About a mile from Deal stands Sandown Castle. In 1664, Colonel Hutchinson is a prisoner within its walls. It was a ruinous place, not weatherproof. The tide washed the dilapidated fortress; the windows were unglazed; cold, and damp, and dreary was the room where the proud heart bore up against physical evils. For even here there was happiness. Lucy is not permitted to share his prison; but she may visit him daily. In the town of Deal abides that faithful wife. She is with him at the first hour of the morning; she remains till the latest of night. In sunshine or in storm, she is pacing along that rugged beach, to console and be consoled.
Eleven months have thus passed, when Lucy is persuaded by her husband to go to Owthorpe to see her children.
"When the time of her departure came, she left with a very sad and ill-presaging heart." In a few weeks John Hutchinson is laid in the family vault in that Vale of Belvoir.
Lucy Hutchinson sits in holy resignation in the old sacred home. She has a task to work out. She has to tell her husband's history, for the instruction of her children:—"I that am under a command not to grieve at the common rate of desolate women, while I am studying which way to moderate my woe, and, if it were possible, to augment my love, can, for the present, find out none more just to your dear father, nor consolatory to myself, than the preservation of his memory."
So rests her shadow, ever, in our poor remembrance.
From Eliza Cook's Journal.
THE WIVES OF SOUTHEY, COLERIDGE, AND LOVELL.
Southey, Coleridge, and Lovell, three poets, married three sisters, the Misses Fricker of Bristol. They were all alike poor when they married. Southey's aunt shut her door in his face when she found he was resolved on marrying in such circumstances; and he, postponing entry upon the married life, though he had contracted the responsibility of husband, parted from his wife at the church door, and set out on a six months' visit to Portugal, preparatory to entering on the study of the legal profession. Southey committed his maiden wife to the care of Mr. Cottle's sisters during his absence. "Should I perish by shipwreck," he wrote from Falmouth to Mr. Cottle, "or by any other casualty, I have relations whose prejudice will yield to the anguish of affection, and who will love, cherish, and give all possible consolation to my widow." With these words Southey set sail for Portugal, and his wife, who had persuaded him to go, and cried when he was going, though she would not then have permitted him to stay, meekly retired to her place of refuge, wearing her wedding-ring round her neck.
Southey returned to England, and commenced the study of the law, but after a year's drudgery gave it up. His wife joined him in a second visit to Portugal, and on his return he commenced the laborious literary career which he pursued till his death. He enjoyed on the whole a happy married life; took pleasure in his home and his family; loving his children and his wife Edith dearly. This is one of his own pictures:—"Glance into the little room where sits the gray-haired man, 'working hard and getting little—a bare maintenance, and hardly that; writing poems and history for posterity with his whole heart and soul; one daily progressing in learning, not so learned as he is poor, not so poor as proud, not so proud as happy.'" Great men have invited him to London, and he is now answering the invitation. The thought of the journey plagues him. "Oh dear, oh dear!" he writes, "there is such a comfort in one's old coat and old shoes, one's own chair and own fireside, one's own writing-desk and own library—with a little girl climbing up to my neck and saying, 'Don't go to London, papa, you must stay with Edith'—and a little boy whom I have taught to speak the language of cats, dogs, cuckoos, jackasses, &c., before he can articulate a word of his own—there is such a comfort in all these things, that transportation to London seems a heavier punishment than any sins of mine deserve." But a sad calamity fell upon him in his old age. His dear Edith was suddenly bereft of reason. "Forty years," he writes to Grosvenor Bedford from York, "has she been the life of my life—and I have left her this day in a lunatic asylum." In the same letter he expresses the resignation of a Christian and the confident courage of a man. "God, who has visited me with this affliction," he says, "has given me strength to bear it, and will, I know, support me to the end, whatever that may be. To-morrow I return to my poor children. I have much to be thankful for under this visitation. For the first time in my life (he was sixty years old) I am so far beforehand with the world that my means are provided for the whole of next year, and that I can meet this expenditure, considerable in itself, without any difficulty."