i^n^ III r. II! OTHERS / REAT ShS Wo M E_N AND -^ ^' " THE MAUL) THAT JK>CJvS THhCRADLE ;■"' 1 S 'i-H E UAIU) THAT RU LE^' W. E VA)RLD" THE LIBRARIES Bequest of Frederic Bancroft 1860-1945 ->' * i- EngV Geo, EPerme.Nwrtovi^ TTME Rfl®Tri}{ll£U^ ®[F JE^ After Papha'^!^' '-"Riminc in iTip, Dresden Gallery THE MOTHERS or GREAT MEN AND WOMEN, AND SOME WIVES OF (iUEAT MEN. BY LAURA C. HOLLOWAY, AVTHOR OP 'Thb Ladies of the White House, ' "As Horn with Charlotte Bromte," KTC. ETC. ILLUSTRATED. BALTI^EORE : R. H. WOODWARD & COMPANY. 1892 > » * ■ I ^ » i • . » ,5 * * ' » ' I '*>>! >J > l>> )> V j^^^(iC- Copyrighted By LAURA C. HOLI/)WAY, < • c» . ■ * « t » *• « X • » « A TO THE MEMORY OP HER WHO GAVE ME THE PRICELESS GIF! OF A Potlier's gone THIS BOOK IS TiEDICATED. ' All true trophies of the cges Are from tnotlier-love innenrled ; For the hand that rocks vfie ci-udle Is the hand thav i-ules the world.' PREFACE. It must not be supposed that in selecting the mothers of great men for a subject, the writer imag- ines that all great men had great mothers, or that the same continuity of qualities are to be looked for in human families as in the lineage of the race-horse. As a rule, however, it has been generally conceded by physiologists that the mother has most to do with the characteristics of the child, and that the fountain of his earliest physical nutriment is also the chief source ••4 of his mental and moral attributes. There is usually to be found in the characters of « the mothers of great men innate strength and a good development of mind, even if they are not what may be termed highly edu- cated. And they are nearly always women of good physical development as well. They cared for their bodies as well as their minds, and gave life to children who in after years rose up and called them blessed. The influence of the mother has been proclaimed by all races of men in all ages. The Red Cross Knights who sauntered to " Sainte Terre," and when they reached the Holy Land fought for the Holy Sepulchre, were inspired to their pilgrimages by zealous mothers and wives. The deeds of heroism in every age have been the indirect, if not the direct, work of women, and most frequently of mothers. PREFACE. We need not travel back to antiquity to find illustra- tions of this truth ; the women of this age are living- evidences of the source from whence their sons have derived their gifts of mind and health. Every de^Dart- ment of human energy and excellence in modern times in all countries furnishes abundant examples of the truth that whatever the mother is that will the son be also. In this volume of 'pen portraits of the mothers of great men, the silent influence of mothers, themselves in many instances unknown to fame, has been traced upon their sons, and in several cases ui)on their daughters. The marks of jjliysical and intellectual lineage have been emphasized and the personal influ- ence of mothers over the career of sons like them has been eagerly proven. The difficulty of explaining how men of genius are indebted to mothers whose at- tainments in no wise compared to their sons is granted, but the writer assumes that while genius escapes all formulas, the physiological and mental aptitude of the man of genius is inherited, and in the majority of cases directly, from the mother. The spiritual side of a man's character is likewise largely transmitted by the mother, while to the mother's training is due the moral development and the aspiration and hope of a higher life i)resent in men. There is no love like a mother's love, and love being the highest and most potential of human qualities, it may be concluded, very naturally, that the intensity of affection bestowed by a mother of character upon her son marks him as hers through life. The difficulty in the way of establishing clear testi- PKEFACE. mony of the pre-eminent power of the mother in the development of the child is due to social conditions, which have operated adversely for them. It is an al- most insurmountable obstacle to the right presenta- tion of the mother's influence in the world. Ignorant prejudice has set such limitations about women and hedged them in with so much that is false in theory and in fact, that the history of the mothers, even of the greatest men, is not easy to obtain. The exceptions are noted, but the lives of the generality of women are not deemed important enough to trace, even in the his- tories of their distinguished sons. Particularly is this true of American women who have been well nigh ignored by historians. If this work succeeds in awakening a new interest in the subject, and arouses in the sex a desire to know more of the great even if obscure mothers of men and women of light and power in the world, it will have fulfilled a w^orthy mission, and performed a good work. List of Subjects. PAGE Mary, thk Mother of Washington 25 The Mother of Mendelssohn 48 Letitia, the Mother of Napoleon 69 Monica, the Mother of St. Augustine 91 The Mother of Lincoln Ill The Mother of Dickens 129 The Mother of the Wesleys 146 The Mother of Charles Lamb 169 The Mother of Thackeray 174 Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi 177 The Mother of Byron 194 The Mother of Rev. John Newton 215 The Mother of Martin Luther 221 The Mother of Stonewall Jackson 241 The Mother of Cowper 259 The Mother of Goethe 266 Lady Lennox, the Mother of the Napiers 284 The Mother of Richter 304 LIST OF SUBJECTS. PAGE ilADAME NeOKER, THE MOTHER OF MaDAME DE StAEL 309 The Mother of Shakspeare 329 The Mother of Beethoven 341 The Mother of Sheridan 360 The Mother of Anthony Trollope 375 Lady Beaconspield, the Wipe of Disraeli, Premier of England 383 The Mother of Garfield 398 The Mother of Humboldt 411 Lady Russell 420 Lamartine 436 Milton's Wives 457 Carlyle's Mother 479 The Mother and the Wife of Samuel Johnson 507 Mothers of Antiquity 535 Marie Antoinette 546 The Mother of Burns 581 Short Sketches op some Wives and Mothers : The Moth- ers OF LucRETiA Mott. Gambetta, George Sand, George Eltot, Kant, Cromwell, Christina op Sweden, etc 597 Abigail Adams 635 List of iLLrsTRATiois^s. PAGE IVIaey and the Child Jesus Frontispiece. {From Raphael's Painting in the Dresden Gallery.) Leah Mendelssohn-Baktholdy 49 The Mother of Napoleon fi8 St. Augustine and his Mother 101 The Mother of President Lincoln 119 Susannah Wesley and her Children, John, Charles, and Others. 153 Cornelia, the ^Iother of the Gracchi 187 Luther at Home 235 Goethe' s Mother , 269 Goethe' s Mother Telling Stories to her Children 287 {See jKifje 366.) Suzanne Necker, the Mother of Madame de Stael 321 Marie Antoinette 371 {See page 546.) The Mother of President Garfield 405 9 SLiDAME Russell 423 The Mother of Lamaetine 441 Marie Antoinette and her Children 555 The Mother of John Q. Adams , . 637 Table of Contents. Maey Washington 25 The mother of Washington — Why she is not better known — Separated from her son in his later years — Few particulars known of her daily life — No letters of hers preserved — An interested observer of public affairs— A woman of strong character — A i^ ray- ing woman her constant companion — De Tocqueville's definition — A silent, serious woman — Forty-six years of widowhood — A good mother and able business woman — Lacking in personal ambition— Not popularly known to the public — Only one public appearance at a grand ball with her son — His beautiful devotion to her — Mother and son much alike — Both wanting in humor — An instance of her courage — How she prolonged her life— Wash- ington persuades her to live in the city — Her personal supervision of her farm — Out-of-door life — Her quiet composiire — A great woman— A consistent Christian — Not a colorless character — A descendant of the Covenanters — The children of the early settlers — Trained to religious habits— Mary Ball's parents — Her home — Marriage — Augustine Washington — A stepmother — Her new home — Birth of a son — The ancestry of Mary Washington — Her son like her in character — A descendant of the Covenanters — As a wife and mother — A religious household — How she instructed her children in obedience— Mr. Washington's death —His will — Mrs. Washington's position — What a kinsman said of her — Mr. Sparks's opinion of her — George Washington Parke Custis's glowing tribute to her — George a schoolboy — Holidays at Mount Vernon — His desire to go to sea — Objections of his mother — A neighbor' s efforts —Mistaken in his estimate of her — Some facts regarding this plan to make George a naval officer — His mother thanked for her wise course — Her manual on morals preserved by her son — Permits him to become a militia officer — Life at Mount Vernon — No more with her — The Revo- lutionary war begun — He visits her before going away— A long separation— The reunion after Cornwallis surrendered — a mes- sage from Washington — His presence in Fredericksburg — After 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS. six years of separation — Attends a ball at seventy j-ears of age — A happy son and a proud mother — American and European officers presented to her — Her appearance— A visit from Lafay- ette — At work in her garden — Washington again at Mount Vernon — Urges his mother to live with him — Her second refusal — Declines to live with her daughter — Washington's frequent visits to her — Her daily habit — Strengthening hei-self by prayer — Quiets her children's alarm — Washington elected President — His farewell visit to his mother — A painfial parting — Her death shortly afterward — Mrs. Lewis writes her brother - His letter in reply -Her will — Corner-stone of a monument — Andrew Jack- son's eulogy — The monument — Graceful poetical tribute. Mother of Mendelssohn 48 Her family — Felix, the happy one — "Midsummer Night's Dream" — The father of Felix — His sister Henrietta — A bright Avomau — Letter from Leah Solomon — Abraham Mendelssohn's wife— Their home in Hamburg — Their children — Mendelssohn Bartholdj' — Letter from Abraham to Fannj' — Noble Hebrew par- ents — Character of Fanny — Happy family life — A fond mother — Her death — Her grandson's description of her. The Mother or Napoleon 69 Born at Ajaccio in 1750 — Married at the age of sixteen — Her beauty remarkable in childhood — Retained it until the end of her life — Her son like her in mental and physical qualities — Some leading characteristics — The description of her by the Duchess dAbrantes— Napoleon's tribute to her — Left a widow in depen- dent circumstances — " Where look for her equal" — The mater- nal heroism of Letitia Bonaparte — Piecalling the days of her youth — Describes the circumstances under which Napoleon was born — Many misfortunes experienced previously — A time of war and want in Corsica — The mother of thirteen children — A widow at thirty-five —The French governor her husband's friend and pro- tector — Scandal concerning her and the Count de Marbceiif — A vile slander — The birth and childhood of Napoleon — His master- principle through life — Early 'exhibition of it — Compared with Achilles — The tapestrj' covering depicting the heroes of Homer's Iliad — A second Charlemagne — Eighty-five millions of people under his dominion — Sir Walter Scott's description of the sum- mer home 8f. Madaiue Bonaparte — A lovely retreat — A hurried departure from it — Death of Napoleon's father — Madame TABLE OF CONTENTS. ill Bonaparte's house pillaged — Her three sous banished — Sails with them for Italj' — Settles at Nice — Kemoval to Marseilles— Severe privations suffered there— Six years of exile and poverty — Kais- ed from privation by her son's successes — Napoleon's attachment to his mother — Assigns a portion of his gains to her — The Revo- lution of 1799— llemoval to Paris — Receives the title of Madame Mere, an income of a million francs, and made Protectrice Generale — Napoleon's remark concerning her — A resolute spirit and great pride — Rebukes her son — Never forgot the past — Par- simonous in habit — How she appeared to the Duchess d' Abrantes — At the house of Joseph — Devoted to the interests of her children — Her efforts for Lucien — Accused bj' the Emi^eror of favoritism — Her noble reply — Her prudence and foresight — Efforts to save the Duke d'Enghien — On her knees in his behalf— Dissatished "with her son — Admonishes him for his ill-treatment of the Pope ■ — Her prophetic warning to her brother — Her alarms for the whole family — Provided for liberally — The ladies of her household ■ — Marriage to Josephine — His mother takes rank next after her — Her dress at the grand fete — Napoleon's three love affairs— Offers himself to Madame de Permon— His remarkable proposition — Who was Madame de Permon — Her children — A widow of forty- six, Napoleon twenty-six — Her refusal of Napoleon — The widow first annoyed and then amused — •" Old enough to be your mother" —They quarrel — Napoleon an exile — His mother and sister with him — Cheering him to hope on — Her letters to him at St. Helena — Her desire to join him — Sends a physician and confessor to him —His long and painful illness — Cancer of the stomach — His men- tion of his mother in his will — The return of the physician sent by Madame Mere — His interview with her — Obliged to tell but little of her son's last days — Her great emotion — An afflicted mother — "A most heart-rending spectacle" — A proof of her gratitude — Gives a diamond to the physician — The phrenologi- cal characteristics of Napoleon — Like his mother in features and mental qualities — Force of will a predominating quality in each — Her residence in Rome- -Offers to give all she has to him — His appreciation of her character — His many tributes to her — Las' Casas reports his condition at St. Helena— Her fortune at her son's disposal -Affecting appeal to the allied sovereigns — "lam a mother' — Her noble conduct— Her treatment of her daughters- in-law — Reserved toward both — Empress Maria Louisa's conduct toward her —She goes to dine with Madame Mere — Empress Josephine less attentive— Ill-advised conduct — Death of Madame Mere at Rome — Her character influenced by outward circum- stances — The charge of miserliness imtrue — A dread of poverty — '•The rainy days" of her life— Napoleon's estimate of her im- partial— Alone and unaided, she supported eight children— Had IV TABLE OF CONTENTS. he heeded her advice —Overleaping ambition- Her maternal in- stinct greater than his judgment — The evening of her last days. Monica, the Mothee of St. Augustine 91 An example to Christian mothers — Her name famous through her son's greatness — Impossible to separate the two — St. Augus- tine's influence over Western civilization in Western Europe — His writings the noblest classics of the Christian Church — The dissensions of Christians in the fourth century — Monica's son stayed the relapse into Paganism — The chief characteristics of his mother and himself found in his writings — His father Patri- cius — A heathen freeman — Monica marries at her father's com- mand — Born in 332 — A Catholic by training — A Pagan husband and a Christian wife — A mother-in-law who was not a saint — How the two lived together — What her son said of his mother's disposition — Death of his father — The son at college at his mother's expense — Monica's husband converted before he dies — A man of violent temper — He mocked at her standard of ex- cellence — Her son's sensuality — The father of an illegitimate child — Patricius's scorn of his wife's morality — His son '• only sowing wild oats" — St. Augustine's description of his son — The youth's early death — His love of Monica — The mother of this child — Enters a convent after St. Augustine's conversion — Monica's efforts in her son's behalf — Baptized at Milan— Before the change — Monica's belief in dreams— One of her remark- able dreams — "Through long years of waiting" —Augustine's friend Nebridius — His death — Augustine inconsolable — He writes a book and returns to Milan from Kome — A teacher of rhetoric — At the age of thirty — He writes despondently to his mother — Her long journey from Tagaste to Carthage, and thence to Rome — A storm at sea — Her great calmness — She cheers the sailors — Arrives at Civita Vecchia— Disappointment awaits her in Rome — Her son at Milan — A long journey over the mountains • — Two hundred leagues to be traversed bj- the wearj^ woman — The desire of her soul was to save her son — Converted under the teachings of St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan — A great convert — Next to St. Paul in intellect— He stayed scepticism in the Church — His great talents were given to the service of God — Deeper grew his thoughts and wiser — His definition of time — The anguish of a repentant soul — "The angel who wrestled in praj'er for him" — Her tears watered the ground in every place — Her gratitude over his conversion — After seventeen years of waiting and praying — A friend from Africa -An incident related by him — A religious revival extending into Africa — St. Augus- TABLE OF- CONTENTS. tine profoundly impressed — Abruptly leaves the house — He weeps in the garden and hears an angel's voice— Account of his conversion — The now happy mother and her transformed son — Their conversations together — A great painter's picture of the two — They talk of eternity — Monica declares her time come — The desire of her heart gratified — "What do I hear?" — The shadows of evening closing in — Illness of Monica — Tells her son to bury her where she dies — Lament of a friend that she was dj'ing so far from her old home in Africa — " Nothing is far to God " — Matthew Arnold's poem — Her son's last duties — He buries her body, and is alone — "It is to my mother that I owe everything" — He thanks God for such a mother — A model Christian mother and wife — She gained her husband and saved her son from unbelief and sensuality — Her saintship m the Catholic Church. Abraham Limcoln's Mothep. .■ Ill Her mental condition — His birthright of sorrow and depres- sion — Mothers physiologically considered — Mr. James Mills's views — When character is formed — " Mothers' marks" — The feel- ings of James the First — Whatever the mother is, that her child is — The undertone of soitow in Lincoln's nature— His mother's health — A disappointed and overworked wife — His father — Lin- coln's reserve — A supposed mystery — The cause of his sorrow — The charge of illegitimacj'' — The impress of disappointment — Nancy Hanks — A well-endowed woman — Her rare intuitive fac- ulty — What was said of her — Lincoln's inheritance from his father — His story-telling proiDensity — The one excitement of Thomas Lincoln's life — A poor mechanic — Proof of the marriage of Lincoln's laarents — The bond given by Lincoln — The marriage — What Mr. Graham says of Mrs. Lincoln— Abraham's birth — The ancestry of his parents — The character of his father — Dickens's and Lincoln's childhood compared — '■'• The long, long rainy day of poverty"— Mother and son— Teaching her child to read— The encouragement she gave — Mrs. Lincoln's morbid fear — A prod- igy of learning — A proud, reserved woman — Her personal appearence— Death of Mi-s. Lincoln— Her little boy— Last thoughts — A neglected child — His one pleasure — A touching tribute— Asks a minister to preach her funeral — Filial conduct — A year of loneliness — A step-mother — Abe's welcome to her— A kind woman — Changes in a Western cabin — An energetic worker — A disappointed wife — Her love for her step- son — What she said of him — Her children — Abe leaves home — His earnings given to his step-mother — A wanderer henceforth — Death of his father — Kind interest in ilrs. Lincoln — Visits her — His last part- Vi TABLE OF CONTENTS. ing with her— Her fears regarding him — His assurance to her- A dutiful son— Like his own mother— The fame that is hers. Chables Dickens' s Mother 129 Early life of her son — Not a happy one — His father's employ- ment — Marriage of John Dickens and Elizabeth Barrow — The parents of eight children — "Charles John Huffman" — Early recollections — " David Copperfield" a true biography — The home at Portsea — Some early memories — Impressions of Chatham — Types of character in "David Copperfield" — Gadshill place — Childish ambition to possess it — " The verj- queer small boy" — What he said— Dickens's descriiDtion of himself —Earliest passion for reading awakened by his mother — Taught him the alphabet — What his father did to aid him— The little room up-stairs — The books he read— VivicL imagination— Personating characters in "Tom- Jones" and other books — A picture from memoiy— Dickens leaves the school at Chatham— An apprentice to poverty and neglect — Micawber's character — Mrs. Micawber a counter- feit presentment of his mother — What Dickens said of his father — Utterly indifferent to his son's claim upon him — De- generating into a bootblack, chore-boy, and drudge — His mother tries an exiDeriment — " She must do something" — Mrs. Dickens's establishment— No pupils— The father arrested for debt — The child's visits to his father — Advice of the latter to the Jad — At work in a blacking warehouse—" Cast awaj' at such an age" — A sensitive and suffering child —His mother and her children join his father in prison— Charles left to work— Dismissed from the warehouse— His mother tries to send him back — "I never shall forget, I never can forget" —Bitterness toward his mother — She fails to appreciate him — Buys a home for his parents — His description of it— Her death — No great love for her— The hardness of his early life attribiited to her--A plea for her — The trials of poverty and shiftlessness— A father with many faults — His mother really serving him — Lacking in insight — A child's yearning for sympathy — Her thoughts of daily bread— Mothers unjustly condemned — Mrs. Dickens a household drudge — As good a mother as she knew how to be —Her burdens heavy to bear. The Mother of Wesley 146 A fine study — Characteristics of her son — Never idle — The Fran- cis Xavier of the Protestant Church — Belief in the supernatural — Proof of his greatness— The Methodist Church — Its tremendous TABLE OF CONTENTS. vii influence — "What Wesley would not have encouraged — Work and prayer — The source from whence his principles came — Letters of his mother — Her character — The mother of the Israel he founded — Her ability— A well trained mind — What Adam Clarke said of her — Who she was — The child of a Nonconformist — A letter ex- plaining her views — An independent spirit — Two differences she had with her husband — A Jacobite in politics — She did not say Amen — Questioned by her husband — Her reply — His rage — A hasty vow — Leaves his wife — Gone a year — The death of King William — Nineteen children — Her child John — Another instance of her independence— The forerunner of Methodism — Mr. Wesley — His wife's prayer-meetings — Eeligious conversation — Family service — A regular gathering — An angry curate — His letter to Mr. Wesley — The conventicle at the parsonage — A word of terror — Why Wesley objected — "Because of her sex" — A brave woman — " If I am unfaithful" — Wesley's second letter — His wife's de- fence — The meetings at her house — Her refusal to obey — The final result of the matter —Susannah Wesley as a mother — Early marriage and many children— The eldest son — A distinguished man — The other children — A precocious child — Teacher and mothei' — The care of thirteen children — Business manager — Mr. Wesley in prison for debt — The secret of Mrs. Wesley's method — A place for everything — Home discipline — A strict family government — The mistake of severity — Set opinions — Mrs. W^esley's great prescription — Her definition of self-will — TJie parent who does the devil's work — Her system successful — John Wesley a noble vindication of it — What Dr. Johnson said of it— Some observations of Mrs. Wesley's — The will of children — A summaiy of her rules — "To cry softly if at all" — Wesley's commendation of his mother — The Wesley children — No eating between meals — No rudeness tolerated — Long hours — Eeligious instruction — The departure of Wesley for school — The fire at the rectory — His mother wading through the fire — John missing — The rescue — How accomplished — Another alarming visitation — Unaccountable disturbances — Some spiritvialistic phenomena — A terrified maid-servant — Strange knockings — The father not in- formed — Loud rumblings heard — Footsteps on the stairs — Ghostly visitors — Wesley annoyed — Nine distinct raps — Search- ing the house — A dog that showed terror — Its nervous distress — Samuel Taylor Coleridge's explanation— Mrs. Wesley's opinion of the noises — " Try the spirits" — Deep groans heard. Asking questions — Father, mother, and sister reassured — The welcome to the spirits — Invited to the rector's study — An offended spirit — The daughter treated to a physical manifestation— Familiar spirits around — Explanations proffered — ^Hiat Isaac Taylor, Priestley, and Southey said — John Wesley's opinions— Super- Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS. natural origin — An apparition seen— ilr. Bamesley's mother's ghost — John Wesley a spiritualist — Strange occurrences at Ep- worth — New Testament confirmation — Mrs. Wesley's -wisdom — Her letter to her son — No sense in the phenomena — Her letter to John — Good advice — Adam Clarke s judgment ot Mrs. "Wes- ley—Her wise instruction— A iaithtul mother — Doubting herself — "One thing troubles me" — Constantly praying— Discontent — Change of heart at seventy — John "Wesley preaching — His mother's approval — Her eldest son's opposition — "A spreading delusion" — Asks her not to join a schism — Her discipleshiiJ— The epitaph upon her tombstone. Chaeles Lamb's Mother 169 How chiefly remembered — Humble parentage — Charles and Marj' Lamb — The difterence between mother and daughter— An inharmonious family— Mary a milliner — Overworked and insane — Kills her mother— Mary's pathetic words. Thackeray's Mother 174 His parentage — A second marriage — A strong churchwoman — Thackeray's stepfather — Unfortunate marriage of Thackeray — Home broken up— His daughter — An insane wife. Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi 177 As daughter and wife — Remains a widow— Where are your jewels? — Her sons — Both murdered— The father of Cornelia— The capture ot New Carthage — Ambitious designs — The battle of Zama — Eetiirn home — His death — Cornelia his youngest child — Plutarch's opinion— Cornelia s husband Tiberius — His death — A noble Roman mother — Her sons land reformers— En- couraged by their mother— The epistles of Cornelia— Her retire- ment at Misenum. Lord Byron's JIother. 194 Unfortunate in temperament — Both parents irrational— " Mad Jack BjTon"— " Foul-Weather Jack" in the navy — Bj'rons great -uncle— "The wicked lord "—" The little boy in Aber- deen" — Lord Bj-ron's beauty — The Marchioness Carmarthen— A beautiful woman — Augusta Byron — The adventurous life- guardsman — Catharine Gordon — A plain-looking heiress— Mar- TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix riage of "Mad Jack" and Catharine —Her father a suicide— The bridal ]3air in Paris— Her fortune— T\yo years afterward — The husband's creditors — A vagabond husband — The milk of human kindness soured — A temper passionate and a heart deceived — Half mad — Bj^-on's mother not the fury represented — Touches of motherhood — Trials and vicissitudes — The pen of Thackeray needed— Wife and children penniless — A begging letter — " Only a guinea" — "Mad Jack's" sister— A wife with nothing — AVine and meat, how bought— The greatest of all his dupes — Plain leg of mutton — An ungoverned temper — Living at Aberdeen — The cai^tain resolves to leave — "Not a jsenny" — The son's feeling toward the father— Perhaps one reason — The little lame boy — Unforgotten caresses — His father's escape — Death at Valen- ciennes — The statement of Mr. Harness— What Bj'ron said — Believing his father a suicide — One who mourned his death — Grief of a hot-tempered wife — The neighborhood alarmed — The wonderment of a child of three years — The result of a French education — Paris a paradise for "Mad Jack" — Contrast between iis first and second wives — Lady Conger's income — The second wife's homeliness — How she looked and walked — Inferior edu- cation — Her broad brogue— A discredit to a waiting-woman — Her letter-writing — Shrewd, and by nature intelligent — In her fits of fury — Her qualities as a stepmother — Kindness to Augusta — The child's gratitude — Byron's half-sister — Cruel and most unnatural episode — Swearing at her son — "A lame brat" — The taunt of a demoniacal mother — Byron's statement to the Marquis of Sligo — She herself to blame for his deformity — Their last parting — Her imprecation— Byron's look — A fearful light from a child's eyes — Self-controlled — "I was born so, mother!" — A terrible scene, never forgotten — A dialogue in "The Deformed Transformed" — Excuses for the mother — The Earl of Carlisle's experiences — Byron at school — Dulwich days — Collisions between his teacher and his mother — Dr. Glennie's pen-portrait of Mrs. Byron — His guardian's efforts — Beaten by the virago — "Your mother is a fool!" — The BjTon family — No intercourse with Catharine Gordon — Mrs. Leigh's course — Not informed of her son's succession to the peerage — News a month old— The gossip of a neighbor — Lively astonishment — A better .state of things — Five years later — Catharine Gordon's pension — Lord Bj'ron at Harrow — Renewal of hostilities — Incidents of their quarrels— The strife of tongues — Mrs. Byron's com^jlaints of being ill-used — Her son's fears — An aiJothecary's singular visit from mother and son — Their neighbors — The Pigotts — An unexpected visit — Off to London— The last meeting between mother and son— An attack with the jDoker- Byron at Newstead Abbey — A luxurious bachelor— His mother not allowed to come X TABLE OF CONTENTS. there — Her presence there afterward — Learns of her death — Byron's recall — " Only one mother !" — A right feeling — Bj'ron's grief — Her death due to rage — In the chamber of death at mid- night — "One friend in the world" — His vehement grief ac- coTinted for — Memorj^ sensibility, and imagination — His motlier not destitute of womanliness — Kemote exhibitions of tenderness — Not insincere in his sorrow — The death of a parent — A mother's curse — Byron's remorse — The dreadful past — His grief oi short duration — Refusal to follow her coffin — Boxing with a servant while the funeral service was being read — Moore's defence of his conduct — "He felt her death acutely" — His mother's jaride in him— Her faith in his literary fame — A col- umn of notices— The final judgment of this unhappy mother. The Mother of Kev. John Newton 215 Who was he? — An emanciiDator who freed himself — Author of favorite hymns — Joint author with Cowi^er — Letters of Cow- per and Mrs. Unwin — Where Cowper met him — Curate of Olney —Rector — Author of theological works — His autobiography — Painful excesses in youth — A sailor and pirate — An African slave-trader — A motherless boy — His remembrance .ot her — Taught him the Scriptures — His inheritance from her — Her influence over him — Her heart's desire— Had she lived— An encouragement for pious parents — Earlj'- imijressions — The child of many prayers — Studying Latin at six years — Death of his mother — His father remarries — A cabin-boy at ten — Years of profligacy — Bondage in Africa — Rescue — Conversion — A religious man — Great will-power — Release from sins— Deeply respected in England — His hymns sung upon every sea — Saved by his mother's prayers and memory. The Mothee of Maetin Luthee 221 Four hundred years ago — Margaret Lindemann — A peasant's daughter — Married to Hans Luther — Her son's birth — The angel of the churches of the Reformation — St. Martin's Eve —Named after a saint — Luther's mother a servant — Mai-ried to a miner — Seven children — The marriages of the daughters— The arms of Luther's father — Martin proud of his parents— A good father — His common-sense — What he would not do— A disappointed priest — His first duty to his children — Carrying fagots— Hard- working people — Severe punishments and little tenderness — Luther's fear of his father— Training of German children four hundred years ago— Whipped until the blood flowed — Flogged TABLE OF CONTENTS. xi fifteen times in one day — Sad reminiscences — Removal from Eisleben — What Martin said of his parents— Position of the mother in Germany — Power of the husband — Blows and the rod — A Saxon wife in those days — A Jewish domestic system — A departed custom — Modern methods of rearing children — Lu- ther's parents generous in educating — What Andin says of Hans Luther — Labor and jarayer — How the Luthers spent their evenings — Hans Luther j)raying at the bedside of his child — Luther and Melanchthon — Hard-earned money s^Dent on Luther — John Luther a public official — Open house to the ecclesiastics — Great questions discussed — Sixteenth century movements — Mar- tin sent to school — Remarkable abilities — Begging alms — Spare hours spent in singing from door to door — A peasant's kindness — The children afraid — "Where are j'ou, boys?" — Fright over- come— A friend in need — Martin sent to another school — Obliged to sing in the streets for his daily bread — Martin' s estimate of his mother — One day's occurrences — Disheartened and weary — Hungrj' and alone — A door opens — The wife of Conrad Cotta — " The pious'Shunammite" — Invited to share their home — Martin Luther happy — A second mother — Learns to play the flute — A poetic nature — His three loves — An incident of his life as a monk — His love for children — A boy's pillory — -Words of wisdom — Shudders to think what he went through — Piecalls his mother's severity — His love for her — Thinks of her as he walks toward Kome^ — " Happy the mother," etc. — His desire to give her hap- piness — What his father designed him to be — Ties of blood strong — His father angry — Blames him for disobedience — Deep anxiety of his mother — Her long useful life — Death of her husband — Last years — Death — Charles the Fifth's saying — Luther before the Diet of Worms — A notable spectacle— The trial— "In the hands of Almighty God " — Luther's fame — His marriage — Fine saying — Could but the peasant mother know of the high festival for her son. The Mothek of SioNEWAiiL Jackson 241 The South and its environments — The father of Thomas Jack- son — His marriage — An improvident man — The gambling habit — Death of Jonathan Jackson — A destitute family — Mrs. Jackson — Her personal character — Endui-es great poverty — Second mar- riage—Separation from her children — A painful picture — Death of the mother — Her life of prayer and faith — Her son like her — A false doctrine — Her children separated — The eldest son— Thomas leaves his home — His long walk — With his brother — Both wan- derers — Great sufferings— Return to Virginia— Death of Warren XI 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS. — Thomas at "West Point — A noble youth — His early resolve — Jackson in the Mexican Army — The only falsehood he ever told— Established at Lexington — Professor in the university — Marriage — Death of his wife — Visit to his mother's grave — Second mar- riage — The Civil War — Career as a soldier — An ideal military hero — The night before the battle of Manassas — Guarding his sleeping soldiers— How he got his title " Stonewall" — A notable letter — Jackson's daughter — His death -bed — Dying experiences — Last words. The Mothee of Cowpeb 259 A sensitive child — A great misfortune — A motherless boy — A loving memory — His poem to his mother — Letter to Mrs. King — A picture of his mother — Cowjier's love for Mrs. Unwin — Her tender care of him — Kecollections of his mother — "Every- body loved her" — Maternal kindnesses — " O that those lips had language" — Her monument, and its inscription — From whom he inherited nervous trouble — A tendency to brafin trouble — Anne Donne- -His ancestry — A weak body and a diseased mind. The Mother or Goethe 266 Her marriage — Her son — Not a woman of genius — An incen- tive to her son — Mr. Lewes' s judgment of her — Relations between the mother and son — Her forte at story-telling — The grandmoth- er — An imaginative narrator and listener — The mother's own words — Her friends — Letters to the Grand Duchess — From Aya's — An anecdote of mother and son — Goethe's sensibility — A sunny nature and lovable woman — Saturday evening amuse- ments—The shadows of old age — Her love for her son — Her death. The Mother of the Napiers 284 Lady Sarah Lennox — The daughter of the second Duke ot Richmond — Her parents — Their singular marriage- A bargain to cancel a gambling debt — A boy brought from college and a girl from the nursery — The exclamation of the bridegroom — A wedding and a parting — Three years afterward — Sees his bride at the theatre — Their meeting and union — A loving couple — His death — She dies of grief for him — Their daughter's remarkable beauty — An inheritance from her mother —Lady Lennox at St. James's — George the Third's admiration of her — The greatest beauty at the celebration of the first anniversary of his accession to TABLE OF CONTENTS. xiii the throne— "What Horace Walpole said of her— The young king desperately in love with her— Encouraged by Henry Fox to re- ciprocate the king's feelings— She loved another— Dazzled for the moment at the possibility of being Queen of England — The king subdued his love— Various reasons assigned— Her lover— Lord Newbottle— A separation— The king's mother op- poses his fancy— His love messages to Lady Sarah— How Sarah went dressed to speak with him — A picture of Lady Sarah as a shepherdess— Her life at Holland House— An era of remarkably beautiful women— The two Miss Gunnings— Duchess of Hamil- ton and Lady Coventry— Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of Lady Sarah— Her sister the wife of the first Lord Holland— A girl of seventeen when she met the king— A young man of twenty-one — His council voted against the marriage— Lady Sarah a bridesmaid to his queen — An incident at the drawing-room next day — Lady Sarah mistaken for the queen— The king never forgot the impres- sion made upon him — His exclamation years after, when seeing an actress who looked like her — Forgetting for a moment his pru- dish wife beside him— The pedigree of Lady Sarah— The ancient family of "The Lennox"— She had royal blood in her veins— A descendant of Henry of Navarre and Charles the Second— Her vivacity and sprightliness due to her French blood— Also her moral weakness and love of admiration— A sad story— Marriage to Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury— The marriage subsequently dis- solved by the House of Lords— No divorce courts in England in 1776 — The wife's errors proven— Her reputation assailed— An infamous writer — The "memoirs'" of a French duke — The beauties of the reign of George the Third — The two Irish beau- ties—Their romantic marriages — Horace "^^alpole s description of them — The crowd clamorous to see these women — Mobs wait at their doors to catch sight of them — Their appearance any- where a signal for a crowd — Seven hundred people sit up all night to see one of them— The eldest Duchess of Hamilton after- ward the Duchess of Argyle^-Lady Coventry's sad fate— A victim to her vanity — Lady Sarah Lennox an intellectual woman — Her appearance in some private theatricals— Compared to the Mag- dalen of Correggio— Married at eighteen— Her husband a re- markable man— What his wife said of his gambling— Her letters to Mr. Selwyn — Accounts of persons about her — Eefers to the Frenchman who blasted her reputation— Thackeray's allusions to him in the " The Virginians"— Itejoices that Jie died on the guillotine — Sarah Lennox a childless wife — Her life as a divorced woman — Meets the Hon. George Napier— Becomes his wife — Fifty years a happy wife— The mother of noble sons— The great- est of her children— His love for his mother — Many allusions to her in his diary — His military career — Much like her m features XIV TABLE OF CONTENTS. — Her total blindness in later life — Her sons engaged in various battles — The blind mother in England weeping for them — Her death at an advanced age — The last great-granddaughter of Charles the Second. Jean Paul Eichteb's Mothek 304 The influence of a good mother — Jean Paul Richter's mother and himself — His tender letters^His noble words, "All women are sacred for her sake" — A domestic man — A poor country parson's son — A pastoral picture — His father's study — The evening meal — Good Pastor Eichter — A widowed mother and a fatherless boy — Spinning to relieve i)overty — Her wish regard- ing her son— At the University of Leipsic — The motive that impelled him — To sweeten his mother's life — " Were it not for my mother" — Becoming iin author— Her anxious question — His reply — His first money — Takes it home to his mother — Late at night he finds her spinning — A golden treasure in her lap — A mother tenderly beloved -A true mother — An illustrious .son. Madame Neckee, the Mother of Madame de Stael 309 Her birthplace — A clergyman's daughter — A Swiss village parsonage — Where baptized — Her beautiful mother — Beaiity her inheritance — A remarkable woman — The excitement her arrival caused m Lausanne — Suzanne's acqiiirements — Borrowing books from the professors — What one of her instructors wrote her— The attractions of the parsonage for young preachers — The congregation not aware of the reason why thej' were priv- ileged to hear so many young preachers — Two young divines bind themselves in writing to preach at Grassy, whenever the beautiful girl should command — Their sweetest pleasure — Pastor Curchod lends his horse to his young assistant — Why they must come back again— The young girl's friendly adviser — "Drive them away with a broomstick" — The most note- worthy episode of her unmarried life — Edward Gibbon, the historian — His infatuation — A youth of twenty, and a maiden of seventeen — Young love's dream — An engagement — Opinions of Eousseau and others— A stern father— English view of filial obedience— Gibbon and Mile. Curchod— The engagement broken — What Gibbon says of her — His glowing tribute to her in old age — After long separation and many vicissitudes— Letters of hers to him— Return to England — "I sighed as a lover, I TABLE OF CONTEXTS. XV obeyed as a son" — Wholly dependent on his father — His cure effected — The Seven Years' War — A statement of his conduct from Gibbon — Explanation of his feelings — Her father and her mother — The daughter of the minister of Grassy — The erudition of Mle. Curchod — Her fine manners and pure nature — A dream of felicity — Gibbon destitute and helpless — Her father dies — Teaching school and supporting her mother — Meets M. Necker — The wealthy Paris banlcer her suitor — Thi'ough vicissitudes a lovely and spotless woman — Thackeray's remarks — Her love for Gibbon — One letter of hers — Love-letters a hundred and thirty years old — The Neckers leave Paris — Meeting with Gibbon — Living at Coppet — Frequent letters to him — "You have always been dear to me" — Calls herself Gibbon s first and last friend — His meeting with Madame de Stael — The latter's innocent design — A brilliant woman, and a great favorite with literary men — Madame Necker 's admirei's — Her dejected suitors — Married to a man who has 35,000 francs a j'ear — The elderly bridegroom — What he said of his money and his marriage — The home of the Neckers in Paris — French society in the eighteenth century — Madame Neckers flatterers — A fearful male egotist — Her Friday evening receptions — Distinguished guests — A famous dinner- party — Freethinkers — Her religious opinions — A letter from Grimm — At Catharine's court — The Eussian Empress — An en- thusiast's praise — Her systems and reforms — Compared with Necker — Diderot — His gossip about Madame Necker — A coarse- minded man— Her friendships — Voltaire — D'Alembert — Courted by the encyclopaedists — Her letter regarding her religious sentiments — " I have Atheist friends — They are so unhap^jy" — Buffon's death-bed —A confession from his lips — A friendship of twenty years— Her friendships with women — Her public life — A noble woman — A dissolute age — Less brilliant but more sin- cere than Madame de Stael — Her perpetual hopefulness. The Mothee and Wife of Shakspeare 329 Mary Arden a woman of gentle birth — Her eldest son — The condition of England at the time of Shakspeare's death— John and Mary Shakspeare — Their son religiously instructed— Learns the Bible at his mother's knee— Proofs of such teachings— Almost literal gospel quotations— ■'= The eye of a needle"— Shakspeare a Christian— What scholars have said of him— Little knowledge of his personal history— Early marriage — Anne Hathaway— Shakspeare in London— Poor in purse— Death of his only son— Shakspeare's domestic life— A god-father— Tender mem- ories. xvi TABLE OF CONTEXTS. The Mothek of Beethoven 341 A sad lot - Beethoven's afllictions— His art an inspiration — A composer at an early age — Music a divine gift — Plato's definition of the soul — Music a medicine and the most humanizing of all recreations— The language of music— An hereditary gift to Beethoven— The family lineage— Beethoven's grandfather— A court musician — His mother a cook's daughter— Beethoven's birth-place — The baptismal register — Death of his grandfather— ApoDTilar man in Bonn — Beethoven's grandmother— His fathers unfortunate inheritance — A fine tenor voice — The habits of a drunkard— Profligacy and poverty— Paints his father's portrait— Ludwig's lessons— Little Louis at the piano — Symjiathy of his playmates for him — At the age of four — A letter to his brothers — His sufferings in childhood described — Attacked with deaf- ness — Thoughts of suicide — Makes his brothers his heirs — Longs for death — His nephew Carl — His mother — A letter to Dr. Wege- ler — An accusation — Not the natural son of the King — Vindi- cates his mother's memory — Allusions to his mother — Poor in health and purse — A kind friend — The support of his younger brothers —Teaches miasic — A musical author at eleven — His first public notice— Herr Neefe's pupil — A pupil of Mozart — The latter's prophecy regarding him — Beethoven's affectionate dispo- sition — His recollections of his mother — His first and onlj' love — His sweet memories. The Mother of Sheridan 360 Born in L.-eland — How she won her husband — Writes a pam- phlet in his favor — The author of a two-volume romance at fifteen — Afterward adapted to the stage — Her eldest daughter — Another novel — Its success — Opinion of the London Monthly Review — Dr. Johnson's compliment — Lord North and Charles James Fox commend it — Her son's plot for "School for Scandal" borrowed from it — Mrs. Sheridan writes a success- ful comedy — Garrick in the principal character — His opinion of "The Discovery," another comedy — "The Dupe" — A romance of the East — ' ' Her best work" — Dramatized after her death — Mrs. Sheridan's "Trip to Bath" — The basis of her son's comedy, "The Rivals" — Her fxigitive verses— Leigh Hunt's adverse opinion of them — Thomas Sheridan receives a pension — Dr. Johnson's ill-natured remark— Moore's neglect to give facts of one of the most remarkable of families — Great hered- itary genius — Stint praise of Sheridan's mother — "A woman indebted for a husband to her literature" — The Sheridans a TABLE OF CONTENTS. xvii rare family — Distinguished in authorship for 300 years — Donald O'Sheridan's ancestors — A daughter of one of the O'Niells — Sarah Sheridan's grandson — The first author of the family — Translates the Bible into the Irish tongue — Denis Sheridan's Irish Bible — The sons of Biblical Denis — The Sheridan home- stead — Dean Swift's epigrammatic attacks upon this farmhouse — His happiest days spent there — Thomas Sheridan, the father of Kichard Brinsley, an actor — Romantic marriage to Miss Cham- berlayne — Subsequently he lectured on elocution and the dra- matic art, adapted old plays for the stage, and edited the life and works of Swift, in nineteen volumes — Author of a pronounc- ing dictionary — His' son, Eichard Brinsley, Secretary of the Treasury — Another son, Secretary of War in Ireland — His daughter a writer — The author of the "ilemoirs of Frances Sheridan" her grandmother — Lord Duiferin a descendant of Frances Sheridan ; likewise the Duchess of Somerset — The story of the acquaintanceship of Sheridan' s mother and father • — Kelly's riot — A paper war — An anonj-mous letter and verses — Miss Chamberlayne introduced to Thomas Sheridan — The theatre closed — Generous condiict of Thomas Sheridan — Wed- ding — A happy couple — The cares of a rising family — Her chil- dren — Eeverses — The wife's brilliant talents — Her novel, "Sid- nej' Biddulph" — A faithful picture of middle life in the eigh- teenth century — Her husband not informed of her work until the novel was completed — How she wrote — Hiding her manu- script on his entrance — Dr. Johnson snubs her — Her little daughter — Travels with her husband — Removal to France — A consumptive — Death of Mrs. Sheridan — Her burial in a Protes- tant cemetery — Personal appearance — A highly intellectual and lovely woman. Frances Teollope 375 The mother of Anthony Trollope, the great novelist, and of Thomas AdolphiTs Trollope, the well-known authori— Both brothers inherited their literary gift from her — A woman of great ability and incessant activity — Mrs. TroUope's unfortunate book — Her "Domestic Life of the Americans" an unpopular production — The writer of many books — When she began to write — Her numerous literary progeny — Satire her chief weapon — Two works on America in two years — Two on Italy the next year — Politics a favorite study — A compromising Tory — Some of her studies overdone — Her aim to bring about social reforms by means of satire — " The Widow Barnaby" — The humor of this story — A great success — Her supplemental novel, " The Widow Married" — Other novels — An active-minded and observant XVIU TABLE OF CONTENTS. writer — Not a great one — Too much gall in her criticisms of society — A "widely-read novelist — Not a jDrofound analyzer of character — Is not the equal of her son as a -s^-riter — The stock characters of both — A social satirist who did much good — Pene- tration and fearlessness her leading attributes — Her literary broom — Reasons why she is unpojjular in this country — Super- ficial judgment of Americans — Her abhorrence cf slaverj' — Her observations on the "Help" question — What she endured with inefficient help — A difficult problem — The prejudice still abroad — Contemi^t for domestic service — Her ijictures of revivals and camp-meetings — A satire upon a revivalist's personal char- acteristics and sermon— The position of women as she found them — A sevenfold shield of habitual insignificance — Fifty years ago — IVIi's. Trollope's looking-glass. *o*^ Lady Beaconsfeeld 387 The wife of Benjamin Disraeli — Some facts regarding him — Literary tastes of Disraeli — His parents — The Jews in England — Sarah Villaval — A stern, strong woman — Disraeli's father runs awaj"- from home — Changes his name — Mr. Disraeli's colleague Mr. Lewis — His appearance in the House of Commons — '' Iioillsit downnow" — Married to Miss Lewis — Becomes master of Hughen- den Manor — Description of the place — A column to the memory of Isaac Disraeli — Lady Beaconsfield — A remarkable woman — Great devotion to her husband — Disraeli's novel dedicated to her — " That gracious lady" — The Queen offers him a coronet — Asks the honor be transferred to his wife — Viscountess Beacons- field — Lord Eonald Gower's reminiscences — Lady Beaconsfield at home — Her death — A simple funeral -Disraeli an earl — Death of Earl Beaconsfield — Buried beside his wife. The Mother or Garfield 398 A hard-working widow — In the wilderness — A dark outlook — Advised to sell her home — Her children — The eldest son's prom- ise — A hungry family —Working in the field — A devout Christian — A pioneer reformer — Her brave boys— Mrs. Garfield's ancestry- Ten generations of preachers — Abram Garfield a strong man — His sons like him — The Sabbath day — Gives land for a school-house — Her eldest son a wood-chopper — James earns a dollar — His pros perous career— President of the United States — Inauguration day — "He kissed his mother" — Mother Garfield at the White House — Returns to Ohio — The assassination— " Her baby" — The TABLE OF CONTENTS. xix nation sorrows — Courageous and strong — Beside the coffin of her son — A blighted old age. The Motheb of Axexandee von. HmcBOLDT 411 Two famoiis sons — The father an army officer — Marie Eliza- beth von Colomb — Marriage of Major Humboldt and Mrs. Colomb — The character of the husband — Resigned from the army — Frederick the Great his friend — The English ambassador's opinion — Death of Major Humboldt — His wife — Widow of the director of the East Friesland Chamber — A wealthy woman — Home in Berlin — Birth of her sons — Alexander's birthday — His contemporaries — Baptized by the king's chaplain — His kingly sponsors — His mother's name that of Christopher Colum- bus — What Alexander was styled — His mother's ancestrj' — Her administrative talent — Extensive knowledge of the world — Her endeavors for a stepson —The education of her young sons — Her ambition for them — Mortgages property to meet the expenses of their education — Secures able teachers — Her country mansion at Tegel — A beautiful country home — Goethe a welcome guest — The mother's influence over her sons indirect, not personal — How she laid the foundation of their greatness — One of their tutors — Neither of the sons remarkable boys — Alexander compared to Al- bertus Magnus — William von Humboldt's description of their school-days — University life at Gottingen — Friendship with Kunth — Fifty years a friend— Gratitude of Frau Humboldt — Its practical demonstration— Herr Kunth receives a pension — A mem- ber of Frau von Humboldt's household — Buried in the Von Hum- boldt family vault— Money set apart by Frau von Humboldt — ■Generous bequests — The endowment still in existence — Death of Frau von Humboldt — Eeference of Alexander to the event — Not deeply wounded by the event — Strangers too long — Her great service to her sons — She gave them their splendid educations — The gulf between mother and sons— Her sacrifice their gain. The Wife of Loed William Eussell 420 A high-minded woman — Her second mai-riage — Older than her husband— Her father — Her favorite residence — Affection of hus- band and wife — Their children — Lord Eussell's position — Hated by the Stuarts— His arrest— Trial — His wife his secretaiy— A terrible ordeal— Heroism of Lady Eussell — Her entreaties— The last leavetaking— The pathos of it — Bishop Burnet's account of it— Lord Eussell beheaded— His wife's agony— Political detrac- XX TABLE OF CONTENTS. tions — Lady Kussell writes to the king — Vindicates her hus- band — Her later years — Her children restored to their rights — Her daughters — Seventy-five years of age — Her death. The Mothee of Lamartine 436 Alice de Eoy — Her diary — Produces twenty volumes — Her studies — Born at St. Cloud— Louis Phillippe her plaj^mate — Eecollections of St. Cloud — Her marriage — In a convent — Her aunt a canoness— Origin of the French Revolution— A reign of terror — Arrest of M. Lamartine — Fortunate in his prison — His visits to his wife — Eeleased — A countrj^ house at Milly — Descrip- tion of it - The husband and wife — Their children — What her son says of her — A religious devotee — How the mother wrote of the son — Her beautiful life — What the grandmother of Lamartine said of Eousseau — A terrible anecdote — An anniversary — Pope Pius the Seventh — Death of Madame Lamartine — Her son absent at the time. Milton' s Wives 457 Description of Milton's personal appearance — His riiling pas- sion — Marriage — His bride — Miss Powell's dowry — Wedded misery— A disappointed wife — Departs — Platonic friendships — Eeturn of Mrs. Milton — Her family bankrupt — Milton' s generos- ity — The father of Milton — His mother — Milton's second wife — Poetical allusion to her death — His blindness — Pathetic account of it — Sonnets on his misfortune — Milton's daughters —His third wife — A good choice — A lonely old age — The great fire in London — His house burned — Teaching his daughters — What he said of them — His death — His family extinct. The Mothee of Caeltle 479 "The best of all mothers"— The father of Carlyle— Their family life— The Mainhill farm — The mother of eight children — A devoted household — Mrs. Carlyle' s religion — Mother and son — A strong tie — Her anxiety for him — The most gifted of her children — His frequent letters to her — Sends her his Life of Schiller — Miss Welsh — Carlyle's future wife — Visits his family — Account of the visit — What Froude said of it — A pitiful tragedy — Carlyle's conduct toward Mrs. Welsh — Settled in Edinburgh — The home at Comely Bank — Character of Jane Welsh Carlyle — The Craigenputtock i)lan — Removal there— Visit of Mrs. Carlyle TABLE OF CONTENTS. xxi to her son — Jane Carlyle's condition — " Gey ill to live -with" — Margaret Carlyle— Carlyle's birthday —Letter to his mother — Leaves Craigenputtock — "Burn their ships behind them" — A discouraged woman — Carlyle settles in London— The Cheyne Kow home — Mrs. Carlyle to her mother-in-law — The " Life of Cromwell" — "Starry flashes she had not" — Death of the mother — Her son's description of her — His wife — Her illness — Her characteristics — Her friends — Carlyle's injiastice^The re- sult — Sudden death — Kepentance — " Jenny kissed me." Johnson's Motheb and Wife 507 The mother and wife of Dr. Johnson — Samuel ' ' the Great' ' — Son of a bookseller — His false pride — Incident illustrating it — His parents — A religious mother — Not a happy couple — John- son's teachers — Svinday a hard day — His mother's instruction — ■ Afflicted with scrofula — Touched by Queen Anne — A child's relic — Johnson's poverty — His affection for his mother — Would not marrj' without her consent — Letters to his mother — To Miss Porter — Death of his mother — " Rasselas" — How he paid the expenses of her funeral — Granted a pension — Marriage — His bride — An unequal marriage — Description of Mrs. Johnson — Johnson an unprepossessing man — His supreme enjoyment — His absent-mindedness — Meeting with Hogarth — A bad habit — Lady Knight' s account o^ Mrs. Johnson — Her marriage distasteful to her children — A wedding journey — The ride of the lovers — Struggles with poverty — Living in London — A bookseller's drudge — Death of Mrs. Johnson — A funeral sermon preached — Inscription on his wife's tombstone — Dr. Johnson' s prayer — Be- lief in ghost stories — Johnson's fidelity — His wife's wedding ring — A mean insinuation — Johnson's belief of immortality — Sanc- tioned by our best natures. Mothers of Antiquity 535 Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus — Aurelia, the mother of Caesar — Olympia, the mother of Alexander — Octavia, the sis- ter of Augustus Cfesar — Agrippina, the mother of Nero — The mother of Symphorian — Helvia, the mother of Cicero — The mother of St. Ambrose — The mother of Jerome — Helena, the mother of Constantine — Anthusa, the mother of Chrysostom — Paula, the recluse — Eachel, the daughter of Laban — Faustina, the wife of Titus Antoninus Pius and mother of Annia Faustina. xxil TABLE UF CONTENTS. Maeie Antoinette as Wife and Mother 346 A sad stoiy — A national shame — A tragedy without a redeem- ing feature — Lafaj'ette— Condemnation of him — The childhood of Marie Antoinette — Her parents — The family — Birthday of Marie Antoinette — One of sixteen children — Her early home — Death of her father — Her mother's ambitious schemes — Mar- riage of Marie Antoinette and the Dauj^hin of France — At the age of fifteen — Wedding festivities — Advice of Maria Theresa — An accident — Earlier years of married life — At Little Trianon — The dujie of designing j^ersons — A giddy j'oung queen — Letter to her mother — Birth of a princess — A hapj^y young mother — Her miinificent bequests — Death of Maria Theresa — A son born —His early death— The third child—" The little Norman"— The fourth and last child — An historian's error regarding these chil- dren — Before the Kevolution — Marie Antoinette's account of the Daui^hin — " Poor little Louis"^ — The j^ear 1789 — Changed posi- tion of the Queen — The storming of the Hotel des Invalides — The King and Queen at Versailles—" Sire, I am at mj' j^ost" — A vacillating King— The Queen urges in vain — Versailles attacked — A iDainful procession — The Queen's prediction — The Keign of Teri'or — At the Tuileries — Attemj^ts made to murder the Queen — The flight and capture of the King and Queen — Napoleon Bona- parte's remark— Brutal treatment of the Daiiphin — Simon the shoemaker — The fete in the Champ de Mars — The King beheaded — Marie Antoinette in prison — Separated from her children — The Princess Elizabeth — Last letter of the Queen — Never re- ceived — Not of herself, but of others she thought — The Queen beheaded — An English lady's description of her in prison — A noble and heroic woman — Her characteristics — The Princess Elizabeth beheaded — A beautiful character. The Mother of Burns 581 A sagacious woman — The poet like his mother — An illiterate ■woman — Beared by her grandmother — Marriage to William Burncs — The family home — Her husband's fine character — A happy mar- riage-The dying words of the husband and father — Anxiety re- garding his son — That son a reproach — A sorrowing mother— Her son a poet — Remembers his mother and sisters — Jean Armour — Her union with Burns— A father — Letters to Mrs. Dunlop and Miss Chalmers- -A picture of his wife — Loves her to distraction after all — The mother's admiration of the son — Her favorites among his poems — Jean Armour a good wife— A characteristic TABLE OF CONTENTS. xsiii account of him — ' ' I wish ye had but seen him" — Death of Burns — Last message to his mother — His wife's last years — Placed above want. Shokt Sketches of some Wives and Mothees 597 LucretiaMott ; the mothers of Leon Gambetta, George Sand, George Eliot, Immanuel Kant, Cromwell ; the wife of the Duke of Marlborough ; the mothers of Daniel Webster, Sismondi, Schiller, Isaac Watts, Christina of Sweden, Chateaubriand, Gray, Dumas, BufEon, Alexander Pope, Curran, Fenelon, Cowley, Thomas a Becket, Campbell, Crabbe, Thomson, U. S. Grant. Abigail Adams 635 A great woman — Her husband — A descendant of Puritan