always been in the habit of calling by that name. She always spoke to and of my mother as "mammy." What she was to her own daughter I have already said. There was somewhat of the tendency towards "spoiling," which is mostly inseparable from the adoration which a young mother, of the right sort, feels for her firstborn child, but she never made any attempt to avert or counteract my endeavours to prevent such spoiling. When little Bice had to be punished by solitary confinement for half an hour, she only watched anxiously for the expiration of the sentence.[1]

[Footnote 1: I do not remember that little Bice ever consoled herself under the disgrace of such captivity as my present wife has confessed to me that she did when suffering under the same condemnation. Her method of combining the maintenance of personal dignity with revenge on the oppressor, was to say to the first person who came to take her out of prison: "No! you can't come into my parlour!">[