ances- try — Sidney Smith's remark — A famous letter-writer — Her lack of opportunities— Eemarkable characteristics — Long separations from her husband— Her political wisdom — Letter to her hus- band — Eights of women — Asks for justice — The Constitution of the United States— An unjust document — Mrs. Adams's disap- pointment — The evils of absolute power — Mrs. Adams's home life— Her children— Mr. Adams in Europe— Her reply to a ques- tioner — Her journey to England — The Minister to St. James — A delicate position — Eeturn to the United States— Mr. Adams vice-president — Eichmond Hill — Eemoval to Philadelphia — The Eepublican court — Letters to her daughter— Incident regarding Washington — The seat of government removed to Washington-=- President Adams defeated — Letter to her son— Differences be- tween Adams and Jefferson— Mrs. Adams'sletters to Jefferson — Views on woman's education — Ketirement to private life — Her influence over her husband— Her death— Her son's eulogy of her. Mothers of Great Men md Women. A REPUBLICAN MOTHER. MARY WASHINGTON. Had the mother of Washington been associated with the daily life of her distinguished son after he reached man's estate, hers would have been a familiar historical character. As she was not, the world knows but the barest incidents of her life as compared with its knowledge of Washington's wife. In the various biog- raphies of Washington there is the same brief state- ment of general facts concerning her, and allusions to her death, and the monument that was erected to her memory during the administration of President An- drew Jackson. There are nowhere to be found any letters of hers to her son, and not many of his friends of later years ever saw her. She lived to a good old age — eighty- three years— and in the half -century that preceded her death her son was the foremost actor in some of the most stirring and important events that have ever transpired in the world's history. That she was an intelligent and interested observer of public affairs cannot be questioned in view of the fact that she was a woman of strong character and native ability. Her son wrote her regularly whUe engaged in his busi- 26 MARY WASHINGTON. ness of surveyor, and afterward when an officer of the Virginia militia, and subsequently while absent from home for six years, during the Revolutionary War. It is to be regretted that none of her letters have a place in the popular histories of colonial times, for doubtless they were a readal^le record of her quiet life in Fred- ericksburg. And it is more to be deplored that the young of this country have not had better opportunity to study her noble character than has been i)ossible. Like the mothers of all great and earnest men, she was a praying woman. Her Bible was her constant companion, audits precepts were ever on her lips. She realized most perfectly De Tocqueville' s definition of life — "a state of neither pain nor pleasure, but a serious business to be entered ujion with courage in the spuit of self-sacrifice." A silent, serious woman she was, self-contained, self-respecting, and reserved. During the forty-six years of her widowhood she managed her household and farm without the assistance of any adviser, and reared her children to usefulness and honor, and saw them go forth into the world equipped for its work and pain. That they each and all revered her, and sought her counsel in every emergency, is sufficient testimony of her worth and ability. Mrs. Washington's lack of personal ambition and her constitutional reserve were qualities whi(;h pre- vented her from becoming popularly known to the pub- lic, even at a time when the people were eager for any opportunity to show her honor. But no demonstra- tion was ever made in her behalf, and there is but one instance recorded when she appeared in public with her son. This was after the surrender of Lord Corn- SIMILARITY BETWEEN MOTHER AND SON. 27 ■u'allis, when AVasliington, accompanied by his suite and many distinguished military men, went to Fred- ericksburg. A grand ball was given in his honor, and the proud old mother was the belle of the evening, the observed of all observers as she passed from group to group, leaning on the arm of lier happy son. The beautiful devotion of Washington to his mother en- deared him to her neighbors and to the people of Virginia, and the honors that were paid him on that occasion were doubly sincere because they were a' recognition of his worth, not alone as a patriot, but as a son. Mother and son were much alike in character, per- sonal appearance, and conduct. Both were wanting in humor and imagination, and both possessed in an ex- treme degree conscientiousness, gentleness, and deter- mination. AVashington, in the most trying emergency of his career as commander-in-chief, did not display more self-control and courage than did his mother in hiding from her children for months and years the distressing fact that she was a sufferer from cancer. This circumstance it was that strengthened her resolve to live alone, which she did up to the last few months of her life, and her mode of life probably had much to do with prolonging her existence to the great age she attained. The last duty that Washington performed previous to leaving Virginia for the seat of Avar at the breaking out of the rebellion, was to go to Fredericksburg and remove his mother from the country into thecitv, where her married daughter was residing. He was unwilling to go away leaving her on the fann, and to overcome 28 MARY WASHINGTON. her opposition lie knew that a i:)ersonal appeal must be made. The i^rospects of a long war and the un- certainty of his return were shown her in their con- versation, and when convinced that it was to add to his peace of mind when away, she consented, and removed at once, leaving a competeht man in charge of the farm, subject to her daily supervision. And sui^ervise it she did every day of her life, riding about the fields, du'ecting the planting and the gathering of crops, ordering repairs, and buying supplies. She had what would now be termed an old-fashioned buggy and a gen- tle horse, and every morning both were before her door awaiting her. She lived out of doors the greater part of the later years of her life. Her children were grown and gone from her, and her eldest son was en- gaged in duties that exposed him more or less to con- stant danger and separated him almost entu'ely from her. It was -wisdom in her so to live, and the disease that had very gradually come upon her was kept at bay for many years by her uniform, quiet, and peace- fid life. Where another mother of less fortunate temperament would have found occasion for constant worry and anxiety, in her son's prolonged absence and trying if high position, Mrs. Washington fretted not at all, and troubled no one with her heart experiences. She had great native sense, and she was strong of ^^ill and firm of faith, and her outlook on life was in con- sequence extended. In a word, she was a great woman, and subject her life to whatever side lights w-e may, we find no angu- larities, no painful contrasts, no contradictions. She was a consistent Christian, and one who lived out A SUCCESSFUL DISCIPLINARIAN. 29 every prayer she uttered and every resolve she made. From the beginning to the end, through eighty-three eventful years, she was in all places wheresoever placed a good woman. Let us glance over it and see how smooth and even was the web and woof of her life history. Quietly and patiently she spun, but indus- triously and with determination. Those who entertain the idea that Mrs. Washington was a colorless char- acter, do themselves a wrong to continue in such error. She was one of the finest characters of the Revolution- ary period, and while not possessed of many of the graces and accomplishments that women delight in, she had exceeding good sense, great business ability, and an influence over others that, if there was no other evidence of her individuality, would prove her to have been remarkable. As has been said, she was a devout' woman, and however far modern materialism may extend its influence and bias criticism, it can never gainsay the fact that the best mothers, the most suc- cessful family disciplinarians, were and ,are women of strong religious natures — j)raying women who, believing with all their hearts in the power and efBcacy of iDrayer, made it the first great duty of their lives to train their children in the same belief. Mary Washington came of pious stock. Her mother was a devout person, and her ancestors were Covenant- ers. As a child on her father's Virginia plantation, Mary Ball was trained religiously, and as she grew to woman- hood she became a church member, and all her asso- ciations were of a religious nature. The children of the early settlers of this country and their immediate 30 - MARY WASHINGTON. descendants were strenuous advocates of clinrcli wor- sliip, and they gave of their means and their time to build meeting-houses. The Sabbath wsis tlie day of all others most filled with important duties. All the week the colonists worked hard, and at the meetings on Lord's day they met together and were companions in devotion. There was a solemnity and a seriousness about the meetings that do not characterize church gatherings to-day, except in the wilderness, and chil- dren trained by active Christians saw the solemn and grave side of religion almost exclusively. They learned the Bible, and could repeat large portions of it, and in their conversations with their elders they were respect- ful and obedient to a degree not understood by the young of to-day. ' Mary Ball was, by reason of her careful rearing and her natural disposition, altogether fitted for the posi- tion of stepmother, which position she assumed when she became the wife of Augustine Washington, her father's friend and neighbor. She was twenty-four years old when she married — an iige not considered very young in that day. The young ladies of the Old Dominion married very earlv, and there were few among them avIio remained single until they liad passed their teens. A wedding was the event of a lifetime, and the people, accustomed to but few forms of amusement, made such an entertainment one of great importance. The hospitality of the bride's parents was limited only by the size of their homes, and the preparations were on a scale of generosity characteristic of well-to-do farmers in a new country. The wedding at Farmer Ball's on March Gth, 1730, was THE WASHINGTOXS. 31 not unlike the typical Virginia wedding. Mary was a beloved daughter, and she was marrying a trusted man, one who had lived a near neighbor for years, and was an eligible match for the favorite child of the house, A large company took part in the festivities that followed the marriage ceremony, and the young bride left her father's house accompanied by the fond wishes of true friends. The Washington s were planters of considerable means in AVestmoreland County, and the home to which Augustine conducted his wife was one of the most comfortable in that section of country. The house was situated on an eminence aboiit half a mile from the Potomac River, and commanded a view of the Maryland shore for many miles. The dwelling was of frame, with a steep roof which sloped down into projecting eaves. It was but one story, and con- tained four large rooms and an entrance hall of con- siderable dimensions. At each end of the house on the outside was an enormous chimney. From the river the house was an attractive one, and the grounds about it, which were not discernible from that point, were well tended and adorned with fine shrubs and flowers. In this pretty country home was born, on the 22d of February, 1732, George, the first child of Mary and Augustine Washington. When in the fulness of time this child became the military hero of his country, historians and others industriously studied the gene- alogy of the Washington family, and rescued from oblivion everv obtainable fact concerning them from remotest antiquity. But with the ancestry of the 32 MARY WASHINGTON. mother of Washington the world concerned itself but little. It is nevertheless a fact that from his mother he inherited his strongest qualities of mind, and to her he owed his fine physique. It would be interest- ing to know more than it is now j)ossible to learn of her ancestry, for the reason that her famous son in- herited from her the characteristics that made his name a familiar one the world over. Before him no Wash- ington had achieved fame, and since his time none of the name have acquired i)ublic rej^utation. Inflexible in courage and unyielding in purpose, the mother might have been a Spartan, She certainly was imbued with the heroic spirit of the Covenanters, and was a better development than the Spartan or the Cove- nanter. She was a happy American mother and wife. Six children were born to Mr, and Mrs, Washington, five of whom lived to maturity. When the eldest was six years of age the family removed from their West- moreland home to a large tract of land on the Rap- pahannock River, opposite Fredericksburg. It was not a thickly settled j^ortion of Virginia at the time, and the Indians, though ostensibly friendly, were still a menace to the settlers. The conversation of the parents, which their little son listened to with interest, was often on this subject, and it was in this new home that he first exhibited his strong liking 'for military life. Mr. Washington owned many slaves, and it required an industrious housewife to manage and provide for so large a family. The spinning-wheel and the weaver's loom, the sewing-room and the seamstresses required constant watching. There could be no better position RELIGIOUS HABITS. 33 for tlie development and cultivation of order, dis- cipline, habits of economy, and method than the one filled by Mrs. Washington. The home was one of I)lenty and order, and there were no grinding cares or pecuniary anxieties to strain the nerves of the wife and mother, or mar the contentment of the home circle. It was a very religious household : both father and mother were members of the Episcopal Church, and were strict observers of the rules of their denomina- tion. Family prayers were said morning and evening. The Bible was read, and the servants of the household were always present. The mother instructed her chil- dren constantly on religious subjects, and as often as not her reproofs were made in scriptural language. For any sign of insubordination she would use as a corrective rod not the scolding words of an impatient mother, but would repeat in measured tones such aw^ul warnings as this, for instance, " The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it ;' ' or if a lesson in obedi- ence needed to be inculcated, the serious and ever- ready mother would take her little child upon her knee, and have it repeat after her the words, " Honor thy father and thy mother," and then slowly and patiently continue the commandment, making clear to the interested impil the promise that follows it. In this way she inspired their hearts Tvdth respect, and imi^ressed upon their unfolding minds the dignity and resjDonsibility of a mother. Not only did her own children look up to and venerate her, but her stepchildren were devoted to 34: MARY WASHINGTON. her, and in after years, when her children were grown up, their half-brothers took the tenderest interest in them, and George was not only put forward in his career by Lawrence, but was his sole heir on the death of the latter. From him George inherited Mount Vernon. Mr. Washington died at the age of forty-nine years, leaving to his wife the responsibility of rearing her young children, the eldest of whom was but a small lad. Washington Irving says of this time : " George, now eleven years of age, and the other children of the second marriage had been left under the guardianship of their mother to Avhom was in- trusted the proceeds of all their property until they should severalh' come of age. She j^i'oved herself worthy of the trust. Endowed with plain, dkect good sense, thorough conscientiousness, and prompt decision, she governed her family strictly but kindly, exacting deference while she inspired affection. George, being her eldest son, was thought to be her favorite, yet she never gave him undue preference, and the implicit deference exacted from him in childhood continued to be habitually observed by him to the day of her death. He inherited from her a high temper and a spirit of command, but her early p^recepts and example taught him to restrain and govern that temper, and to square his conduct on the exact principles of equity and justice." Mrs. Washington found little difficult}^ in bringing up her children. Thej^ were disciplined to obedience, and a simple word was her command. She was not given to any display of petulance or rage, but was A PEN PICTURE. 35 steady, well-balanced, and unvarying in her mood. That she was dignified even to stateliness is shown us by the statement made by Lawrence Washington oi Chotauk, a relative and playmate of George in boy- hood, who was often a guest at her house. He says : " I was often there with George — his j^laymate, school- mate, and young man's companion. Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than I ever was of my own j)arents. She awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was indeed truly kind. I have often been present with her sons, j)roper tall fellows too, and we were all as mute as mice ; and even now, when time has whitened my locks, and I am the grandparent of a second generation, I could not behold that remarkable woman without feelings it is impossible to describe. Whoever has seen that awe-inspiring air and manner, so characteristic in the Father of his Country, will remember the matron as she appeared when the pre- siding genius of her well-ordered household, command- ing and being obeyed." Allied to this spirit of command were gentle qual- ities which made obedience to her wishes an easy task. It is related of her that on one occasion, having ordered a person in her employ to do a piece of work in a certain way, she was surprised to find that he had disobeyed her. He explained that he had a better plan, when she reminded him that she had commanded, and there was nothing left for him but to obey. There was no occasion for a second reprimand in that direc- tion. Mr. SjDarks, than whom there is no better authority, credits her with the jDossession of assiduity, tender- 36 MARY WASHINGTON. ness, and vigilance, as well as an indomitable will, and says : " As the richest reward of a mother's solicitude and toil, she had the hax3i3iness to see all her children come forward with a fair j^romise into life, filling the sphere allotted to them in a manner equally honorable to themselves and to the parent who had been the only guide of their principles, conduct, and habits. She lived to witness the noble career of her eldest son, till by his own rare merits he was raised to the head of a nation and applauded and revered by the whole world. It has been said that there never was a great man, the elements of whose greatness might not be traced to the original characteristics or early influence of his mother. If this be true, how much do mankind owe to the mother of Washington !" George Washington Parke Custis said of her : " The mother of- Washington, in forming him for those distinguished parts he was destined to perform, first taught him the duties of obedience, the better to prei)are him for those of command. In the well- ordered domicile where his early years were passed, the levity and indulgence common to youth were tern- pered by a deference and well-regulated restraint which, while it curtailed or suppressed no rational enjoyment usual in the spring-time of life, prescribed those enjoyments within the bounds of moderation and propriety. " The matron held in reserve an authority which never departed from her, not even when her son had become the most illustrious of men. It seemed to say, ' I am your mother, the being who gave you life, the HER SON'S APPEAL DENIED. 37 guide wlio directed your steps when they needed the guidance of age and wisdom, the parental affection which claimed your love, the parental authority which commanded your obedience ; whatever may be your success, whatever your renown, next to your God you owe most to me. ' Nor did the chief dissent from these truths, but to the last moment of the life of his vener- able parent, he yielded to her will the most dutiful, nuplicit obedience, and felt for her person and char- acter the most holy reverence and attachment." Mrs. Washington permitted her son to spend his holidays at Mount Vernon, with his brother Lawrence, and there he was brought into contact with military men and naval officers. The martial spirit was always strong in the lad, and he was a careful listener to the conversations held in the bachelor home on the Poto- mac. Lawrence encouraged George in his desire to become a military man. An opportunity offered to secure for him a midshipman's position on a British man-of-war, and Lawrence urged Mrs. Washington to let him accept it. George also petitioned her, and the trial was a severe one to her. She refused finally, on the ground that there was no reason why her son (he was then fourteen years of age) should be thrown out into the world, and separated so far from his kindred. The pj'ofession she objected to also as one that would take her boy from her permanently. She could not bring herself to see that it was to his advantage to go to sea, and we may feel assured she made it the burden of many prayers. There was a neighbor of hers who was a friend of her stepson' s, and this man, Mr. Jackson, at the request 38 MARY WASHINGTON. 01 Lawrence, went to see her regarding the matter which he advocated. After visiting Mrs. Washington, he wrote to Lawrence as follows : " I am afraid that Mrs. Washington will not keep up her first resolution. She seems to dislike George's going to sea, and says several persons have told her it was a bad scheme. She offers several trilling objec- tions, such as fond, unthinking mothers habitually suggest, and I find that one word against his going- has more weight than ten for it. " Wise Mr. Jackson, who rated his worldly judgment against a mother's intuitions! His obtuseness ■ in styling her an " unthinking" mother was sufficient to have made a woman of her strong sense distrust advice from such a quarter. Had she been persuaded against her will, her son's great future would ha.ve been marred, and the proba])ilities are that his career would have been a comparatively obscure one. And Mr. Jackson, whose only claim to immortality is based upon one interview with Mrs. Washington, lived to see that his judgment of her was unjust, and that she was right in her refusal to let her son go to sea. One of Washington's biographers affirms that " the luggage of the young aspirant for naval honors was actually conveyed on board the little vessel destined to convey him to his new post, and that when attempt- ing to bid adieu to his only parent, his previous j'eso- lution to depart was for the first time subdued in consequence of her ill- concealed dejection and her irrepressible tears." It is hardly likely that this version of the matter is true, since her son had never in liis life exhibited a WHAT WASHINGTON IRVING SAYS. 39 disobedient spirit, and Lawrence Washington was not at all inclined to offend her by urging a plan after she had opposed it. In the archives of Mount Vernon may be seen to- day a manual compiled by Mrs. Washington from Sir Matthew Hale's "Contemplations, Moral and Divine," which she wrote out for her son, and which he preserved until the day of his death. It stands to reason that a son wko heeded every other instruction would yield implicit obedience in a matter of so much importance, and it is an historical fact that he in after years alluded to it with expressions of gratitude to his mother for preventing him from taking a stei;) that would have been unfortunate if not fatal to his future. A quotation from \Vashington Irving is applicable in this connection. He says, after speaking of the ex- emplary manner in which she had reared her children : "The deference for her then instilled into their minds continued throughout life, and was manifested by Washington when at the height of his power and reputation. Eminently practical, she had thwarted his military aspirings when he was about to seek honor in the British navy. During his early and dis- astrt^us campaigns on the frontier she would often shake her head and exclaim, ' Ah, George had better have staved at home and cultivated his farm. ' " Even his ultimate success and renown had never dazzled, however much they may have gratified her. Where others congratulated her, and were enthusiastic in his praise, she listened in silence, and would tem- perately reply that he had been a good son, and she believed he had done his duty as a man." 40 MARY WASHINGTON. It was not a great wliile after tlie circumstance nar- rated above that the French and Indian War broke out, and George Washington received his motlier s consent and blessing when he made known his desire to go. From that time henceforth he was with her only on occasional visits. After his marriage he settled down at Mount Yernon, and lived a life of ease and retirement for many years, until the breaking out of the Revolu- tionary War. There is no record t>f anv visit made by Mrs. Washington at any time to Mount Yernon, nor h there any account of any meetings or interviews between the mother and the wife of Washington. That there were such meetings and visits are almost certain, and Washington, Ave know, was often a guest in his mother's house at Fredericksburg. When the war broke out lie paid her, as has been said, a visit before starting north to assume command. In tlie long years tliat passed before she saw him again, he wrote her rei^eatedly, and lost no opportunity to relieve her mind of anxiety concernino; him. The lavish praises bestowed upon him by all who saw her hardly ever received any other recognition than a quiet reminder that Providence was ordering all things. For herself, she found her self-control in i^rayer, 5nd much of her time was spent alone. The surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown was the auspicious event that hastened their reimion. A mes- senger was sent to apprise her of the fact, and as soon as possible jDublic duties were laid aside, and Washington visited her, attended by his staff. His presence in Fred- ericksburg aroused the enthusiasm of all classes. For the first time in six years mother and son met, and it A BALL AT FREDERICKSBURG. 41 may be imagined that her heart rejoiced over the meet- ing. She was then over seventy years of age, and was an erect, well-preserved woman. The attentions lavished npon her from that time to the end of her life were con tinnous, and she had greater canse than any othei* American mother to rejoice in the good fortnne of her son. On this occasion the x^eople of Fredericksburg gave a ball in his honor, and it was attended by a ]:)rilliant throng of military officers and foreigners. Mrs. Wash- ington was the most interesting person in the ball-room to very many ^leople, particularly to the members of the staff of General Washington who met her for the first time. The spectacle of a woman of her advanced years, who had always lived a secluded life, and who was consequently expected to be childish and indiffer- ent, moving among the people about her, an interested and entertaining woman, full of dignity and reserve, was a charming one. Washington presented the Ameri- can and European officers to his mother, who regarded her with undisguised pleasure and astonishment. Tradi-. tion says that she was the picture of beautiful sim- plicity, moving among the dazzling throng dressed in the appropriate costume of a Virginia matron of the olden time. Another occasion when Mrs. Wasliington apjjeared to great advantage in the eyes of a foreign officer was when the Marquis de La Fayette visited Fredericks- luirg especially to bid her good-by. Accompanied b}' a grandson of Mrs. Washington, he ax^proached the house, and saw the venerable lady working in her garden. She wore a homespun dress, and her snow- white hair was covered with a sun-bonnet. 42 MARr WASHINGTON. u All, Marquis,'' slie exclaimed, as soon as she recognized her guest, "you see an old woman; but come, I can make you welcome to my poor dwelling without the parade of changing my dress. " Her amiable visitor enjoyed her welcome, and closed his long visit with a request that she would give him her blessing to take back with him to France. He loved his hero chief, and the reverence he felt toward the mother of that chief was sincere and intense. At the close of the Revolution Washington endeavor- ed, as he had done before, to have his mother reside with him at Mount Vernon. She was now past seventy, and he was unwilling that she should live alone at her time of life. Her children all shared this feeling, and Mrs. Lewis, whose husband was a devoted son-in-law, opened his home to her repeatedly, and beseeched her to stay with her daughter. ISTothing could shake her determi- nation. Her reply was, " I thank you for your dutiful and affectionate offers, but my wants are few in this life, and I feel perfectly competent to take care of myself." Very often Washington visited her, and always with increasing anxiety. In his published correspondence are many records of his visit to her. He offers as an explanation of his delay in replying to a letter of the Secretary of Congress, that he has been on a journey to Fredericksburg to see his aged parent. At another time he gives the same reason to another official, and he tells a friend that he has been absent from Mount Vernon for some days looking after his mother's com- fort and interests. During the latter portion of her life, when the ])itiless disease from which she had WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL VISIT. 4o suffered for years was making rapid headway, it was her habit to repair daily to a secluded spot near her dwelling, and there commune with her Maker. She sought by this means to gain strength to live out her days without harrowing the feelings of others with the sight of her sufferings. But for this disease, cancer in the breast, which had exhibited itself years before, she would in all probability have lived with her son, or at least her daughter. But as long as she could hide the cruel secret from her children, she did, and it was not until the last years of her life that her son knew of it. His alarm and anxiety she quieted by her resolute course, and her own courage and calmness helped the others.* When Washington was elected President of the United States, he paid her a farewell visit. He was soon to start for the seat of government, and he felt that he would not see her again. This was the year of her death, and she knew when she gave him her last blessing that the end was not far off. The separation was intensely i^ainful to him. He rested his head on her shoidder while she folded her feeble arms about his neck. Both wept, the mother silently, while Washington, unable to control his feelings, sobbed as she gently released herself from his embrace. She bade him do the duty Providence had assigned him, and live his life through with her blessing on his head. * Mrs. Washington's children ^vere George, Betty (Mrs. Lewis), Samuel, John Augustine, Charles, and Mildred. The latter died in infancy, and the three sons lived on separate plantations in Virginia left them by their father. Their descendants are among the best citizens of the old Commonwealth. 44 MARY WASHINGTON. * The trial was bitter to her, because she was fast hastening away, and wonkl have gladly had his loving support to the end. But it was not to be, and control- ling herself with great effort, she met the parting with more composure than he could summon. After intense sufferings, she died on the evening of the 25th of August, 1789, in her eighty-third year, and the forty-sixth of her widowhood. Mrs. Lewis, after the last sad rites were paid her, wrote to Washington in- forming him of the end. He had been extremely ill, and the intelligence deeply affected him. His letter in rejAy was as follows : "New York, 13 September, 1789. " My dear Sister : Awful and affecting as the death of a parent is, there is consolation in knowing that Heaven has spared ours to an age beyond which few attain, and favored her with the full enjoy- ment of her faculties, and as much bodily strength as usually falls to the lot of fourscore. Under these considerations, and a hope that she is translated to a happier place, it is the duty of her relatives to yield due submission to the decrees of the Creator. When I was last at Fredericksburg. I took a final leave of my mother, never expect- ing to see her more. " It will be impossible for me ut this distance, and circumstanced as I am, to give the smallest attention to the execution of lier will ; nor, indeed, is much required, if, as she directs, no security should be given, nor appraisement made of her estate ; but that the same should be allotted to the devisees with as little trouble and delay as may be. IIow far this is legal, I know not. ^Mr. Merced can, and I have no doubt would advise you, if asked, which I wish you to do. If the ceremony of inventorying, appraising, etc., can be dispensed with, all the rest, as the will declares that few or no debts are owing, can be done with very little trouble. Every person may, in that case, immediately receive what is specially devised. Were it not that the specific legacies, which are given to me by the will, are HER GRAVE. 45 meant and ought to be considered and received as mementoes of paternal affection in the last solemn act of life, I should not be desirous of receiving or removing them ; but in this point of view, I set a value on therJi much beyond their intrinsic worth." Mrs. Washington's business integrity throughout her life was one of her finest characteristics, and in her last worldly transaction she recorded the fact that her estate was encumbered by no debts. She died as she had lived, a grand character, one of the noblest this country ever has produced or ever will produce. Her grave was unmarked, even by a headstone, until the year 1833, when the corner-stone of a monument to her memory wa^ laid by President Jackson, in the presence of a great concourse of people. The Presi- dent was accom23anied by members of the Cabinet and many citizens of Washington. His eulogy on this interesting occasion was a fitting one. The day, the seventh of May, was beautiful, the soft sj)ring air and cloudless sky making it seem the perfection of weather. The grave was made near the spot where she was ac- customed to retire and pray, and it recalled the memo- ries of her last years to very many who stood on ground consecrated by her presence. The plan of the monument was pyramidal, and the height of the obelisk forty- five feet. A colossal bust of Washington adorns the shaft, surmounted by the American eagle sustaining a civic crown above the hero's head. The simjDle but eloquent inscription it contains is : Mary, the Mother of Washington. 46 MARY WASHINGTON. , Mrs. L. N. Sigoiirney- s poem read on tlie occasion of the laying of the corner-stone contains the following touching lines, with which is concluded this tribute to her worth and her memory : " Long hast thou slept unnoted. Nature stole, In her soft ministry, around thy bed, And spread her vernal coverings, violet-gemm'd, And pearl'd with dbws. She bade bright Summer bring Gifts of frankincense, with sweet song of birds, And Autumn cast his yellow coronet Down at thy feet, and stormy Winter speak Hoarsely of man's neglect. But now we come To do thee homage, Mother of our Chief, Fit homage, such as honoreth him who pays ! Methinks we see thee, as in olden time, Simple in garb — majestic and serene— Unaw'd by " pomp and circumstance" — in truth Inflexible — and with Spartan zeal Repressing vice, and making folly grave. Thou didst not deem it woman's part to waste Life in inglorious sloth, to sport awhile Amid the flowers, or on the summer wave. Then fleet like the ephemerou away. Building no temple in her children's hearts, Save to the vanity and pride of life Which she had worshipped. Of the might that cloth'd The ' Pater Patria; ' — of the deeds that won A nation's liberty and earth's applause, Making Mount Vernon's tomb a Mecca haunt For patriot and for sage, while time shall last. What part was thine, what thanks to thee are due, Who 'mid his elements of being wrought With no uncertain aim — nursing the germs Mary Washington. 47 Of Godlike virtue in his infant mind, We hnow not — Heaven can tell ! Rise, noble pile ! And show a race unborn who rests below, And say to mothers, what a holy charge Is theirs — with what a kingly power their love Might rule the fountains of the new-born mind ; Warn them to wake at early dawn, and sow Good seed before the world doth sow its tares, Nor in their toil decline — that angel bands May put the sickle in, and reap for God, And gather to His garner." THE MOTHER OF MENDELSSOHN. Some of the brightest geniuses that have shed light upon the world in every age have been members of the Jewish race. Not to mention the name suj^remely dear to every Christian heart, we need only look at the illustrious names of poets, philosophers, artists, states- men, and philanthropists in recent times, to know hoAv much the human family is indebted to the Jew. The history of art and science, and therefore of civilization, would be. almost a blank if the names of illustrious Hebrews were eliminated. In strange contrast with Beethoven, whose life was darkened by affliction, was Felix Mendelssohn, a master in the same art of music, whose first name " Felix," the happy one, was prophetic of the whole current of his life. His father was a wealthy banker, and he never knew an hour of privation from the cradle to the grave. Genius is sometimes said to be hereditary, and certainly it was so in the Mendelssohn family, although the same studies were not the choice of all its members. The grandfather of the great musician, Moses Mendels- sohn, used to be called " the Socrates of the Jews,'' and was a moral philosopher and metaphysician of original and powerful talent. Felix, of whose family and especially of whose mother we have now to treat, was born at Berlin in 1809. His precocity in his special LEAH MENDELSSOHN BARTHOLDY". FELIX MENDELSSOHN'S CHARACTER. 51 gift Avas vvonderful. Before he was eight years old l]e read music at sight, with a facility that astonished his teachers, and in his ninth year he i)eriornied at a public concert in Berlin. At twelve he comj)osed a pianoforte quartette in C minor. He resided in France, Italy, and England at different times, and gave in London his first symphony and his overture to the "Midsummer Night's Dream," which produced an electrical effect. When twenty-three years old lie became director of the theatre at Diisseldorf, where in 1835, Avhen he was twenty-six, he performed his great oratorio '" Paulus." That and " Elijah" are his greatest works. He died at Leipsic, where he was musical director, in 1847. Such are the brief outlines of the life of Felix Men- delssohn. His character was worthy of his happy fortune, for he was full of nobility, goodness, tender- ness, and delicacy of feeling. His family were only less gifted than himself, and whether we look at his sisters, his father, or his mother, we shall find them at all times worthv of him and he of them. His -father's letters from Paris and London, recently published for the first time, show that he abounded in humor, shrewdness, and the amusing gossip of the times in which he lived. His nephew, Sebastian Hensel, son of liis elder sister Fanny, collected and published the letters of Felix Mendelssohn w^hich had not previously been given to the iDtiblic, as well as those of his fatlier Abraham, and his mother Leah, and his tAvo sisters. Those of his father and mother are especially cliar- acteristic and beautiful, and as it is our purpose to speak especially of the latter and her influence on he:- 52 THE MOTHER OF MENDELSSOHN. illustrious son, we will begin with a brief sketch both of the Mendelssohn and Salomon families, to the latter of which his mother belonged. Abraham Mendelssohn, the father of Felix, was born on the 11th of December, 1776, and was the second son of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, to whom we have already referred. One may judge of his ex- cellent humor and kindly nature, as well as of the l)ride he took in the greatness of his son Felix, by his own words: "Formerly I was the son of my father, and now I am the father of my son." Little is known of his youth until the year 1803, when he occupied the office of cashier in the banking-house of the Messrs. Fould, at Paris. Here he probably often talked about his futui'e prospects with the younger of his two sisters, Henrietta, in her cosey arbor in the Rue Richer, and in their conversation she no doubt often mentioned her dearest and most intimate friend Leah Salomon as one who would make her brother happy if he could secure her as a wife. The Salomon family enjoyed a considerable social position in Berlin. Leah's elder brother had adoj^ted the name of Bartholdy, after the former proprietor of the garden belonging to the Salomon family. This garden, when it afterward came into the possession of Abraham Mendelssohn on his marriage with Leah Salomon, was situated on the Spree, in the K(jpenick Street, and came in time to be called "the farm," or the " Meiever." We mention these apparently unimportant facts to account for Felix Mendelssohn adding Bartholdy to his own name. Leah Salomon is described by those who knew her in her girlhood as not exactly handsome, but as pos- AN ACCOMPLISHED WOMAN. 53 sessing eloquent black eyes, a sylpli-like figure, a gentle and modest demeanor, and possessing great powers of conversation, which was distinguished as much by sound judgment as by keen yet kindly wit. If this description be accurate, it would seem that the English poet, Alexander Pope, was not altogether correct when he wrote that "Wit and judgment ever are at strife, Though meant each other's helps, like man and wife." Her accomplishments are also described as quite exceptional for a girl of her age. She was familiar with every branch of useful knowledge, as taught to the youth of Germany in the schools. She played and sang mth grace and expression, although only in the presence of her friends. She drew with exquisite skill. She spoke and read En^ish, French, and Italian, and she could read " Homer" in the original Greek. Here were certainly attainments which even Lady Jane Grey, who used to read Plato's "Dia- logues" in Greek in her father's garden, might have envied. An excellent trait of her character was her simplicity in dress, for although by the legacy of a relation she was possessed of a considerable fortune in her owTi right, her apparel was always as simple as it was elegant, and she allowed her mother, who was not nearly so well off as herself, a liberal income, and care- fully kept house for her. Leah, or Lilla Salomon, as she was sometimes called, was born on March 26th, 1777. Some of her letters give abundant proof of her literary tastes and jDOwers of mind. After her grandfatlier's death, when she 54 THE MOTHER OF MENDELSSOHN. was twenty-two, she writes to a friend, in the midst of a long letter dated Berlin, July 2d, 1799 : " Under these trees, i^lanted and cultivated with real love by my dear grandfather, I have dreamed the rosy dreams of childhood ; every path, every spot is sacred and interesting to me, in sweet remembrance of past times. Here my feelings developed ; here my youthful mind ripened, and the half-slumbering thoughts of my soul took definite form in this charming solitude ; here 1 read my favorite iDoets with a higher enjoyment ; here I learned to understand and appreciate the advocates of liberty, justice, and truth ; and I even fancy that the weak notes my unskilled fingers produce are here more melodious and pure. Thus my imagination sur- rounds everything here with higher splendor, and you must pardon the enthusiasm of a foolish girl." Abraham Mendelssohn seems to have first met his future wife and to have fallen in love with her on a journey from Paris to Berlin. Her mother w^ould not hear, at first, of her marrying a clerk in a Paris bank- ing-house, and his sister Henrietta thus wrote to him about his prospects : "I need not tell you how heart- ily I join in your hopes of a happy result, but I must confess that it appears to me nearly impossible that you should succeed under your conditions. And yet. dear brother, this marriage would be the greatest bless- ing to you in every respect, and I cannot but entreat you not to be too hasty, and not to sacrifice too much to your position, which, though certainly advantageous now, may change in future times. " I feel as if I were twenty years older than you, and could tell you from my own experience that at LETTER FROM HENRIETTA MENDELSSOHN. 55 your age people often raslily overlook their own happiness, even when they find it is in then- path ; they always expect everything exactly to suit their own wishes, and then, while they are hesitating, their happiness is gone and lost forever ! I hope to read in your next letter that you have already seen Lilla ; and the of tener you speak to her, the more you will observe how seldom, if ever, you can find a woman like her. I do not therefore approve of your dislike of Berlin, having so great an influence on this most important decision. I could not help charging you with juvenile want of consideration when I read in your letter, ' Je prefererais manger du i^ain sec a Paris.' ' Du pain sec ' is a very good tiling, especially here, where it is so white ; but I always fear that if you continue to work for others without the means of getting on, and notwithstanding your great talents are always dejDend- ent on caj^rice and obstinacy, we know it might be- come ' du pain amer,' and I pray God that you may not have to repent afterward of your present refusal." The allusion to her brother's preference for dry bread in Paris to anything Berlin could offer him as a place of residence exjDlains the only obstacle which existed to his immediate union with Leah Salomon, except her mother's objection to him as being merely a bank cashier. The letter of his sister, added to his own love for Leah, overcame his reluctance to throw up his place in Paris, and he forthwith entered into partnership with his brother Joseph, married the object of his affection, and the young couple settled in Ham- burg. A letter from the bride gives an animated description of the first days of their married life. '/If ki I. /iZ/vv I ;/*l, Oft ih //W////M w/y/,/////' 1 ' ■.-., .„f/ ... nr^ I'lm mol. iUii> M ■'! ''/ ' III.''.! ' '/!■ "! .'/.' '.'.'' J/''/^/'' ' '* •)inii //ni IHf^' ioht/^ T/ y/ithoui fit*' ih< '> " t'nih{f III'/ l)Ml<.' itOKi ftont i'tuin, 1/ .It tf^Uii/, Oh fn}/ ' .Ui i\ unman, ii'ir/nn fy ' f/«/( oiii}/ iU lo Uu ^oih u\ lUii iloml of thu ^n,,,■ > '' ' ' "■ ■'^' <<|; «N//1 intnlh*iii. I>4''h'' " >• in • II' !ilace — Fanny, the eldest, on November 14th, 1805 ; Felix on February 3d, 1809, and Rebecca on April 11th, 1811. In announcing the birth of Fanny to his wife' s mother, the father wrote : " Leah says the child has Bach-fugue fingers," a prox)hecy which proved to be true. The pretty cottage with the balcony, on which the hai3py bride had set her heart, and which was called Marten' s Mill, had been purchased, and here the young couple spent the earlier years of their exceptionally happy life. Years afterward, in 1833, when their son Felix had become famous, and was the conductor of the great Diisseldorf music festival, Abraham Mendelssohn wrote to Leah : " Dear wife, tliis young man gives us much joy, and I sometimes think, three cheers for Marten's Mill !" Their last child, Paul, was born at Berlin, October 3d, 1813. Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn showed a decided talent for music even in their early childhood ; they in- herited this beautiful gift from their mother, and she was their first teacher. The father' s method with his children was marked with Jewish strictness, although he brought them up as Protestant Christians. He and his brothers had remained Jews in religion when their sisters, Dorothea and Henrietta, had embraced the Roman Catholic faith. But Abraham's brother- in-law had already become a Christian, and had already adopted the surname of Bartholdy. He wrote 58 THE MOTHER OF MENDELSSOHN. urging his sister's husband to follow his example, and in the fragment of a letter which he wrote to Abraham he argues in reply to the other's plea that something was due to the memory of Moses Mendels- sohn, his father: "Do you think that you have done anything wrong in giving your children the religion Avhicli appears to you the best ? It is the greatest homage you or any of us could pay to the effort of your father to promote true light and knowl- edge, and he would have acted like you for his chil- dren, and perhaps like me for himself. You may remain faithful to an oppressed, persecuted religion, you may leave it to your children as a prospect of life-long martyrdom, as long as you believe it to be absolute truth. But when you have ceased to believe that, it is barbarism. I advise you also to adopt the name of Mendelssohn Bartholdy as a distinc- tion from the other Mendelssohns. At the same time you would please me very much, because it would be the means of preserving my memory in the family." So it came to pass that Abraham and Leah Mendelssohn took the additional name of Bartholdy. In writing to his children, he says in 1817: "About you, my dear Felix, your mother writes as yet with satisfaction, and I am very glad of it, and hope to find a faithful and pleasing diary. Mind my maxim, 'True and obedient.'" And to little Paul: "Your letter, my dear little king of the Moors, also called Paul Hermann, was the best of all, without a single mistake, and beautifully short. I praise you in good earnest for your conduct, of which mother, Rebecca, and Fanny give such a charming account." ABRAHAM TO HIS DAUGHTER. 59 And some months later to Fanny: "Above all, let there be more and more strengthening of your en- deavor to please your loving and revered mother, and to arrive through obedience at love, through order and discipline at freedom and happiness. That is the best way of thanking and worshipping the Creator, the Maker of us all. There are in all religions only one God, one virtue, one truth, one happiness. You will find all this, if you follow the voice of your heart. Live so that it be ever in harmony with the voice of your reason. You know from my letters to mother how I get on. Daily and hourly do I think of you with true affection." He tells her in another letter not to mind growing stout: " It is one resem- blance to your mother, and you can never be enough like her, for there is not her superior." Still more impressively does he write to her, his eldest child, after her confirmation in the Lutheran Church in 1820 : "My DEAR Daughter: You have taken an impor- tant step, and in sending you my best wishes for the day and for your future happiness, I have it at heart to speak seriously to you on subjects hitherto not touched upon. Does God exist ? What is God ? Is He a part of ourselves, and does He continue to live after the other part has ceased to be ? And where '. And how ? All this I do not know, and therefore have never taught you anything about it. But I know that there exists in me and in you and in all human beings an everlasting inclination toward all that is good, true, and right, and a conscience which warns and guides us when we are going astray, I know it, 60 THE MOTHER OF MENDELSSOHN. I believe it, I live in this faith, and this is my re- ligion. . . . The example of your mother, the best and noblest of mothers, whose whole life is devotion, love, and charity, is like a bond to me that yon will not cast it away. You have grown up under her guidance, ever intuitively receiving and adopting what alone gives real worth to mankind. Your mother has been, and is, and I trust will long remain to you, to your sister and brothers, and to all of us, a prov- idential leading star on our path of life. When you look at her and turn over in your thoughts all the unmeasurable good she has lavished upon you by her constant self-sacrificing devotion as long as you live, and when that reflection makes your, heart and eyes overflow with gratitude, love, and veneration, then you feel God and are godly. "This is all I can tell you about religion, all I know about it; but this will remain true as long as one man will exist in the creation, as it has been true since the first man was created'. "The outward form of religion your teacher has given you is historical, and changeable like all human ordinances. Some thousands of years ago the Jewish form was the reigning one, then the heathen form, and now it is the Christian. We, your mother and I, were born and brought up by our parents as Jews, and without being obliged to change tlie form of our religion, have been able to follow the divine instinct in us and in our conscience. We have educated you and your brother in the Christian faith because it is the faith of most civilized people, and contains noth- ing that can lead you away from* what is good, and A HEBREW PARENT'S VIEW. 61 much that guides you to love, obedience, tolerance, and resignation, even if it offered nothing but the ex- ample of its Founder, understood by so few, and followed bv still fewer. " By pronouncing your confession of faith you have fulfilled the claims of society on you, and obtained the name of a Christian. Now be what your duty as a human being demands of you — true, faithful, good, obedient, and devoted till death to jour mother, and I may say also to your father, unremittingly attentive to the voice o,f your conscience, which may be suppressed but never silenced — and you will gain the highest happiness that is to be found on earth, harmony, and contentedness with yourself. " I embrace you with fatherly tenderness, and hope always to find in you a daughter worthy of your mother. Farewell, and remember my words." We have quoted this letter in full because it ex- plains the views which these Hebrew parents of the noblest type took of religion. To those who confound form with spirit, it may appear wrong for them to have reared their children in the Christian faith while they themselves were Jews. But they regarded creeds and churches in a rational, not a dogmatic light. Their views may be illustrated by the couplet of Alexander Pope, w^ho was a Roman Catholic : " For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight ; His can't be wrong whose life is in the right." We see, at all events, both in this letter and in the brief extracts we have given from the preceding ones, 62 THE MOTHER OF MENDELSSOHN. liow admirable were the precei:)ts wliicli their noble parents instilled into their children, and the reverence and affection which this Hebrew Inisband jiays to his wife — " mother," as he familiarly speaks of her. It is a sacred name, and what a mother must she have been who could call forth such a eulogy from her husband as this : "The best and noblest of mothers, whose whole life is devotion, charity, and love." One writer, in speaking of her, says : " She was musical, but not in the eminent degree of her two elder children ; yet she was Fanny' s eldest teacher, and conducted her through the most difficult studies of Bach, so that when a mere child she was able to play from memory not only vast quantities of Beet- hoven' s and Mozart's music, but twenty-four of Bach's fugues. . . . She was a lady of romantic tempera- ment, quite unlike her methodical and austere hus- band. . . . Her one weakness appears to have been excessive nervous excitability, leading at times to peevishness and to unreasonable demands ; but as a rule she held herself well in hand, and was a spring of delight to her household and friends." Another writer, in speaking of her, has said : "There have lived few women more honorably dis- tinguished than she was by acquirement ; by that per- fect propriety which Horace Walpole has justly called the grace of declining life ; by a cordial hospitality, the sincerity of which there was no mistaking ; by an easy humor in conversation, a knowledge of men and books, and a lively interest in the younger generation, which at her age is only found in the brightest and best of their species. It is true that she had no common mo- A CHRISTMAS REUNION. (J3 tive for keeping pace with the world of Europe in the fame of her son, and in the brilliant succession of guests whom her daughter assembled ; but apart from this she possessed a fund of intelligence, a mind bred amid constant intercourse with the best things and persons of all countries, which belonged to herself and remained with her to the last." The remaining years of Leah Mendelssohn' s bright and beautiful life were passed, like the earlier ones, in making herself useful and others happy. In the career of her son Felix she always exhibited the tenderest interest, and their affectionate and intellectual relations with each other were never broken or saddened till her death put an end to them. He was looking forward to a happy meeting in the December of 1842, and had ap- pointed to be at Berlin on the 17th, but an unlooked- for affliction summoned him at an earlier date. His mother had latterly been remarkably well in health, and in more than usually good spiiits. She entered with greater eagerness than usual into all the prepara- tions for Christmas, and no one who saw her pursuing the even tenor of her life from day to day, always calm, always happy, could dream of any approaching danger. There was indeed not the slightest sign of the end. On Sunday, December lltli, some friends in ad- dition to the family, who always dined with her on that day, liad been invited to dinner. The -party was a merry one, and she entered into all the fun and laugh- ter, extracting a promise fi'om her guests that they would spend the next ten Christmases with her. In the evening a party of friends more numerous than usual gathered in the drawing-room, but in the 64 THE MOTHER OF MENDELSSOHN. midst of a lively conversation she was taken ill, and had to be carried to bed. After a time she fell asleep in her habitual position, seeming quite comfortable, even her hands being warm, and her children could not conceive that they •were standing by their mother's death-bed. This lasted until half-past nine on Monday morning, De- cember 12th, when there was a short struggle, and all was over. "Thus," says her grandson, "another full and happy life was cut short by a sudden, almost painless death, without any preceding illness." Her daughter Fanny, the eldest of her children, writes in her diary : ' ' A more happy end could not have been desired for her. She was taken literally as she told Albertine last summer she should like to be, knowing nothing about it and without being laid up, but engaged to the last in the ordinary course of her pleasant daily life, and in the full enjoyment of her intellectual faculties." Shortly afterward, Felix Mendelssohn, writing to his brother Paul, said that they ' ' were all well, and living on their sorrow as they best could, dwelling on the happiness they once possessed." The mother had been literally the centre of the family circle, and al- though her four children did not need her to keep up their affection, they felt the loss of this rallying-point in many minor but important incidents of daily life. "She," says her grandson, Sebastian Hensel, "was the natural head round whom the others fell into their own places as a matter of course. The members of the family dined every Sunday with her ; the Christmas- eve gathering took place, year after year, at her liouse ; DEATH OF THE MOTHER. 65 Felix, when he came to Berlin, was, as a rule, her guest. Now the brothers and sisters were forced to make fresh arrangements, and they all felt the change acutely." So it was that Felix, in his letter to his younger brotlier Paul after her death, says : " My letter was addressed to Fanny, but written to you all, though it seems you had not heard of it ; and even this trifle shows what will day by day be more deeply and pain- fully felt by us, that the point of union is now gone where we could always feel ourselves still to be chil- dren, and though we were no longer so in years, we fel't that we were still so in feeling. When I wrote to my mother I knew that I wrote to you all, and you knew it too ; we are children no longer, but we have enjoyed what it really was to be so. Now this is gone forever ! At such a time we cling to outward things from hour to hour, like people in a dark room groping to find the way." The following obituary notice appeared in the lead- ing Berlin paper on the evening of the day of her death : " LEAH SALOMON. A PORTRAIT. " Berlin has lost to-day one of its most eminent inhab- itants. Leah Salomon, the widow of Town-Councillor Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and mother of the King's Kapellmeister, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, died this morning from an attack of spasm of the lungs, with which she was seized on the previous evening. En- dowed with rare qualities of head and of heart, she was high-minded and affectionate to a degree, and fulfilled all the duties of a loving wife and devoted mother. 66 THE MOTHER OF MENDELSSOHN. Her benevolence exercised in secret, invariably guided by sound common-sense, made itself felt far and wide. The sweetness of lier character did not exclude firm- ness, and in times of difficulty and danger, when her husband showed himself a patriot of faith and pa- tience, her courage equalled his. Her death will be deplored, not only by her gifted children and near re- lations, but by a large circle of friends and acquaint- ances, for she had gathered around her a society as select as it was brilliant, and as sociable as it was ani- mated. It was while engaged in conversation, friendly and intellectual as hers always was, that she was suddenly called away. Her memory will be cherished by all who knew her. and handed down to future ages." THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. Ramolii^o Marie Letitia, the mother of Napoleon, was bom at Ajaccio on the 24th of August, 1750. She was married to Charles Bonaparte before she had completed her sixteenth year. Her beauty made her an object of admiration when a mere child, and she retained it to extreme old age, dying when nearly in her eightieth year. The bust taken of her in the evening of her life at Rome, by the great Italian sculptor Canova, reveals a classic beauty and regu- larity of feature which recalls the profile of her ex- traordinary son, and indicates the possession of the same qualities, otherwise applied, as those that made him the a-reatest commander and ruler of men of his own and perhaps of any age. Dauntless courage, strength of will, foresight, fiexibility to circumstances, and the adaptation of means to ends, added to a sense of duty and a recognition of higher principles of conduct than her son possessed, are what chiefly strike the observer in her face. Her complexion was very pale, and became more than usually so when excited, and on such occasions her eyes seemed to open wider, her lips became closely set, and her whole countenance had a rapt and prophetic aspect. The Duchess d'Abrantes, who describes her as one of the most beautiful young women in Corsica, says that " her soul beamed in her looks, and it was a soul 70 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. full of the loftiest sentiments." Napoleon himself did full justice to the heroic character of his mother. " I had need," he says, referring to his boyhood, "to be on the alert ; our mother would have repressed my warlike humor ; she would not have put up with my caprices. Her tenderness was joined with severity : she i)unislied, rewarded, all alike ; the good, the bad, nothing escaped her .... she did indeed watch over us with a solicitude unexampled. Every low senti- ment, every ungenerous affection was discarded, dis- couraged ; she suffered nothing but what was grand and elevated to take root in our youthful understand- ings. She abhorred falsehood, was provoked by dis- obedience ; she passed over none of our faults." And when describing the death of an uncle upon whom, after Charles Bonaparte's death, the family were partly dependent, he says : " He then made us draw near, and gave us his blessing and advice. ' You are the eldest of the family,' he said to Joseph ; ' but Napoleon is the head of it. Take care to remember what I say to you.' He then expired, amid the sobs and tears wliich this melancholy sight di^ew from us. Left without guide, without support, my mother was obliged to take the direction of affairs nxDon herself. But the tas|v was not above her strength ; she managed everything, provided for everything, with a prudence and sagacity which could neither have been expected from her sex nor from her age. Oh, what a woman ! — where look for her equal !" Napoleon was not the only great man who has been born amid peril and privation. The Duchess d' Abran- tes gives an account of his birth in her interesting YOUTHFUL REMINISCENCES. 71 journal about the persons and events connected with the court and camp of Bonaparte. She was the wife of his comrade Junot, whom he made a duke, and the Emperor was godfather to her child. She and her mother had frequent and intimate conversations with the mother of Napoleon — Madame Mere as she calls her — at a later time. One day in particular she records the strong impression she received of the maternal heroism of Letitia Bonaparte. " We had no other company, and she conversed for hours with my mother with greater freedom than she had yet done since her arrival from Corsica. They began both of them to recall the days of their youth. Madame Bonaparte was quite at ease, because with us she spoke nothing but Italian. I recollect she this day told us, that being at mass on the day of the fete of Notre Dame, of August, she was overtaken with the pains of child- birth, and she had hardly reached home when she was delivered of Napoleon on a wretched rug. Pre- vious to his birth she had experienced many mis- fortunes ; for when the French entered Corsica many of the principal families, and among them that of Bonaparte, were compelled to fly. ' They assembled at the foot of Monte Rotondo, the highest mountain in Corsica. In their flight and during their sojourn among the mountains they underwent many hard- ships. ' ' Napoleon was born on the 15th of Augast, 1769. The Bonaparte family had been distinguished in the middle ages in Italy, whence his branch of it removed to Corsica, at the time of the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines. They belonged to the gen- 72 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. try of the island. Charles Bonaparte, Napoleon's father, was an advocate of local reputation, and when the Corsicans nnder Paoli were struggling against the domination of the French, he espoused the i3opular side. He afterward made his peace with the French, and Napoleon was born two months after their con- quest of Corsica. He was their second child. Joseph, afterward King of Spain, was the eldest, and he had three younger brothers, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome, and three sisters, Eliza, Caroline, and Pauline. These grew up, but five others must have died in infancy, for we are told that Letitia had given birth to thuteen children when, at the age of thirty-five, she became a widow. Her husband became reconciled to the French conquerors of the island, and the French governor, the Count de Marboeuf, became his friend and protector. The breath of scandal is ever ready to sully the reputation of a beautiful woman. Letitia Bonaparte did not escape it, and it was rumored that Governor Marboeuf was her lover ; some even went so far as to hint that he was the father of the future Emperor. Napoleon, in his earlier days, is said not to have been careful of his mother's good name, but he lived to do her justice in deed and word. In Ajaccio itself the scandal of illicit love between the governor of Corsica and the mother of Napoleon was not believed, but it was easy enough for gossip to assign a dishonorable motive for the kindness which the Count de Marboeuf showed to the family. It was through him that Charles Bonaparte received the government appoint- ment of Procureur du Boi, an office equivalent to Attorney-General for Corsica. It was through him NAPOLEON'S LETTER TO PAOLI. 73 also that Cliaiies and Letitia Bonaparte obtained scholarships for their sons in some of the principal schools in France. While the patient endurance and unflinching forti- tude of his ^mother in the months preceding his birth, during \Yhich she shared the perils of war with her husband, demonstrate her remarkable self-possession, the same circumstances developed, no doubt, the con- centrated and resolute character of her illustrious son. " I was born," wrote Napoleon to Paoli in 1789, "when my country was sinking; the cries of the dying, the groans of the ojopressed, and the tears of despair surrounded my cradle from my bhth." " Like the infant Achilles," says the French historian Lanfrey, " he had been dipped in the Styx." Such experiences in childhood made him prematurely serious, and his favorite reading was of heroes and battles. " Caesar's Commentaries" and " Plutarch's Lives" were his con- stant companions in leisure hours. When a mere boy he brooded over the troubles of Corsica, and became misanthropic. " How depraved men are !" he ex- claims at the age of sixteen; "what cowardly, cring- ing wretches they are ! What a spectacle my country presents ! The trembling inhabitants clasp the hand that oppresses them. They are no longer the brave Corsicans whom a hero inspired with his love of virtue and Ms hatred of tyranny, of luxury, of base cour- tiers. . . . Frenchmen, not satisfied with depriving us of all we most prize, you have also corrupted our manners. . . . Life is a burden to me, for I enter into none of its pleasures, and everything is a toil, because the men -with whom I live, and probably shall always 74 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. have to live, liave tastes which differ as miich from mine as the light of the moon does from that of the sun. I cannot live in such a manner as alone would make existence endurable, so I am full of disgust for everything." Here, surely, we have premonitions of that "vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other side !" But Napoleon's master principle through life was self-interest, and although he is reported when a boy even at the school at Brienne to have denounced his father before his school-fellows for submitting to the French conquerors of Corsica, and to have lauded Paoli to the skies, yet when Paoli asked for his services against the French at a later day he refused them, and enlisted under the French com- mander, knowing that this was then the winning side. We have seen Xapoleon compared, for his early baptism in conflict, with Achilles dipped as an infant in the Styx, according to fable. The reference to Achilles recalls to mind the tradition that when Napo- leon was born the only covering of his mother was' a tapestry on which the heroes of Homer s " Iliad " Avere depicted. This seems prophetic and appropriate at the birth of a hero who was one day to be a second Charlemagne and master of half of Europe. Accord- ing to Humboldt, when the population of all Europe was one hundi^ed and eighty- two millions, Napoleon had eighty-five millions under his domination : his control extended over nineteen degrees of latitude and thuty of longitude. He was able to make kings of his brothers, but his mother showed her prudence and foresight when, on being asked why she was so econo- mical and saving in the midst of imperial affluence and THE SUMMER HOME. 75 splendor, she humbly answered, " Who knows but that some day these kings may have to come to me for bread?" Sir Walter Scott has left a descrix)tion of the summer resort of Madame Charles Bonajparte and her children, which seems to have been a peaceful retreat for them. " Going along the seashore. from Ajaccio toward the Isle Sanguiniere, about a mile from the town, occur two stone pillars, the remains of a doorway leading up to a dilapidated villa, once the residence of Madame Bonaparte's half-brother on the mother's side, whom Xapoleon created Cardinal Fesch. The house is ap- proached by an avenue surrounded and overhung by the cactus and other shrubs, which luxuriate in a Avarm climate. It has a garden and a lawn, showing, amid neglect, vestiges of their former beauty, and the house is surrounded by shrubberies now permitted to run to \vildness. This was the summer residence of Madame Bonaioarte and her family. Almost inclosed by the wild olive, the cactus, the clematis, and the almond tree, is a very singular and isolated granite rock, called Xapoleon's Grotto, which seems to have resisted the decomposition which has taken place around. The remains of a small summer-house are visible beneath the rock, the entrance to which is near- ly closed by a luxuriant fig-tree. This was Bonaparte's frequent retreat, when the vacations of the school at which he studied permitted him to visit home. How the imagination labors to form an idea of the visions which in this sequestered and romantic spot must have arisen before the eyes of the hero of a hundred battles !" They were to be rudely driven from this retreat as 76 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. well as from Corsica. In 1793, when Charles Bona- parte had been eight years dead of the painful disease which was to kill Napoleon at St. Helena (cancer of the stomach), disturbances rent the island. The Bona- parte family adhered to the French, but Paoli, who had returned from his previous exile, wished to sur- render Corsica to the English. Several thousand peas- ants made a descent from the mountains on Ajaccio. The house of Madame Bonaparte was pillaged, and the flocks and vineyards destroyed. Napoleon, who Avas on a visit from France to his mother, as well as his brothers Josei)h and Lucien, were subjected to a decree of banishment from their native Corsica. Under the protection of these three sons, Letitia Bonaparte set sail with Jerome, as yet a chUd, and her three daughters for Italy. They settled for a time at Nice, but afterward removed to Marseilles, where they suffered the severest privations. The events of the 18th Brumaire, the 9th of Novem- ber, 1799, when Napoleon by military force put an end to the Directory and became First Consul, which in fact meant Dictator or President of France, are famil- iar to all students of modern history. Six years had now elapsed since Madame Bonaparte and her children had quitted Corsica. She was now to be raised from privation and to participate in the elevation of her son. " Upon the first flush of good fortune,"" says Madame Junot, as the Duchess d'Abrantes then was, " Napo- leon, whose attachment to his mother Avas ever con- spicuous, did not fail to assign a portion of his gains to the use of Madame Letitia, wlio thus found herself raised on a sudden from a state of comi)arative in- MADAME MERE INDIGNANT. 77 digence to one of ease and comfort. Shortly after the Revolution of 1799, by which Napoleon was placed at the head of the consular government, Madame Bona- parte removed with her children to Paris, where she lived in tlie most retired manner, nor was it until 1804, Avhen her son was proclaimed Emperor, that j^ublic attention Avas directed toward her. She then received the title of Madame Mere, and had an income of a million francs settled upon her, and in order to invest her with a position of political importance, she was made Protectrice Generale of a]l the charitable insti- tutions of France — an office well befitting the mother of the sovereign. Napoleon used to say of her that she had the head of a man on the shoulders of a woman, and 'on many occasions she showed her resolute spirit and a proud consciousness of what was due to her as his mother. Shortly after he became Emperor, he happened to meet her in the gardens of St. Cloud, and half in jest, half seriously, he offered her his hand to kiss. She flung it from her with indignation, and exclaimed in the presence of his officers, " It is vour duty to kiss the hand of her who gave you life !" She never forgot for a moment the bitter experience of the past, and even her parsimonious habits resulted from the apprehension of future reverses to her familv. "Madame Mere," says the wife of Marshal Junot, afterward created Duke d'Abrantes, "had often talked over these events before, but the recital never interested me so powerfully as on the 8th of November, when the space of six years had rendered so different the situation of those very children whom she, a lone, feeble woman, had been forced to hurry away beyond 78 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. the reach of the proscription, carrying the yonngest in her arms, when overcome with fatigiie they could no longer walk, and ultimately embarking with them in a frail vessel and landing on a shore which increased their dangers. In recording this period of her life, the looks of Madame" Bonaparte were as beautiful as her language was eloquent." Again : " The Revolution of the 8th was completed, and Paris was no longer agi- tated. We went to see Madame Letitia Bonaparte, who then lived with Joseph. She appeared calm, though far from being at ease, for her extreme paleness and the convulsive movements she evinced whenever an unexpected noise met her ear, gave her features a ghastly air. In these moments she appeared to me truly like the mother of the Gracchi. And her situa- tion added force to the idea ! She had j)erhaps more at stake than that famous Roman matron."' Whatever her faults of character, and she could scarcely have been the mother of Xajjoleon if she had not possessed some of those imperfections which were conspicuous in him, she was thoroughly devoted to the interest of her sons. When all of them except Lucien were kings, she was unceasing in her solicita- tions to the Emj)eror on his behalf. And when he told her that she loved Lucien more than she did the rest of the family, she nobly answered, " The cliild of whom I am the most fond is always the one who happens to be the most unfortunate." She seems on some occasions to have had more prudence and fore- sight than her son. " On being informed by Josephine of the arrest of the Duke d'Enghien, she flew to the Tuileries, where she made use of all the authority over NAPOLEON'S EARLY LOVES. 79 the First Consul which a mother might be supposed to possess, and even threw herself on her knees, implor- ing mercy for the unfortunate prince. She was highly dissatisfied with Napoleon's treatment of the Pope at Fontainebleau, and would say to her brother, Cardinal Fesch, " Your nephew, by i^ursuing this course, will ruin himself and us too. He should stop where he is : by grasping too much he will lose all. I have my alarms for the whole family, and think it right to provide against a rainy day !" When First Consul, and still more when Emj)eror, Napoleon not only provided his mother liberally with money, as we have seen, but he apjDointed some of the chief beauties of his court to be ladies of her house- hold. As is well known, he did not marry his first love, nor his second, nor his third. The first object of his vehement affection was a beautiful girl of sixteen, Mademoiselle de Colombier. When Maret, who was Secretary of State when Xapoleon was First Consul, asked him what came of his attachment, he answered that nothing came of it, because he was at the time only a lieutenant of artillery, and the Revolution breaking out, he was sent to another garrison. '* ^V^e swore eternal fidelity, but the impossibility of corre- sponding hopelessly separated us.'' He saw her again twenty years afterward, when she had long been the wife of M. de Bressieux. He was astonished at the rav- ages which time had made on her good looks. He gave her husband a lucrative office, and made his first love a lady companion in the household of his mother. She succeeded Madame de St. Peon in this api3ointment. Madame de Fontanges was the inseparable attendant 80 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. of Madame Mere. At tlie first grand fete given by Napoleon after his marriage with Josephine de Beau- harnais, his mother entered next to his wife, and wore " a white velvet bonnet trimmed with nacarat feathers, a robe of cherry-colored satin, bordered by deep black blonde. Her ornaments were antique cameos and engraved shells." K'apoleon's second love was Made- moiselle Eugenie Desiree Clary. His third love affair was the most remarkable, and justifies the remark of Alison, in his " History of Europe" : " Never did such destinies depend upon the decision or caprice of the moment. Madame de Permon, a lady of rank and singular attractions from Corsica, in whose family Napoleon had from infancy been intimate, and whose daughter afterward became Duchess d'Abrantes, re- fused in one morning the hand of Napoleon for her- self, that of his brother Jerome for her daughter, and that of his sister Pauline for her son. She little thought that she was declining for herself the throne of Charlemagne, for her daughter that of Charles V., and for her son the most beautiful princess in Euroi)e I" Alison inadvertently wrote Joseph for Jerome. ^A"e have corrected the error, for Joseph was already mar- ried to Mademoiselle Clary, the sister of Napoleon's second love. Napoleon's motive in proposing to Madame de Per- mon, his third attraction, was probably the hope that the union of her family name of Comnenus with that of Calomeros, the ancestor of the Bonapartes, would guarantee him speedy promotion. It was an extraordi- nary offer, however, considering she was eighteen years his senior, and had been the contemporaneous if not PROPOSING TO MADAME DE PERMON. 81 rival beauty of his own mother in Corsica. The story is thus told in Goodrich's "Court of Napoleon": " On the 8th of October, 1795, Madame de Permon, a lady of Corsican buth and of Greek descent, became a widow. She was exactly the age of Napoleon's mother, and that lady and herself — Letitia Ramolini and Panoria Comnenus — had been in their youth the beauties of Ajaccio. Their attractions, however, were of so opposite a nature that jealousy never occurred to them, and their friendship endured through life. Mile. Panoria married M. de Permon, and Mile. Letitia married Charles Bonaparte. Madame de Per- mon, herself the mother of a family, often carried her playmate's second son. Napoleon, in her arms, and even danced him on her knees. When, therefore, she became a widow, at the age of fortj^-four, Napoleon being but a few months over twenty-six, she was certainly justified in expressing astonishment at, and in treating with levity, a proposition which the young officer one day made to her. " She was in deep mourning, and lived in absolute retirement. Her physician having advised her, how- ever, to allow herself some recreation, she consented to an incognito attendance at the opera for a short season. Napoleon, who was a constant visitor at her house, profited by the opportunities thus presented, and passed every evening in the society of the widow, A few days afterward he proposed to her an alliance, which should forever unite the two families. ' It is,' added he, ' between my sister Pauline and your son Albert. Albert has some fortune ; my sister has noth- ing ; but I am in a condition to obtain much for those 82 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. who are related to me, and I can get a good office for her husband. The alliance would make me happy. You know what a pretty girl my sister is. My mother is your friend. Come, say yes, and the matter shall be settled.' " Madame de Permon replied that she could not answer for her son, and that she should not influence his decision. Napoleon then projiosed another match between his brother Jerome and Madame de Permon' s dauG:hter, Mile. Laura. ' Whv, Jerome is younger than Laurette,' said the widow, laughing. ' Indeed, Napoleon, you are playing the high friend to-day and marrying everybody, even children.' Napoleon then confessed that that morning a marriage breeze had blown over him, and that he had a third union to pro- pose — an alliance between her and himself, as soon as etiquette and regard to propriety would permit it. '* Madame de Permon was at first annoyed, and then amused. She burst into a hearty laugh, at which the petitioner was sorely vexed. ' My dear Napoleon, let us talk seriously. You fancy you are acquainted with my age ; the truth is, you know nothing about it. I shall not tell it you, for it is one of my little weaknesses. I shall merely say that I am old enough to be your mother, . . Spare me this kind of joke ; it distresses me, coming from you.' Napoleon answered her that he was serious ; that the age of the woman whom he should marry would be indifferent to him, provided, like herself, she did not appear to be past thirty ; that he had maturely considered the proposal he had made ; that he wished to marry, and that the idea he had suggested suited him in every respect. IN EXILE AT ELBA. 83 At any rate, lie asked her to think of it. She gave him her hand, and said that her pretensions did not asi)ire to conquer the heart of a young man of twenty- six, and that slie hojDed their friendship would not be interrupted by this incident." None of the i^roposed marriages came to pass. Madame de Permon soon afterward had a quarrel with Napoleon, and they did not meet again until he had become the husband of Josephine. It was singular, however, and exhibits the strangeness of his caprices, that he should wish to marry the playmate and equal in age of his mother. In the summer of 1814, when Napoleon was an exile at Elba, his mother, accompanied by his sister Pauline, went there to cheer him, in his fallen fortunes, by their company. When he was at his last j)lace of exile, St. Helena, the mother wrote affectionately to him, and expressed her desire and intention of joining him. It was his mother who sent the physician and confessor to him at St. Helena, fearing that the English physicians w^ould feel li ttle interest in his recovery from his long and painful malady. The nature of the malady was not known until after his death. In his will, dated the loth of Ai)ril, 1821, at Longwood, Island of St. Helena, he says, in Section 7, "I thank my good and most excellent mother, the Cardinal" (his mother's half-brother, Cardinal Fesch), " my brothers Joseph, Lucien, and Jerome ; Julie, Hortense, Caroline, Eugene, for the interest they have continued to feel for me. I pardon Louis for the libel he published in 1820 ; it is replete \\ith false assertions and falsified documents." He left his silver night-lamp to his mother ; if he did 84 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEOX. not leave lier money it was because she had already an abundance for all her wants. The physician whom his mother had sent him from France, F. Antomarchi, records in his journal that after the Emperor's death he sailed to England, and on arriving in London wrote at once to Madame Mere to inform her of his return. He had taken a j)laster cast of ISTax^oleon' s face, and presented a copy to Madame Mere. He saw both her and Pauline. The mother's emotion, he tells us, was even greater than the sister's on learning that Najjoleon was dead. He dared* not describe his terrible suffer- ings. " I was obliged to use the greatest caution, and only to relate to her part of what I had witnessed. At a second visit she was more calm and resigned. I entered into several details, which were frequently interrupted by the jDaroxysms of her grief. But if I suspended my recital, that afflicted mother dried up her tears, and recommenced her questions. It was a struggle between courage and affliction which x)re- sented a most heart-rending spectacle. I saw her a third time, when she expressed herself in terms of the utmost kindness toward me, and as a proof of her satisfaction offered me a diamond, whicli, coming as it does from the mother of the Emperor, shall never leave me." The same skilful physician who had watclied and tended so earnestly the last lingering illness of Xapo- leon, tells us that after his death " he felt a curiosity to examine the head of this great man, according to the craniological system of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim," and that the following was its conspicuous character- istics : A MOTHER'S DEVOTION. 85 1. Oracan of Dissimulation. 2. Organ of Conquest. 3. Organ of Kindness and Benevolence. 4. Organ of Imagination. 5. Organ of Ambition and Love of Glorv. Of tlie class of intellectual faculties he found : 1. The Organ of Individuality, or knowledge of individuals and things. 2. Organ of Locality — of the relation of space. 3. Orsan of Calculation. 4. Organ of Comparison. o. Organ of Causality— of the faculty of indirection — of a philosophical head. As the features and eyes of Napoleon were like his mother's, so no doubt were the mental and moral char- acteristics of the mother and the son alike. The force of will and the ambition to conquer obstacles are seen in the mother as in the son. Before she dreamed that he w^as destined to die in his island prison in the prime of manhood, his mother made every effort to console him by her letters from Rome, where she resided ev^er since his escape from Elba, and offered him all that she i:)ossessed. " For me," he said gratefully, looking back on earlier days, , '' my mother would without a murmur have doomed herself to live on bro^vn bread. Loftiness of sentiment still reigned iDaramount in her breast ; pride and noble ambition were not yet subdued by avarice." The Duchess d' Abrantes adds : " Of all that Napo- leon had said at St. Helena respecting his mother, Count Las Casas, on his return to Europe, witnessed the literal fulfilment. No sooner had he detailed the 86 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. story of the ex-Emperor\s situation, than the answer returned by the. courier was, that her Avhole fortune was at her son's disposal. In October, 1818, she ad- dressed an affecting appeal to the allied sov^ereigns assembled at Aix la Chapelle, on his behalf : " Sirs,"' said she, " I am a mother, and my son's life is dearer to me than my own. In the name of Him whose essence is goodness, and of whom your Imperial and Royal Majesties are the image, I entreat you to put a period to his misery, and to restore him to liberty. For this I im^Dlore Grod, and I implore you who are His vicegerents on earth. Reasons of state have their limits, and posterity, which gives immortality, adores above all things the generosity of conquerors." The domestic relations of Napoleon made his mother's part toward her two daughters-in-law and the several members of her own family not a little difficult. The daughter of her early friend and con- temporary, and of her son's thii'd love, Madame de Permon, the beautiful and talented wife of Marshal Junot, the Duchess d' Abrantes, who is the most reliable authority about the family of the Bonapartes, says : " Madame Mere was very reserved in attending to the Empress Maria Louisa ; she observed the same rule with respect to her second daughter-in-law as she had observed toward her first : that is to say, she seldom spoke of her, and was always anxious to establish friendly feelings among her numerous children. In her relations with the latter, Madame Mere admii'ably maintained the dignity of her own position. During the first few months of her marriage, the new Empress seemed to imagine that the only individuals of the Im- MARIA LOUISA AND LETITIA. 87 13erial family worthy of her attention were Xapoleon and the Qneen of Naples. Madame Mere, whose ex- cellent nnderstanding pointed out to her the impro- priety of creating any discord through complaints, which after all must be unavailing, determined to de- pend on herself alone for securing the respect of her young daughter-in-law. One day Maria Louisa went to visit Naj^oleon's mother. 'Madame,' said she, 'I have come to dine with you. But I do not come as the Empress — ^I wish merely to pay a friendly visit to you.' Madame, drawing Maria Louisa toward her and kissing her forehead, replied, ' I shall treat you with no ceremony. I shall receive you as my daughter, and the Emperor' s wife shall have the dinner of the Emperor's mother.' The Empress Josephine was less attentive than Maria Louisa to Madame Mere, and in this she was ill advised. The Emperor did not exter- nally show his mother much attention, but he was always deeply offended when he heard that any one had slighted her." We find a discrepancy in the age assigned to the mother of Napoleon at the time of her death. Mrs. Ellis states -that she lived to nearly eighty years of age, but William Hazlitt, in his extensive and able " Life of Napoleon, ' ' says that she was eighty-six years old when she died at Rome, on the 26th of April, 1836. An acci- dent which she sustained in 1830, while walking in her garden, made the last years of her life very painful. In forming a candid judgment of the character of Letitia Bonaparte, v/e must remember that her charac- ter was, no doubt, largely influenced by the checkered and eventful fortunes of her life. Had she not been 88 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. driven from lier native Corsica, the tenor of her thoughts and deeds would have differed widely from what the necessities of exile, the early loss of her husband, the adventurous career of her second son, involving the extremes of fortune to all the members of her family, actually made them. It is neither just nor possible to separate the character of an individual from his or her surroundings. Napoleon himself has been accused of cruelty and a total indifference to human life, yet his physician credits him with natural kindness and benevolence. His mother has been charged with miserliness in her later years, not only by historians, but by the son who always cherished gratitude and affection for her. But what can be more likely to create a dread of spending money than a life passed in alternations of splendor and obscurity ; the mother of the greatest ruler since Charlemagne one day, and of an imprisoned and dethroned exile the next. As she herself said, she prepared herself for rainy days, and they too surely came, with torrents of disaster and misfortune. She had been the belle of Corsica in her giiihood, and she lived to see her daughters, especially the naughtiest of them, Pauline, the most beautiful princess in Europe. If she did not reprove their frivolities and intrigues with a strong dis- approval of a Christian mother, we must remember the universal laxity of French morals, and especially of the Court in the days in which she liv^ed. If the Court of Louis XVI. was immoral and dissolute, that of Napoleon was no better. She had to tolerate what she did not approve, but she herself showed always a con- tempt for sensuality. Her indomitable spirit rose NAPOLEON'S LAST DAYS. 89 buoyantly above the waves of adverse fortune ; she had shared the perils of her husband in Corsica, and she was ready to share those of the son whom she had given birth to amid the joerils of flight and revolution. That son's estimate of her is certainly impartial, for aflfection never prejudiced his keen judgment of those nearest to him. We must therefore accept as ab- solutely true his statement that his mother, alone and unaided, protected and supported her eight children when they were left without a father and without a country. He might well praise her unselfishness, her devotion, her maternal fidelity and affection. Had he listened to her counsel and been warned in time by her, that by grasping at too much he imperilled all, he might have reigned securely over the people that worshipped him, have kept the peace with other powers, and in a larger and happier life have remained " tete d'armee'' — his dying Avords — instead of sacrific- ing that army to his insatiate thirst for power. He had loved to read the life of Alexander the Great when a child, and he remembered Alexander in lamenting that there were no more Avorlds for him to conquer. To become master of all Europe he sacrificed an im- perial sovereignty of France, which had not only a magnificent army to defend it, but which had taken deep root in the affections of the people. The mother of the Emperor, discrowned and exiled and in a few years dead, might well seek a refuge, in the evening of her days, in Rome, the Eternal City, where, more than in any other city in the world, her mind and memory could reflect on the evanescence of earthly empires, the vanity of human wishes, and the 90 THE MOTHER OF NAPOLEON. futility of merely secular ambition. Here, no doubt, the consolations of religion would remind her of a city still more eternal — "City glorious, a great and distant City, A mansion incorruptible" —whose palaces are grander than the Tuileries, where crowns can never perish, and where no disturbance can have place. There, in the requiem of death, she has slept for forty-seven years, under the shadow of those imperial Csesars with whom her son was worthy of compare. MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Those not familiar with ecclesiastical biography may need to be reminded that there were two St. Au- gnstines who have left illustrious records in the an- nals of Christianity. One of them was the monk, who with forty of his comrades was sent by Pope Gregory the Great to Christianize Britain, and who, landing on the coast of Kent, became the first Archbishop of Can- terbury. The marble chair which is still seen in Can- terbury Cathedral, and which is used at the enthrone- ment of each successive Primate of all England, has the traditional prestige of having been the identical throne of the first bishop of the Anglo-Saxons. But the other and greater St. Augustine, who became after his conversion first a priest and then Bishop of Hippo in Africa, is he whose mother has left an example of encouragement and benediction to the Christian mothers of all time. It is of her that we would now speak with the pen of truthful delineation. But as her name has become famous chiefly through the surpass- ing greatness of her son, and as that son became great chiefly through her incessant and at length successful efforts to \vin him from ' ' the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life," it is impossible to separate the two or not to think of Monica when we recall Augustine, or to eulogize Augustine without con- fessing the blessed influence of Monica. Even secular historians cannot write the history of 92 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Western civilization without frequent reference to the great Fatlier of the Latin Church. For although the episcopal labors of St. Augustine were located in Af- rica, his writings were in the Latin tongue, his mission came from Rome, the seat of Latin Christianity, and his influence was one of the great forces of Western civili- zation in Europe. To his acute mind is due that subtle system of philosophic theology which Calvin and other theologians subsequently developed, for his deep musings were largely occupied with fate, free- will, and those profound problems relating to pre- destination which have since been known by his name. His " City of God," his sermons, his "Confessions," and his commentaries on the Scriptures are among the noblest classics of the Christian Church. Human nature is everywhere the same, and so also is divine grace and truth. But the circumstances of individuals vary according to the times they live in and the persons, scenes, and influences that surround them. St. Augustine was born under very different auspices from those of the Christians in the nineteenth century. Although Christianity had a large titular domain in the fourth century, and the Roman emperors were nomi- nally Christians, yet the dissensions of Christians as to doctrine were so great and their morals were so largely impregnated with heathenism, that when the third cen- tury closed it seemed as if the salt of Christ's Evangel had lost its savor and the light and sweetness of Jesus had deserted his professed disciples. A wholesale relapse into paganism seemed imminent until St. Au- gustine lifted up the cross anew, and "the plague was stayed." THE HUSBAND OF MONICA. 01^ It is from his own "Confessions," a work that has been translated again and again into all the languages of Europe, that w^e must gather the chief characteristics both of his mother and himself. His temptations were those of sensuality in its most subtle form of co- alescence with intellectual activity, a sceptical imagina- tion, and a thirst for knowledge. His father, Patricius, was a heathen until within a few years of his death, which occurred when St. Augustine was a lad of seven- teen. There are instances of the marriage of Jew and Christian, of Christian and Turk, of Roman Catholic and Protestant, and even of white and black, in our own day, but Monica reluctantly, and from a sense of filial obedience, gave her hand to the heathen freeman Patricius. He was a native of the ancient Roman city of Tagaste, not far from the ancient battle-field of Zama, famous for the decisive victory by which the third of the Scipios, who had fought with honor in the Punic w^ars, put an end to them, and became henceforth known as Scipio Africanus. This was some six centuries, however, before the days when the Roman lady Faconda gave birth to Monica, the mother of Augustine, in the same year that a great Father of the Church, St. Jerome, was born at Stridon, in Dalmatia. Many great saints were rising at this time in difierent parts of Christen- dom to fight the good fight of faith against the pagan and the infidel, as well as the heretic and schismatic. The galaxy includes such stars as Gregory Nazian- zen, Gregory of Nyssa, Hilary of Poictiers, and Martin of Tours. The Church was emerging from the catacombs, and Sylvester occupied the See of 94 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. Rome. Atlianasius, so well known for his battles with Arius, was bishop of Alexandria. Monica's birth took place in 332, and she was bred in the Catholic or orthodox faith, to which her parents had steadily adhered, althongh their native town was almost given over to the Danatists. They were per- sons of genteel poverty, who kept up appearances and a retinue of servants upon a scanty exchequer. One of these servants had nursed the father of Monica in his infancy, and had obtained great authority in the house- hold. She was a strict but judicious monitor to the future mother of St. Augustine, and it was through her restraining influence that Monica, after her marriage with Patricius, was enabled to live peaceably with her mother-in-law, who, at first, did all she could to preju- dice the pagan husband against his nnofifending Chris- tian wife. Monica returned good for evil, and when her mother-in-law and the servants wliispered against her "she so overcame, by observance, and persevering endurance and meekness, that in the end these whis" pering tongues were silenced," and the wife and mother of Patricius lived together " with a remarkable sweetness of mutual kindness." It is her illustrious son who tells ns this, and who exclaims, "Such was she, Thyself, O God, her most inward instructor, teaching her in the school of the heart. Finally, her own husband, toward the end of his earthly life, did she gain unto Thee. She was also the servant of Thy servants. Whomsoever of them knew her did, in her, much praise and honor Thee ; for that, through the witness of the fruits of a hol}'^ con versation, they perceived Thy presence in her heart." ST. AUGUSTINE AT SCHOOL. 95 We hear much in our own time of the dangers and temptations of a college life. Undoubtedly, if a youth be naturally inclined to low pleasures and intellectual dissipation, he will find plenty of opportunity when he is away from home and among unformed characters of his own age. Carthage, which was now a part of the Roman Empire, was the seat of the best learning of the time, and thither St. Augustine was sent, in the year 371. Here he studied rhetoric, heathen literature, and philosophy. The "Hortensius" of Cicero seems to have kindled in his mind a higher ambition than it had been familiar with. The Scriptures appeared to him trivial when compared with the heathen classics, and especially with Cicero. His " swelling pride," he tells us, " shrank from their lowliness." Augustine re- mained at Carthage until his nineteenth year, at Monica's expense, his father having died two years before. It was a great consolation to Monica that her hus- band had become a Christian before his death, and that the last few years of their union had been peace- ful and affectionate. It had not always been so. Pa- tricius was a man of violent temper, who had abused, though he did not beat her, had impeded her relig- ious doctrines, mocked at her high standard of virtue, and when the sorrow- stricken Monica learned that her son Augustine, long given to immoralit}^, had be- come the father of an illegitimate child, Patricius only laughed as though his sowing of wild oats were a mat- ter of course. Tennyson has said, as other poets had said before him, 96 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. " That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things." St. Augustine, after his conversion, was an illustra- tion of this. He never speaks of his illegitimate off- spring in his "Confessions" except as " the fruit of his sin." "I had but one dream at that time," he says, " to love and to be loved." This son, whom he called Adeodatus, the Latin equivalent of the Greek Theodoras, was present at Monica' s death, and made great lamentations for her. At the time of his father' s conversion this son was fifteen years of age. Augus- tine describes him as "most excellently made, though born in sin, and of rare wit and talents, surpassing those of many learned men." There is true pathos in the fact that the penitent convert, when seeking baptism, joined his son with himself and his friend and fellow-convert, Alypius, as "our contemporary in grace." The youth whose talents " struck awe" into his father's soul died soon after, and Augustine sadly says, " I remember him without anxiety, fearing noth- ing now for his childhood, his youth, or his whole life." The sin of his youth, his dead self, thus be- came, on his conversion, a stepping-stone to higher things, and an earthly love was transformed into a heavenly. For the mother of this boy Augustine entertained a sincere affection, although tlieir relations, which con- tinued for fifteen years, were unlawful. One is re- minded of Abelard and Eloise, at a later date, on learning that the mistress entered a convent when her lover bi^carae a Christian, and then a "[iriest and a MOTHER AND SON. 97 bisliop. Like Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, accord- ing to Voltaire, Augustine forswore the company of women henceforward, and would not even allow his sister to keep house for him after his ordination. Among those whom Monica interested in the men- tal and moral struggles of her son was a venerable bishop who bade her leave Augustine alone in his Manichseism, and trust to prayers and time for the longed-for change, and who cheered her with the words, " It cannot be that the son of such tears should perish." But the person who, next to herself, had most to do with his conversion was the great St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. It was at Milan that his baptism took place, the saintly bishop officiating, and there is a beautiful tradition that as the heavenly light shone upon their faces, the bishop and the neophyte sang in alternate verses and by divine inspiration the grand *'Te Deum," which is the most glorious of Christian hymns. But before this happy change was consummated there was a hard period of sorrow and probation both for the mother and the son. A gifted American bishop, Arthur Cleveland Coxe, of Western New York, has lately told us that it is a shallow philos- ophy which pretends to deny and disregard the fore • shadowing of dreams. Monica believed in dreams, as every one who believes the Bible must to a certain extent and under reasonable limitations. On one occasion, while she slept, there appeared to her a youth of shining aspect, who liad, as it were, the face of an angel, and who whispered words of hope and consolation to her regarding the future conversion of 98 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. her son. Slie herself seemed to be standing safely upon a bridge, which no storm could shake or waters of destruction reach. The radiant messenger assured her that "where she was there should her son be also." She awoke, and beheld Augustine standing at her side. Through the long years of waiting that were yet to come she drew comfort from the recollec- tion of this vision, and pondered it in her heart. Slowly and silently the change was wrought. Au- gustine had a dear friend, Nebridius. In his '.' Con- fessions" he thus speaks of him, addressing, as is his wont, "the Father of light and God of mercy." ' ' I had made one friend, only too dear to me from a community of pursuits, and, like myself, in the fresh opening flower of youth. I had warped him to those superstitions and ]3ernicious fables for which my mother bewailed me. With me he now erred in mind, nor could my soul be without him. But behold ! Thou wert close ujDon the steps of Thy fugitives. Thou- tookst that man out of this life, when he had scarcely filled up one whole year of my friendship — sweet to me, above all sweetness of that my life." Nebridius was taken sick of a fever, and lay unconscious and nigh unto death. " In this state he was baptized, unknowing ; myself, meanwhile, little regarding, and presuming that his soul would retain rather what it received from me, than w^hat was wrought during his unconsciousness. But it proved far otherwise, for he was refreshed and restored. Forthwith, as soon as I could speak to him — and that was as soon as he was able, for I never left him, and we hung but too much upon each other — I essayed to jest MONICA'S LONG JOURNEY. 99 with him, as tliough he would jest v/ith me, at that baptism which he now understood that he had received. But he so shrunk from me as from an enemy ; and with a wonderful and sudden freedom, bade me, as I would continue his friend, to forbear such language to him. I, all astonished and amazed, suppressed my emotions until he should grow well enough for me to deal with him as I would. But he was taken away from my madness. A few days after, in my absence, he was attacked again with fever, and so departed." Augustine sorrowed long and bitterly for the loss of his "one friend." They had fulhlled Cicero's condition of friendship, in having the same tastes and the same aversions. "This it is," adds Augustine, "that is loved in friends. Hence that mourning if one die, and darkenings of sorrow ; that steeping of the heart in tears, all sweetness being turned into bitterness." Augustine at this time was occupied with the study of the beautiful, and, like Edmund Burke, wrote a Ijook upon the subject. He dedicated it to a famous orator in Rome, and to Rome he himself set out from Car- thage. He caught a sickness on his arrival, and while sick studied the Scriptures with more attention. From Rome he set out for ]SIilan, where he had received an ax)pointment as teacher of rhetoric. Augustine was now thirty years old ; it was the year 385. Monica had for some time been kept anxious by the despondent tone of Augustine's letters, and at last she resolved, at all hazards, to rejoin him at Rome. In those days the journey was a difficult one, especially for a Avoman. She was at this time residing at her native place, Tagaste. To meet the expenses of the 100 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. jonrney she had to sell her valuables. But she made her way to Carthage, from which her son had sailed two years before while she was waiting on the shore, and embarked. Hardly had the vessel sailed when a violent storm set in. The hearts of all on board sank with ap- prehension, and even the captain and sailors gave up all hope. But the faith which had enabled St. Paul to tranquillize a shij^'s company when he too was travel- ling Romeward, inspired poor Monica with courage. She cheered the sailors and restored their courage. She told them that though the waves of the sea were mighty and raged horribly, the Lord who ruled them was mighty and could still their raging. And so it was. They reached Civita Yecchia, and Monica hastened on to Eome, only to find that her son had left for Milan. The latter city is two hundred leagues from Rome, and to reach it one must cross the Apennines. This did not scare her. The mountain passes had no more terrors for her than the stormy sea. So, after one day's rest, she set out for Milan, where the long desire of her soul was to be accomplished, and her son, after all his wanderings in the far country of sin and unbe- lief, was to be converted by the preaching of St. Ambrose, " whom,'' said Monica, " I shall ever think of as an angel of God," and receiving baptism in the spirit of a little child was to learn the eternal strain, " Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ." Except St. Paul, Christianity had never gained a greater convert than St. Augustine, so far as intellect was concerned. Augustine stayed the sceptic process that was fast destroying the life of the Western Church. His marvellous gifts were transferred at once from the ST. AUGUSTINE AND HIS MOTHER. PLEASURES OF THE SENSES. 103 school of lieatlienism to the scliool of Christ ; from the vain babbling of false jjliilosophy to the service of ab- solute truth. His natural characteristics became sanc- tified and consecrated to higher uses. The eye that was so keen to note things bea,Litiful in books and nature now saw the beauty of the City of God. "There remains," he says, "the pleasures of these eyes of my flesh, on which to make my confessions, and so to conclude the temptations of the lusts of the flesh, which yet assail me, groaning earnestly, and de- sii'ing to be clothed upon with my home from heaven. The eves love fair and varied forms, and soft and bright colors. And these afl'ect me, waking, the whole day ; nor is any rest given me from them, as there is from musical, sometimes in silence from all voices. For this queen of colors, the light, bathing all which" we behold, wherever I am through the day, gliding by me in varied forms, soothes me when engaged in other things, and not observing ; and so strongly doth it entwine itself, that, if it be suddenly withdrawn, it is with longing sought for, and, if absent long, saddeneth the mind." The pleasures of the senses, however exciting for the moment, failed to satisfy, and so also did the specula- tions of the mind. "I sought," he says, "for pleasures, sublimities, truths, and fell headlong into sorrows, confusions, errors." His was a mind that could argue on the subtlest points. Deep were his thoughts while yet a youth, and they grew deeper still when he discovered that God has created the soul and reason of man for His own abode, and that happiness and contentment can be found in Him alone. To this 104 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. day, when men discuss such mysterious matters as time and eternity, one does not often hear a profounder answer than one that St. Augustine gave. ' ' ' Aslv 7ne what time is, I cannot tell ; don't ask me, and I know." What a confession is here of the inadequacy of logic and language to define the highest thoughts ! The mental troubles and intellectual conflicts which Augustine j^assed through were only exceeded by his moral and sensual sufferings. He had too great a soul to be happy in sin. The unseen world was too vivid to his imagination for him to be able to forget or ignore it. He tasted, in the full bitterness of a proud and rebellious spirit, the powers of the world to come. What must have been the anguish of a soul whose prayer each day was, ' ' Convert me. Lord ; convert me, but not to-day. Save me, but not yet." Thus did he pass from youth to manhood, " still greedy," as he says, of enjoying present things, which passed away and wasted his soul ; while he said to himself, " To- morrow I shall find it." The angel wdio wrestled in prayer for him and shed such tears of anguish was his mother, Monica. His " Confessions" are full of the most grateful acknowl- edgments to God for what she had wrought for him. "Thy faithful one," he says, "weeping to Thee for me, more than mothers weep the bodily death of their children ; for she discovered the death wherein I lay, and Thou didst not despise her tears when, streaming down, they watered the ground in every place where she prayed." To this long-suffering mother, who saw at length 3f the travail of her soul and was satisfied, as well as to her son after his conversion, might be applied AFTER SEVE.XTEEX YEARS. 105 surely the pathetic words of the Psalmist : " He who now goeth on Ms way weeping and beareth forth good seed shall surely come again with joy and bring his sheaves with him." When at last he tells her that the hour long desired has come, and that he has chosen Christ forever, she does not doubt him, but as he says, " She triumphs and blesses God." " Like the widow of Nain," exclaims St. Augustine in his "Confessions," " she followed the bier of her son until the i)oignancy of her grief obtained from God the answer, ' I say unto Thee, arise ! ' " It was not, however, until after seventeen years of anxious wandering and doubt that this voice of his enfranchisement was heard. The im- mediate circumstances are worth narrating. An old friend from Africa named Pontitianus, one of " them that were of Caesar's household," being a military officer of the imperial court, but a fervent Christian, paid Augustine and his mother and his friend Alypius a visit at Milan. The old soldier of Christ and of Caesar had travelled much in Gaul, in Spain, in Italy, and in Egypt, and his talk was much upon religious houses which had taken rise from St. Antony, in Alexandria, and had spread to Africa. Augustine listened eagerly as the old man narrated that, while the Emperor was at the circus, he had gone with three or four friends to walk in some gardens near the town. On theu' road two of them went into a hermit's cell and found a manu- script life of St. Antony, which they began to read. " Tell me," said one to the other, " to what, after all, does our life tend ? What do we seek or hope for ? The favor of the Emperor i But that is here to-day and gone to-morrow ! Instead of that, if we wiU seek the 106 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. 95 favor of God, it is onrs at once, now, and forever ! When Pontitianus and the others joined them, the two men declared their purpose of devoting themselves henceforth to the service of God. Augustine, who with his friend Alypiiis was moved at the story, went into the garden, whither Alypius soon followed him. "What are we doing?" said Augustine. "Did you not hear ? The ignorant, the unlearned, carry the kingdom of heaven by storm, while we, with our boasted science, grovel on the earth. Is it not a shame that we have not the courage to imitate them V ' Abru]3tly quitting Alypius, he threw himself under a fig-tree and began to weep in misery. Suddenly a child' s voice seemed to reach him, singing and rej)eating the words, " Take and read !" These words appeared to him as a revelation from heaven. Seizing a copy of the 'New Testament, he opened on the passage, " Let us walk honestly, as in the day ; not in rioting and drunkenness ; not in chambering and wantonness ; not in strife and envyings. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." "Instantly,"' he says himself, at the end of the sentence, "by a light, as it were, of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away." Henceforth, until her death, a spiritual union was added to the natural affection subsisting between the now happy mother and her transformed son. j\Iany were the conversations about high and heavenly things which they enjoyed together. A great painter, Ary Scheffer, has depicted one of these occasions when Monica and Augustine stood together at a window, LAST DAYS OF MONICA. 107 gazing at tlie Tiber. The window opened upon a gar- den of the house at Ostia, where they stayed. They gazed upon the historic river and then upward at the eternal heavens. "We were soaring," says the son, " higher yet by inward musing, and discourse, and ad- miring Thy works, that we might arrive at that region of never-failing plenty, where Thou feedest Israel for- ever with the food of truth. . . . We were saying then, if to any one the tumult of the flesh were hushed ; hushed the images of earth and waters, and au' ; hushed also the poles of heaven ; yes, the very soul hushed to herself, and so by not thinking on self, did surmount self ; hashed all dreams and imaginary revelations ; every tongue and every sign, and whatso- ever exists only in transition, which if any could hear, all are saying, ' We made not ourselves, but He made us that abidetliforemr ; ' if, then, having uttered this, they too should be hushed, and He alone should speak, not through any tongue of flesh, nor angel's voice, nor sound of thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a simili- tude, but so that we might hear His very self without these (as we two strained ourselves, and in swift thought touched on that eternal wisdom which abideth over all) ; could this be continued, and other visions far unlike be withdrawn, and this one absorb and ravish and wrap up the beholder amid these inward joys, so that life might be forever like that one moment of un- derstanding which now we sighed after, were not this — Bnter into tliy Mastef s joy f And when shall that be ?" " Son, for my part," said Monica, " I have no further delight in anything in this life. What do I here any longer, or to what end I am here, I know not. 108 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. now that my hopes in this world are accomplished- One thing there was for which I desired to linger for a while in this life — that I might see thee a true Chris- tian before I died. My God hath now done this for me more abundantlj^, that I now see thee, despising earthly ha|)piness, become His servant. What do I here ?" The shadows of life's evening were indeed closing around the mother of Augustine. About five days after this she was taken with a fever, and said to him, " Here shall you bury your mother." And when some lamented that she was about to die so far from her old home in Africa, she meekly answered, " Nothing is far to God ; and I do not fear that He should not know where to find me at the resurrection morning." Matthew Arnold has most fittingly depicted in verse the last words of Monica : " O could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be ! Care not for that, and lay me lohere I fall. Everywhere heard ioill he the judgment call. But at God's altar, rememher me I " Thus Monica, and died in Italy. Yet fervent had her longing been, through all Her course, for home at last and burial With her own husband, by the Libyan Sea. " Had been, but at the end, to her pure soul All life with all beside seemed vain and cheap, And union before God the only care. " Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole ; Yet we her memory, as she prayed, will keep, Keep by this : Life in Ood and union there .'" DEATH AND BURIAL. 109 " I closed her eyes," said her son, " and there flowed a mighty sorrow into my heart. O my God, what comparison is there between the, honor that I paid to her and her slavery for me ? Being then forsaken of so great comfort in her, my soul was wounded, and that life rent asunder, as it were, which, of hers and mine together, had been made but one." He adds subse- quently : " And behold the corpse was carried to the burial. \Ye went and returned without tears. And then by little and little I recovered former thoughts of Thy handmaid : her holy conversation toward Thee ; her holy tenderness and observance toward us ; where- of I was suddenly deprived." Such was the mother of whom Augustine, to the close of his own life, declared, " It is to my mother that I owe everything. If I am Thy child, O my God, it is because Thou gavest me such a mother. If I -pietev the truth to all other things, it is the point of my mothers teaching. If I did not long ago x^erish in sin and misery, it is because of the long and faithful tears with which she j)leaded for me." Monica may well stand as a model of the Christian mother as well as of the Christian wife. By meekness, charity, silence, and obedience in things lawful, she " gained her husband," Patricius, and was an example of St. Paul's saying, " The believing wife sanctifieth the unbelieving husband." By prayer and patience she won her great son Augustine from unbelief and sen- suality to that faith and self- consecration which made him a burning and shining light to all ages of the Church and of the world. His influence upon Chris- tian civilization can hardly be overestimated, and even 110 MONICA, MOTHER OF ST. AUGUSTINE. to the present time he still bears a splendid reputation as an interpreter of Scripture. It is to the great credit of the Roman Catholic Church that she has paid due honor to her noble women. St. Monica is not the least of the female saints in her calendar, and a special day and special service in the Breviary commemorates her pure, unself- ish, and heroic life. ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER. " This man, whose homely face you look upon, Was one of Nature's masterful, great men ; Born with strong arms that unfought battles won ; Direct of speech and cunning with the pen. " Chosen for large designs, he had the art Of winning with his humor, and he went Straight to his mark, which was the human heart ; Wise, too, for what he could not break he bent. " Upon his back a more than Atlas load. The bui'den of the commonwealth, was laid ; He stooped, and rose up to it, though the road Shot suddenly downward, not a whit dismayed. *' Hold, warriors, councillors, kings ! — all now give place To this dear benefactor of the race ! " R. H. Stoddard. This man, of whom the poet writes thus touchingly, was born with the birthmark of sorrow and hopeless- ness upon him, and there is no subject in the annals of biography more touching, more pathetic, than Abraham Lincoln. And the cause of this is not due wholly, as many have asserted, to the poverty and misery of his early years : it was the result of the mental condition of his mother. To know him aright it is necessary to study her life in detail, and the difficulty encountered in the iDursuit of such knowledge is well-nigh dis- couraging. 112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER. The great mothers of great men and women are few in number, but are widely known. The obscure and comparatively unknown mothers of men and women of genius form a great multitude of flitting shadows whose outlines and properties are not easy to ascertain. Undoubtedly these unknown mothers must have had strong characteristics, or they could not have trans- mitted great qualities to their children. It is the settled opinion of physiologists that the mother has a far greater influence than the father in the mental and moral qualities of the offspring. It has even been maintained that no great man has ever existed who had not a great mother, whether she was known to fame as great or not. Mr. James Mill, in his essay on "Education," viewing the matter physiologically, lays down the principle that as soon as the infant begins to feel, the character begins to l)e formed, and that the habits which are then contracted are the most pervading and operative of all. Many French physiologists of eminence hold the same opinion, and date the influence of the mother upon the character and intellect of the child to a time considerably anterior to its ])irth. No one will deny that what are called "mother's marks" upon a child are often caused by her condition and feelings at a particular time. A sudden shock, such as the tidings that her husband has met A\ith a serious accident or been killed, will almost certainly affect her condng offspring for life, if it is born alive. The child who, but for this terrible unhingement of his mother's nervous system, would have been distinguished for intelligence, de- velops very soon into a gibbering idiot, or a half- A MOTHER'S RESPONSIBILITY. 113 witted innocent, incapable of doing anything service- able for himself or others. Sir Walter Scott, in " The Fortunes of Nigel," states that the extreme dislike which James the First nourished against naked steel, which seemed to be as constitutional as his timidity, was usually ascribed to the brutal murder of Rizzio having been perpetrated in his unfortunate mother's presence before he was bom. A mother who j)rotects herself, on the other hand, from unseemly spectacles, and who keeps her thoughts in calm and cheerful currents, will bless her offspring with a happy temperament. The contemplation of beautiful pictures, of fine, natural scenery, or of pleas- ant external surroundings, will favorably mark a child's character and mould its features in harmony and beauty. Whatever the mother is before the child is born that will it be when it enters upon its earthly career, and a more important subject than this cannot be submitted to the contemplation of intelligent people. It is most undeniably true that the undertone of deep sorrow in Lincoln's nature was directly due to the hopeless state of mind in which his mother had fallen jjrevious to his birth. She was in poor health, and it is safe to say was a disapj)ointed wife, overworked and discouraged. She was naturally kind, and was morbidly sensitive to the sight of suffering in others. All the biographies we have had of Lincoln make out his father to have been an unambitious, easy-going, shiftless man, one who was satisfied with shabby sur- roundings, and who felt no great responsibility for others. Zeal in any direction was an unknown factor 114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER. in liis make-up, and it was an impossibility for any woman, even the most devoted of wives, to feel any pride in or greatly to love a husband who was so in- different to her comfort and happiness. The reserve with which Lincoln made even the barest reference to his early youth and parentage, and the undisguised look of sadness — almost of anguish — that overshadowed his countenance when questioned as to his mother, led many to believe that there was some unhappy mystery connected with her life, and his- torians have not been wanting who liave explained his reluctance to dwell upon his childhood as due to his illegitimacy. Nothing so cruel could be charged. The cause of his sorrow was deeper than any knowl- edge that came to him after he grew up to boyhood. It was, as said, the impress made upon him before he was born by a lonely-hearted, long-suffering, and in- tensely nervous nature — a nature silent and depressed, overwrought and dumb from the pain of her life. She was a strangely sad woman, and during the later years of her life exhibited a shrinking reserve, in striking contrast to the gay spirits and extreme sociability of her nature as a girl. The impress of disapjoointment and sorrow was early made upon her face, and her little son, intensely sym- pathetic as he was, and with an inherited predisposi-' tion to gloomy views of life, early took on a like ex- pression which never left him. We may not picture the influence she would have exerted upon that son had she lived, because it is a diflBcult as it is a profitless task to draw conclusions of this kind. But it is hardly probable that, had she A WELL-ENDOWED WOMAX. 115 lived, lier life-lines would have been brighter, and it is not likely that she would ever have recovered from the loss of physical energies due to biting poverty. All her early ambition was dead, and the years to come could give no i)romise of lightened cares or a happier home. Mrs. Lincoln, whose maiden name was Nancy Hanks, would have been, under other and haj)pier circum- stances, a noticeable woman. She was well endowed, and by nature possessed of many excellent qualities. She had a limited outlook in life, but considering her surroundings she was far more intelligent than the majority of those about her, and to her her son was in- debted for his rare intuitive faculty and his wonder- fully developed sympathetic nature. Dr. Holland says of her : " She had much in her nature that w^as truly heroic, and much that shrank from the rude life around her. A great man never drew his infant life from a purer or more womanly bosom than her own." From his father he inherited his conversational habit, for he was an inveterate talker, and had a fund of anecdote. The story-telling propensity of the former made him popular, and he preferred above all things to sit in a group of familiar spirits and tell jokes. Abraham early learned this accomplishment, but in his case it was indulged in more to mask deep feeling and to avoid unpleasant subjects than for .the j)leasure the telling of stories gave him. All his life he put barriers between the world and himself through the medium of humor. The one excitement of Thomas Lincoln's life, in which he periodically indulged, was moving. He had 116 ABRAHAM LINCOLN S MOTHER. a mania for changing his homes, as he had for varying his business occupations. He did both whenever the thought occurred to him, and the adage of the rolling- stone found a fitting illustration in him. He was a poor workman, and made little headway in his trade — that of carpentering. With even a superficial knowl- edge of this trade, it would be supposed that he would have made his home comfortable ; but it does not ap- pear that he ever did more than put together a table or , two and a bedstead. The charge that has been made against his parents — that they were never married — does great injustice to the character of the father as of the mother of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln was, so far as can be learned, a strictly moral man, and his wife was a noble woman. Testimony sufficient exists to have prevented the utterance of this slander. The bond given by him to the county clerk on the occasion of his obtaining a marriage license is on file in the Washington County, Kentucky, Court-House. It reads as follows : ' ' Know all men by these presents, that we, Thomas Lincoln and Richard* Berry, are held and firmly bound unto his excellency the Governor of Kentucky in the just sum of fifty pounds, current money, to the pay- ment of which, well and truly to be made to the said Governor and his successors, we bind ourselves, our heirs, etc., jointly and severally, firmly by these pres- ents, sealed with our seals, and dated this 10th day of June, 1806. ' ' The conditions of the above obligations are such that, whereas, there is a marriage shortly intended be- HER MARRIAGE. 117 tween the above bound Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, for which a license has been issued ; now, if there be no lawful cause to obstruct the said marriage, then this obligation to be void, else to remain in full force and virtue. Thomas Lincoln, Richard Berry. "Witness : Moses Rice." The marriage occurred on September 23d, 1806, and the ceremony was performed by the Rev. Mr. Head, an itinerant Methodist preacher. This same preacher, who was a cabinetmaker in Springfield, Kentucky, preached Mrs. Lincoln's funeral sermon years after- ward. The young couple were poor, but very pox^ular, and among the neighbors at the marriage was Judge Felix Grundy, who subsequently removed to Nashville, Tennessee, and became Attorney- General of the United States. A venerable citizen of Kentucky, Dr. C. C. Graham, of Louisville, in a letter to a friend, pays this tribute to Mrs. Lincoln : " It is not at all unlikely that our great and good President owed his great qualities of head and heart to Nancy Hanks Lincoln, to depreciate whom Messrs. Lamon and Herndon have done their utmost. I am acquainted with Dennis Hanks, and find a very de- cided resemblance in many features between him and President Lincoln ; the difference being in greater massiveness of Mr. Lincoln's features, not in their type. The mother of Abraham Lincoln is entitled to vindication and veneration from every American 118 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER. citizen who loves his country, and to whom the fame and glory of its greatness is dear. She deserves as well and is entitled to as much honor at our hands as the mother of Washington, for she gave us as great and as good a man. Let the chivalry of every true man in the land he rescued from ruin feel and resent as a personal indignity the brutality of him who would endeavor to cast a reproach upon his mother." Three years after the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Lin- coln their only son Abraham was born, on the 12th of February, 1809, in a district of Hardin County now in- cluded in La Rue County. Both Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were born in Virginia, and the father of Thomas Lincoln was a Pennsylvania Quaker. The little boy came of good stock, and had his father been an energetic, ambitious man, the family would have been far differently situated. The harshest thing that need be said of him is that he failed to realize his re- sponsibilities, and ignored them to an extent that a more enlightened man would have considered criminal. Dickens has made all the world his confidant in the particulars of his poverty-stricken and unappreciated infancy and childhood. Lincoln, who endured ex- quisite anguish on the same account, would gladly have died and made no sign of the suffering he had i^assed through. The long, long rainy day of poverty and want did not end with him as with the novelist, and he had not the pleasure of lifting his mother from her toils and burdens, and putting her where she would realize the happiness she deserved. She died of that most terrible enemy of the poor, consumption, and left her desolate little boy alone in his misery when only >. ■ ^«|^^|^^A""^^■ \- ■ I MOTHER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN. TEACHING HIS SON. 121 ten years old. He was her only living child, and about him centred every ambition of her dreary life. She could read and write — an accomj)lishment which her husband did not possess— and she taught her little child his letters, and by slow degrees to learn to spell and then to read. It was an absorbing task for him, for the cabin in which thev lived afforded him no comforts, and he had no amusements. His mother's attention, denied him too much because of the hard work she performed, was the sweetest boon he coveted, and to lean against her knee or to sit beside her and labori- ously wrestle with the sounds of letters and the spell- ing of words was a priceless pleasure to him. She encouraged and praised him, and pictured the future that he would make for himself wiien he grew to be a man ; and the little child, watching her sad face and listening to her earnest words, did not know how hard it was for her to make him understand what his mother mshed him to be, mthout telling him in so many words how unlike he must be to his father. She had a morbid fear of her son growing up to idle- ness and ignorance, and she successfully impressed upon him the necessity of doing some particular task in nfe, and doing it well. Compared to the mental poverty of those about her, Mrs. Lincoln was a prodigy of learning, and her hus^ band and relatives were alike proud of her. She held herself aloof from many of her husband's friends, and had he possessed a tithe of her pride and energy, the early home of the future President of the United States might have been a pleasant memory to him in later years, instead of a depressing and sorrowful recollec- 122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER. tion. Had Mrs. Lincoln lived, her child's life would have been different, but as it was, she laid so sure a foundation in his nature that he owed to her, more than to any other human being, his finest traits of character. She is described as being, at the time of her mar- riage, a " slender, symmetrical woman of medium stature, and a brunette, with dark hair, regular features, and soft, sparkling hazel eyes." Her son could not have recalled her by this description, for when he was old enough to know her, her form was bent with hard work ; and but for the' touchingly sad exj^ression on her faded countenance it would have been hard in outline. She died, after a long illness, in October, 1818, and left her child wretched, not only in feeling but in con- dition. He was old for his age, and during her pro- longed suffering he was her constant attendant, and while her greatest comfort was at the same time her one anxious thought. How to leave him alone in the world was the added anguish of her dying hours. Her great love for him, and his clinging, helpless de- pendence upon her, his sick mother, made her last days pathetic ; and their sad condition has been fit- tingly expressed by Robert Buchanan in these fines : " Oh, bairn, when I am dead, How shall ye keep frae harm ? "What hand shall gie ye bread ? What fire will keep ye warm ? How shall ye dwell on earth awa' frae me ?" " Oh, mither, dinna dee !" A LONELY CHILD. 123 Oh, bairn, it is but closing up the eeu, And lying down never to rise again, Many a strong man's sleeping hae I seen ; There is nae pain ! I'm weary, weary, and I scarce ken why ; My summer has gone by. And sweet were sleep but for the sake o' thee." " Oh, mither, dinna dee !"' C( And sweet were sleej)" to tliis poor weary heart if she had no after-knowledge of how her son was faring. If in her spirit home she was cognizant of the lonely, neglected child in that dreary Western cabin, her death was not the mercy which we must hope it was. Her child was as forsaken as a motherless boy's fate could be, and he could not look back upon that time, to the latest day of his life, without emotion and humiliation. His greatest pleasure was found in the study of the books which his mother had taught him to read, and he busied himself, when opportunity offered, with practising writing, which he had learned with great difficulty. He could write with tolerable success before his mother died, and when she had been gone nearly a year he used his knowledge of penmanship to secure a tribute to her memory which had been neglected by others. When Mrs. Lincoln died there was no funeral cere- mony, and the child, perhax)s inspired by others, wrote to the minister who had performed the marriage cere- mony for his parents, and asked him to preach his mother's funeral. Time passed, and it was quite three months before Mr. Head appeared in response to the appeal. The 124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER. funeral was preached over her grave in the presence of the father and son and a gathering of about twenty of the neighbors, and in the course of his remarks the I)reacher referred to the son's share in securing this tribute to his mother's memory. And little Abe's filial conduct was favorably commented upon by the neighbors. The loneliest year of his life had scarcely passed when the boy's father married again, and his mother's place was taken by a kind-hearted woman who bright- ened the child's existence from the day she set foot into the cheerless cabin of Thomas Lincoln. She took an instant and especial liking to the neglected boy, and won in return his permanent affection. ******* Mrs. Johnston, Thomas Lincoln's second wife, was a Avidow, whom he had known when they were both children in Kentucky, and she went with him to his Western home, carrying with her a son and two daughters of her own. She opened her heart to the ragged little boy, who gladly welcomed her cheerful presence to his comfortless home. Her picture presented in these pages rejiresents her in her later life, but when Abraham Lincoln first saw her she was young and cheerful, and full of energy and determination. It is not to be wondered at that he loved her so warmly. She made his hard life easier, and her influence over his father greatly improved the aspect of affairs at home. Mrs. Lincoln was as ener- getic and industrious as her husband was otherwise, and she had a difficult task before her when she mar- ried. She had been greatly disappointed in her new A STEPMOTHER. 125 home, having been led to believe that Mr. Lincoln was a well-to-do farmer in Indiana, whereas he was not a farmer, but lived in great poverty, and gained what little support he made by doing odd jobs and working for the surrounding farmers, Mrs. Lincoln's fondness for the tender-hearted, lonely little boy enabled her to read his character speedily, and she soon discovered that he had much natural ability and a strong desire to learn. As he grew older she said of him that " he read every book he could lay his hand on, and when he came across a passage that struck him, he would write it dowTi on boards if he had no paper, and keep it there until he did get paper. Then he would rewrite it, look at it, repeat it. He had a copy-book, a kind of scrap-book, in which he put down all things, and thus preserved them." Mrs. Lincoln must have been a wise mother, be- cause she successfully managed her own children and her stepson, and the affectionate relations existing be- tween them were remarkable. There was nothing that Abe would not do for his half-sisters or his mother, and they in turn gave him the tenderest affection. These daughters, after they were grown up and married, made their new homes Abe's, and he was better loved by them than was their own brother, a young man who gave his mother much trouble. The daughters, when speaking of their distinguished stepbrother after his tragic death, invariably referred to his affection for their mother, and of how worthy she was of every one's love. Lincoln's youth was brightened by her companionship, and when he left 1-40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER. home, at the age of twenty-one, to care for himself, the i)ain he felt was in leaving his stepmother. The first money he earned he sent her a share of it, and as long as she lived he continued to provide for her comfort, though much of the money he sent was used by those who lived on her kindness and imposed ui^on her generosity. From the time Lincoln left his father's service, he never returned to his home to stay. During his life at home his aspirations were chilled and his ambition curbed by the work that was j)^^t before him, and the poverty of his family, which grieved him deeply. Twice only during his father's life did he visit his home, but when his father died he wrote kindly to his stepbrother, who had informed him of the event. He was unable to see his mother at the time because of illness in his own household, but when he was elected President of the United States he went to see her. Mr. Lamon thus describes this last reunion : ' ' It was all very pleasant to Mr. Lincoln to see such multitudes of familiar faces smiling upon his wonder- ful successes. But the chief object of his solicitude w^as not here ; Mrs. Lincoln lived in the southern part of the county, and he was all impatience to see her. As soon, therefore, as he had taken a frugal breakfast with Dennis (Hanks), he and Colonel Chapman started off in a ' two-horse buggy ' toward Farmington, where his stepmother was living with her daughter, Mrs. Moore. They had much difficulty in crossing ' the Kickapoo ' river, which was running full of ice ; but they finally made the dangerous passage and arrived at Farmington in safety. FINAL FAREWELLS. 127 (( Tlie meeting between, liim and the old lady was of a most affectionate and tender character. She fondled him as her own ' Abe,' and he her as his own mother. It was soon arranged that she should return with him to Charleston, so that they might enjoy by the way the unrestricted and uninterruj)ted intercourse w^hich they both desired above all things, but which they were not likely to have where the people could get at him. . . . The parting between Mr. Lincoln and his mother was very touching. She embraced him with deep emotion, and said she was sure she would never behold him again, for she felt that his enemies would assassinate him. He rei3lied, ' No, no, mamma ; they will not do that. Trust in the Lord, and all will be well ; we will see each other again.' " The fear expressed by his stepmother had been im- pressed upon her from the time of his election, and it was generally shared in by her family and neighbors. She never saw him again. In her interview with Mr. Herndon, after the assassination, she sj^oke of him with a voice broken with emotion. " Abe was a poor boy," said she, "and I can say what scarcely one M^oman — a mother — can say in a thousand. Abe never gave me a cross word or look, and never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested. I never gave him a cross word in all my life. . . . His mind and mine — what little I had — seemed to run together. ... He was here after he was elected Presi- dent." (At this point the aged speaker turned away to weejD, and then, wiping her eyes with her apron, went on with the story.) " He was dutiful to me always. I think he loved me truly. I had a son 128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER. Jolm, who was raised with Abe. Both were good boys ; but I must say, both now being dead, that Abe w^as the best boy I ever saw, or expect to see. I wish I had, died when my husband died. I did not want Abe to run for President ; did not want him elected ; was afraid, somehow — felt in my heart ; and wdien he came down to see me, after he was elected President, I still felt that something told me that something would befall Abe, and that I should see him no more." AVhen Mr. Herndon rose to go, her eyes were filled with tears, and wringing his hands as if loath to part with one who talked so much of her beloved Abe, she said, " Good-by, my good son's friend, farewell." Kind to both mothers, and loving the stepmother dearly because he received from her hands the daily comforts of life and the companionshij) a nature so like his required, he was yet the likeness in spirit and purpose of his own mother. Her sadness of heart covered his as a pall at intervals all his life, and her stifled ambition found its fullest exi^ression in him. It seems a cruel wrong to deny to Abraham Lincoln's fame the influence of his mothers character upon his own, or to withhold from hers that which is her due — file acknowledgment that his best qualities w^ere in- herited from her. Had she no other title to homage as the mother of Lincoln, the one fact that she instilled into him while yet a little child the traits that dis- tinguished him as a man, and endeared him to his kind, should give her rank with the noblest mothers of America. CHAELES DICKENS^ S MOTHER. The early life of Charles Dickens was not a happy one, although it is typical of the lives of many hun- dreds of children, especially of the class in life to which he belonged. The great, perhaps the greatest of modern humorists and story writers was born at Land- port, in Portsea, on Friday, the 7th day of February, 1812. His father, Mr. John Dickens, was a clerk in the navy pay-office, and was at that time stationed in Portsmouth dockyard. He formed the acquaintance of Elizabeth Barrow, who afterward became his wife, through her elder brother, Thomas Barrow, who was also engaged on the establishment at Somerset House ; and she bore him in all a family of eight children, of whom two died in infancy. The eldest, Fanny, born in 1810, was followed by Charles, entered on the bap- tismal register of Portsea as Charles John Huffham, though on very rare occasions, when he used his full name, he spelled the last name Huffam. In " David Copperfield," which was largely autobiographical, or, at least, reminiscent of Charles Dickens's own child- hood and youth, he represents himself as seeing so far back into the blank of his infancy as to discern therein his mother and her servant, dwarfed to his sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and himself going unsteadily from one to the other. '' If it should appear," he adds, "from anything I may set down in 130 CHAELES DICKENS'S MOTHER. this narrative, tliat I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my child- hood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these char- acteristics." Upon which, John Forster, his biog- rajoher, remembers : " Applicable as this might be to David Copperfield, it was simply and unaffectedly true of Charles Dickens.'" This faithful friend of Dickens and his children, whose death occurred so soon after his own, adds, as a reminiscence of his own, that Dickens had often told him that he remembered the small front garden to the house at Portsea, from which he was taken away when he was two years old, and where, watched by a nurse through a low kitchen win- dow, almost level with the gravel walk, he trotted about with something to eat, and his little elder sister with him. When John Dickens, his father, was again brought nj> by his duties to London from Portsmouth, Charles Dickens remembered that it was snowing hard when they left Portsea. At this time he was but two years old. About two years after this their home was again changed, his father being placed on duty in Chatham dockyard. It was in Chatham that he received the most durable of his early impressions, and to whose surroundings we owe so much of the scenery as well as so many of the types of character in " Copperfield" and others of his works. " The associations," says John Forster, " that were around him when he died were those which at the outset of his life had affected him most strongly. The house called Gadshill Place stands on the strip of A QUEER SMALL BOY. 131 highest ground in the main road between Rochester and Gravesend. Often had we travelled past it to- gether years and years before it became his home, and never without some allusion to what he told me when I first saw it in his company, that amid the recollections connected with his childhood it held always a promi- nent place, for, upon first seeing it as he came from Chatham with his father, and looking up at it with much admiration, he had been promised that he might himself live in it, or in some such house, when he came to be a man, if he would only work hard enough, which for a long time was his ambition. The story is a pleasant one, and receives authentic confirmation at the opening of one of his essays on travelling abroad, when, as he passes along the road to Canterbury, there crosses it a vision of his former self. " ' " So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and so fast went I, that it was mid- way between Gravesend and Rochester, and the widen- ing river was bearing the ships, white-sailed or black- smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy. " ' "Halloa !" said I to the very queer small boy, " where do you live ?" At Chatham, " says he. What do you do there ?" says I. I go to school, " says he. I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently the very queer small boy says, " This is Gadshill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away." " ' " You know something about Falstaff, eh ?" said I. a c a 132 CHARLES DICKENS'S MOTHER. a i u All about him,'' said the very queer small boy. " I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please." " ' " You admu-e that house ?" said I. " ' " Bless you, sir," said the very queer small boy, *' when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, 'If you were to he very persevermg and were to worTi Jiard, you migTit some day come to line in it.'' Though that's impossible !" said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of the window with all his might. " ' I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy ; for that house happens to be my house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true.' *' It will not appear," says Forster, " as my narra- tive moves on, that he owed much to his parents, or was other than in his first letter to Washington Irving he described himself to have been, " a very small and not over-particularly-taken-care-of boy ; ' but he has frequently been heard to say that his first desire for knowledge and his earliest passion for reading were awakened by his mother, who taught him the iirst rudiments not only of English, but also, a little later, of Latin. I once put to him a question in con- nection with this, to which he replied in almost exactly the words he placed five years later in the mouth of DAVID COPPERFIELD. 133 David Copperfield : ' I faintly remember her teacliiiig me the alphabet ; and when I look upon the fat black letters in the i3rimer, the puzzling novelt}" of their shapes, and the easy good nature of and S, always seem to present themselves before me as they used to do.' " If his mother taught him to read, his father soon gave him an opportunity of gratifying his taste for reading, especially of the romantic kind. We have the l^ositive assertion of Mr. Forster that the following description in " David Copperfield" was literally true of its author, and that every word of this jDersonal recollection had been written down as fact, some years before it found its way into that novel, the otily change being the omission of the name of the cheap series of novelists then in course of publication, which his father also numbered among his literary treasures. " My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs to which I had access (for it adjoined my own), and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, ' Roderick Random,' ' Peregrine Pickle,' ' Humphrej^ Clinker," 'Tom Jones,' 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Don Quixote,' 'Gil Bias,' and 'Robinson Crusoe ' came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy and my hope of something beyond that time and place — they and the ' Arabian Nights ' and the 'Tales of the Genii,' — and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me ; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now how I found time, in the midst of my porings and l)liinderings over heavier themes, to read those books 134 CHARLES DICKENS'S MOTHER. as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under small troubles (which were great troubles to me) by imjDersonating my favorite char- acters in them. ... I have been Tom Jones (a child' s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. 1 have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and travels. I for- get what more that were on those shelves ; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees, the perfect realization of Cap- tain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. . . . When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbor- hood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own in my mind connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. 1 had seen Tom Piper go climbing up the church-steeple ; I had watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket gate ; and I know that Com- modore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle in the Xmrlor of our little village alehouse.'' Dickens was not much more than nine years old when his father was recalled from Chatham to Somerset House, and he had to leave his kind schoolmaster, the Rev. Mr. Giles, a young Baptist minister, and all the old scenes which he loved so dearly to the last hour of AX APPRENTICESHIP OF POVERTY. 135 his life. He was to be torn away from the boys' play- ground near Clover Lane, in Chatham, where the school-house stood, and where he had been in the hay- maldng time, " delivered from the dangers of Seringa- X)atam, an immense pile [of hay-cocks], by his country- men the victorious British (boy next door and his two cousins), and had been recognized with ecstasy by his affianced one (' Miss Green '), who had come all the way from England (second house in the terrace) to ransom and marry him." " The gay, bright regiments always going and coming, the continual paradings and firings, the successions of sham sieges and sham defences, the plays got up by his cousin in the hospital, the navy- pay yacht in which he had sailed to Sheerness with his father, and the ships floating out in the midway, with their far visions of sea — he was to leave them all." Meanwhile he was now not only to serve himself a bitter apiDrenticeship to x)overty and neglect, but to learn for the first time his father' s financial insolvency, which he has depicted both in Micawber's character and in that of the father of the Marshalsea. Mrs. Micaw- ber is supposed to be a counterfeit presentment of his mother. On one occasion he gave Mr. Forster a sketch of the character of his father. " I know my father to be as kind-hearted and generous a man as ever lived in the world. Everything that I can remember of his conduct to his wife, or children, or friends in sickness or affliction, is beyond all praise. By me as a sick child he has watched night and day, unweariedly and pa- tiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any business, charge or trust, that he did not zealously, conscientiously, punctually, honorably discharge. His 136 CHARLES DICKENS'S MOTHER. industry has always been untiring. He was proud of me in Ms way, and had a great admiration of my comic- singing. But, in the ease of his temper, and the straitness of his means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I had any claim upon him, in that regard, whatever. I degen- erated into cleaning his boots of a morning and my own, and making myself useful in the work of the little house, and looking after my younger brothers and sisters {we were now six in all), and going on such poor errands as arose out of our poor way of liv- mg. He paid visits at this time to his bachelor uncle, his mother's elder brother, who. was a fellow clerk with his father in Somerset House. This Mr. Thomas Barrow had broken his leg in a fall, and little Charles Dickens used to carry many messages to him from his sister and brother-in-law, the boy's mother and father. Things had come to such a pass with them that it was resolved to try the experiment of his mother opening a school. " The time was arrived for her to exert herself," she said, " and she must do something." A house was found in North Grover Street, and a large brass plate on the door announced " Mrs. Dickens's Establishment." " I left," writes Dickens, " at a great many other doors, a great many circulars calling attention to the merits of the establishment. Yet nobody ever came to school, nor do I recollect that anybody ever proposed to come, or that the least preparation was made to receive anybody. But I know that we got on very badly with the butcher and baker ; IN A BLACKING WAREHOUSE. 137 that very often we had not too much for dinner, and that at last my father was arrested." It was two or three years before " David CopiDerfield" was even thought of, that Dickens recorded his first visit to his father in the debtors' prison, " My father was waiting for me in the lodge, and we went np to his room (on the toj) story but one), and cried very much. And he told me, I remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a year and sj^ent nineteen pounds nineteen shil- lings and sixpence, he would be happy ; but that a shilling spent the other way would make him \vretched. I see the fire we sat before now, with two bricks in- side the rusted grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coals. Some other debtor shared the room with him, who came in by and by." And he went home to his mother to comfort her wdth an ac- count of his visit. His father and mother now accepted the offer made for him by a relative of his mother's, that he should go to work at a blacking warehouse at six shillings a week. " It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age." (He was now ten years old.) " It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough on me — a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally— to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school. Our friends, I take it, were tired out. Xo one made any sign. ]SIy father and mother were quite satisfied. 138 CHARLES DICKENS'S MOTHER. They could hardly have been more so if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar school, and going to Cambridge. ' ' His father failed to i^ropitiate his creditors, every- thing they had was either pawned or sold, and his mother had to break up her " Establishment" in North Grover Street and go with her children to live with her father in the Marshalsea. Charles, however, " was handed over as a lodger to a reduced old lady, who took children in to board" — the original of Mrs. Pipchin in " Dombey and Son." The relative who rnled the blacking shop quarrelled with his father, and Charles Dickens was discharged. His father was now '^' whitewashed" in the Insolvent Court, and out of prison. The family were all living with Mrs. Pipchin, whose name was Roy lance. " My mother," he writes, "set herself to accommodate the quarrel, and did so next day. She brought home a re- quest for me to return next morning, and a high char- acter of me, which I am very sure I deserved. My father said I should go back no more, and should go to school. I do not write resentfully or angrily ; for I know how all these things had worked together to make me what I am, but I never afterward forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent back." It is a relief to turn from the sorrows and humilia- tions of the sensitive child, so little appreciated even by his mother, to the successful man and famous author who made it one of his first cares to provide a home for his father and mother. " I took a little house for them this morning, ' ' he writes from Exeter, on the 5th of A HOME FOR HIS PARENTS. 139 March, 1839, " and if they are not pleased with it I shall be grievously disappointed. Exactly a mile be- yond the city, on the Plymouth road, there are two white cottages ; one is theirs, and the other belongs to their landlady. I almost forget the number of rooms, but there is an excellent parlor with two other rooms on the ground floor ; there is really a beautiful little room over the parlor which I am furnishing as a draw- ing-room, and there is a splendid garden. The j)aint and paper throughout is new and fresh and cheerful- looking ; the place is clean beyond all descri]3tion ; and the neighborhood I supjoose the most beautiful in this most beautiful of English counties. Of the landlady, a Devonshire widow, with whom I had the honor of taking lunch to-day, I must make most esjiecial men- tion. She is a fat, infirm, splendidly fresh-faced coun- try dame, rising sixty, and recovering from an attack on the nerves. I thought they never went of: the stones, but I find they try country air with the best of us. In the event of my mother's being ill at any time, I really think the vicinity of this good dame, the very lecture of respectability and good humor, will be the greatest possible comfort. ... I am sure they may be hajDpy there ; for if I were older, and my course of activity were run, I am sure I could, with God's bless- ing, for many and many a year." Charles Dickens' s mother died in September, 1868. We find no further mention of her, except the mere fact of her death, in Forster's " Life of Dickens," after he had provided his parents with the comfortable Devonshire cottage. His father died on the 31st of March, 1851. Both 140 CHARLES DICKENS'S MOTHER. while he lived and after his death Dickens invariably spoke of him in terms of respect as well as affection. To his mother rather than to John Dickens he attributed, as we have seen, the hardness of his early lot. It w^ould be unjust to suppose, however, that because he men- tioned her so seldom and then chiefly as associated with such bitter recollections, he bore her any ill-will. It is to be regretted, nevertheless, that there is so little evi- dence of that life-long affection for his mother which one looks for in a generous son. It may be that she failed to discern his genius or sympathize with his early aspirations, which certainly wete of a noble kind. The impression she leaves upon the mind is that of weakness and want of insight and forecast. But in estimating her character, allowance must be made for the peculiar trials she was called upon to undergo. It is difficult for this very reason to share Dickens's ad- miration of his father. With a government situation, which in England is permanent, and which gave him a regular salary, there is little excuse for him, as a hus- band and father, in involving his family in disgrace and discomfort through extravagance or mismanagement. He seems to have been one of those who " had rather teach twenty what were right to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow his own teaching." Vain of his own importance, full of admu'ation for his own sententious wisdom, and pity for his own privations, there seems to have been as little steady principle about money matters in him as in Leigh Hunt, the supposed original of Harold Skimj)ole, w^ho only asks to be per- mitted to live and enjoy life — at other people's ex- pense. TRYING CIRCUMSTANCES. 141 His wife, on the other hand, had to keep house for a large family without the necessary funds to meet their every-day expenses. If she could not pay the butcher and baker, it was certainly not her fault, but that of her husband, who was too generous to himself and spent upon his own comforts, like Turveydrop Senior, the money that should have been held sacred to household exj)enditure. It was natural for Mrs. Dickens, who certainly was not a woman of genius, to wish her boys to be self-supporting as early as possible. Hence what seemed to Dickens the cruelty of keeping him for two years at the detestable blacking business. As it proved in the long run, his mother was really laying the foun- dations of his fortune and fame, for had it not been for those early ex2:)eriences he would never have studied and grasped all conditions of life and character as he did. There is no doubt that " the iron entered into his soul and made long furrows," and that for years, and in- deed until the Hungerford Bridge, close to which it stood, was pulled down, Dickens could never pass the scene of his early humiliations. But as in the case of his wife, so with that of his mother, the question may he asked whether he made sufficient allowance for the weakness and defencelessness of women, especially of a woman placed in such trying circumstances as his mother was. Yet w^e would fain hope and believe that his heart was right toward her, although he could ' ' never forget' ' that it was his mother who advocated his continuance at a drudgery which was naturally repugnant to his nature. Mrs. John Dickens was not the only mother who has failed to discern her children's intellectual gifts. The 142 CHARLES DICKENS'S MOTHER. story of Charles Dickens's childliood is a lesson to mothers in this respect. A mother should not only- have no favorites among her children, but she should be the earliest confidante of all their thoughts and hopes. Too often the last person to whom the sensitive child is willing to open his griefs, reveal his inner self, and show the little efforts of his boyish ambition, is his mother. How many mothers entertain in the neglected and discouraged child "an angel unawares." They praise the boy who is full of physical courage and energy, and even the scrapes he gets into makes him dearer to the mother. But the solemn, solitary, thoughtful child, who builds castles in the air and sees Aladdin's palace in the red coals of the nursery fire, is too often looked upon by his mother as an odd boy who will never be good for much. Nothing connected with humanity is more touching than the child's yearning for sympathy and keen sense of isolation and neglect. A cold, worldly mother repels " the young lamb's heart." The neglected boy or girl hide their loneliness and bury their wealth of love and brightness in their own throbbing hearts. Sometimes the father has looks and ways of sympathy and ten- derness toward them which the mother never feels, or feeling, never shows. When the family, like the elder Dickens's household, is in straitened circumstances, the mother is apt to be especially impatient with the first symptoms of anything like a romantic and un- practical turn of mind. Her thoughts are of daily bread, and how soon her boys can earn it. Charles Dickens felt his own neglect the more keenly, no doubt, because the talent of his elder sister, Fanny, A HOUSEHOLD DRUDGE. 143 was at once recognized and made the most of by the mother. When he was the poor blacking boy at six shillings a week, his sister w^as a pupil at the Royal Academy of Music, and he used to call for her early every Sunday morning, so that they might spend the day with their i)arents in the Marshalsea and see her safe home at night. Poor boy ! he must have felt sad indeed as he ate the crust ^f bread and slice of cheese he used to put. by for his supper and went to his ill- furnished bedroom, to think of the week of menial drudgery that lay before him, and w^hich then seemed likely to go on without alleviation for years, if not for life. Early feelings and experiences are the most en- during with all of us, and in i)roportion to the child's sensitiveness will be the depth of the scars which the sorrows of childhood leave behind them. Too many parents, alas, imagine that so long as the child is fed and clad all is going w^ell with it. On the other hand, mothers must be judged of, not by an ideal and sentimental standard, but by their ac- tual surroundings and opjiortunities. The mother of Charles Dickens, with so many children and so un- thrifty a husband, could have little time and impulse for the higher and more prospective feelings. She can have been little better than a household drudge, always troubled with sordid cares and immediate difficulties. A good mother is a term of wide and various applica- tion. She who sews and mends and gets the meals and teaches the alphabet to her children is a good mother. She who, dreading a fresh creditor's demand with every knock and ring, and who has at last to carry her brood with her to join her husband in a debtors' prison. 144 • CHARLES DICKENS'S MOTHER. after every houseliold treasure has been carried to a pawnbroker's, is a good mother, even if not always a wise one, in wishing her little ones to learn a trade and earn their daily bread when more favored children are storing their minds with mental capital at school. No doubt this mother rejoiced in her heart of hearts, as only a mother can, when she saw her poor boy trans- formed into the wealthy man by the exercise and market value of such intellectual gifts as very few I)ossess, and of which, amid her daily drudgery, she could have formed no previous estimate. The com- monplace mother of a man of genius gets little credit, but there is every reason to believe that the mother of Charles Dickens, whose cares and burdens were so heavy, did her duty to him with all true motherly affection, according to her lights. Had she been differ- ently situated there is no doubt but that she would have educated her little boy, and shared with him her every blessing. Poverty is a bitter foe, and to a mother of many children it is cruel and terrible. It dries up the affections, closes up the avenues of hope and mirth, and keeps its victims morose, harassed, and anxious in spirit. It is cruel fate to be a mother under such circumstances, and sad indeed is it to be unloved and ignored by one's children in after years because of such misfortunes. It has always seemed to us to detract from Dickens's character that he has left nowhere any affectionate reference to his mother. He seemed never to realize, or to be willing to admit, tliat the " iron which entered his soul" had reached him only after it had passed through hers. It was his misfortune, not her fault, that he failed to judge her unselfishly, and AN UNFORTUNATE POSITION. 145 to make allowance for her lieli)less and defenceless po- sition in life as the wife of her husband and the mother of his many children, whom she loved but could not properly rear, however much she desired to do so. THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. The character of Jolin Wesley, the founder of Methodism, presents one of the finest studies in modern biography. Dr. Johnson, who was not easily satisfied, was pleased with the conversation of John Wesley, and objected to him only that he seemed to begrudge every half hour of relaxation as so much stolen from the dis- charge of active business. Whoever reads the life of Wesley, which has been written by Southey, and more in detail by later biographers, must be struck with this characteristic, that he never was idle. From sunrise until midnight his energies sufficed for constant and laborious work. He was to evangelical religion what Francis Xavier and other never-tiring missionaries have been to the Roman Catholic Church. He had within him the materials of faith and energy of which the greatest saints and martyrs have been formed, and beside him the mere eloquent pulpiteer and worldly clergyman of the Established Church of Eng- land of his time becomes wholly contemptible. If we want proof of the extraordinary character of the man, we have but to look at the largest religious denomination in America, and one of the most \^^de- spreading and inlluential in all lands, the Methodist Church. It is too large to be ignored, for it has a membership of millions ; it is too tremendous in its influence upon society to be laughed at, even by those SOME LEADING CHARACTERISTICS. 147 wlio have least sympathy with its more sensational methods of camp-meetings and revivals. John Wesley would not have encouraged the emotional excesses of some of his followers. His mind was of too high an order to stoop to childish demonstrations, but he be- lieved heart and soul in devotion to Christ and renun- ciation of the world, and his favorite work, of which he translated all but the part which maintains the Roman \dew of the Eucharist, was the beautiful " Imitation of Christ," by Thomas a Kempis. Work and prayer, the one constant, the other instant, are the key-notes of John Wesley's life, and when we in- quire for the source from which he derived these guid- ing principles of his life, investigation answers clearly, From his mother. The letters of Weslev's mother are the counterpart of Wesley's life. Always working, always leaning on the everlasting arms of God, always regulating the minutest duties of life with punctuality and performing them with clock-like steadfastness and patience, restraining the imagination by the reins of duty, imparting to others the precepts and counsels which she put in practice herself, the mother of John Wesley was virtually the mother of the Israel he founded. There are very few religious writers, very few Fathers of the Early Church or bishops of the mod- ern, who excel Wesley's mother in clearness, force, and intelligence on the subject of religion and moral conduct. ]N"ot only had Susannah Wesley a devout and rational theological instinct, but her mind had been carefully trained in secular knowledge, and she had by self-culture attained unusual accomplishments. The 148 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. reasoning powers which were so early developed in John Wesley were conspicuous in his mother. Adam Clarke says of her : " Mrs. Wesley had read much and thought much, and thus her mind was cultivated. Greek, Latin, and French, and both logic and meta- physics had formed part of her studies ; and these latter acquisitions, without appearing— for she studi- ously endeavors to conceal them — are felt to great ad- vantage in all her writings. She had a strong and vigorous mind, and an undaunted courage. She feared no difficulty, and in search of truth at once looked the most formidable objections fall in the face ; and never hesitated to give any enemy all the vantage ground he could gain, when she rose up to defend either the doc- trines or precepts of the religion of the Bible." He bears witness also to the beauty of her person, jDro- nouncing her not only graceful but beautiful, and add- ing that her sister Judith, painted by Sir Peter Lely, is represented as a very beautiful woman, but one who w^ell knew both said, " Beautiful as Miss Annesley aj)- pears, she was far from being as beautiful as Mrs. Wesley." John Wesley's father, Samuel Westley, as he al- ways spelled it, and his mother Susannah Annesley, were both the children of Nonconformist ministers, that is, of beneficed preachers who were ejected from their livings because they had not received Episcopal ordination. His grandfather, John Wesley, was ac- counted one of the martyrs of nonconformity, but his son, who was but eight years old when his father died, became disgusted with the more bigoted of these Dis- senters who defended the execution of King Charles the HER VIEWS EXPLAINED. l-iS First, which they celebrated with atrociously bad taste by a Calf s Head Club. When little more than a child Samuel Wesley left them, and instead of ^oing to their academy and i^reparing for their ministry he made his way to Exeter College, Oxford, took orders in the Es- tablished Church, and writing a defence of the revolu- tion, which he dedicated to Queen Mary, daughter of James the Second and wife of William the Third, he received from her the living of Epworth. Susannah, his future wife, was the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Annesley, who, like Wesley's grandfather, was ejected from his living. She, too, abandoned the Dissenters and became a stanch adherent of the State Church. A letter to her eldest son, Samuel, the elder brother of John and Charles, so fully explains her motives that it is well to quote it as throwing light upon her conscientious and independent character. It is dated October 11th, 1709, and reads : " There is nothing I now desire to live for, but to do some small service to my children ; that, as I have brought them into the world, I may, if it please God, be an instru- ment of doing good to their souls. I have been several years collecting from my little reading, but chiefly from my own observation and experience, some things Avliich I hoped might be useful to you all. I had begun to correct and form all into a little manual, wherein I designed you should have seen what were the par- ticular reasons which prevailed on me to believe the being of a God, and the ground for natural religion, together with the motives that induced me to embrace the faith of Jesus Christ ; under which was compre- hended my own private reasons for the truth of re- 150 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. vealed religion ; and because I was educated among the Dissenters, and there was something remarkable in my leaving them at so early an age, not being full thirteen, I had drawn up an account of the whole transaction, under which I had included the main of the contro- versy between them and the Established Church, so far as it had come to my knowledge, and then followed the reasons which had determined my judgment to the preference of the Church of England, I had fairly transcribed a great part of it, but before I could finish my design, the flames consumed both this and all my other writings/' The same independent spirit which made Susannah Annesley, when a girl, leave the Dissenters for the Church of England, was exhibited in two notable differences, the one political, the other religious, which she had with her husband. They serve equally with the above letter to bring her remarkable characteristics, which her great son inherited from her, into strong re- lief. While the Rector of Ep worth, as we have seen, had written in defence of King William, his wife was silently a Jacobite in her political opinions. She dis- approved of the Revolution, and it was about a year before William of Orange died that her husband first remarked that when he craved for him as King she did not say amen. When he questioned her, she told him frankly that she did not regard Prince William of Orange as King of England lawfully and by divine right. This so inflamed her husband that he vowed never to live with her again wliile she held that opinion, and mounting liis horse he rode away in anger from the parsonage. She did not hear from him again until a MRS. WESLEY'S PRAYER-MEETINGS. 151 year afterward, when the death of King William re- leased him from his rash vow. Of the nineteen chil- dren that were born to them, John, or John Benjamin, as the founder of Methodism was christened, was the first who came after this reconciliation, and was their second son. The other instance of Mrs. Wesley's independence is the more interesting because it places her before us almost as the forerunner of Methodism, and as uncon- sciously anticipating the irregular methods by which the most regular of men was subsequently to revolu- tionize Protestant Christendom. Mr. Wesley, as a beneficed clergyman, used to attend the Convocations of the clergy in London, and while he was absent from his Lincolnshire parish his wife used to pray with her own family on Sunday evenings when there was no service at the church. After prayers she read a sermon to them, and then engaged in religious conversation. Sometimes one or more of the parishioners w^ould happen to drop in at the time, l)ut she did not allow their presence to disturb the fnmily service. They were so much impressed by her discourse and the solemnity of the scene that they would repeat their visits, and bring others with them. At length some forty of the villagers w^ere regular at- tendants. She chose " the best and most aw^akening sermons," and a revival of religion w^as perceptible at Epworth. This enraged one of the curates, a vain, sensual fellow, who dreaded the growth of a strictness which w^ould rebuke his own careless living, and he wrote to Mr. Wesley that a " conventicle was being held at the parsonage." The mere word was enough 152 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. to carry terror with it in those days, when irregular religious assemhlies were punishable as breaches of the law. He wrote at once to his wife, objecting to her meetings because of her sex, and because " it looked particular ;" and reminded her that his own position as rector would be compromised. She thanks him for speaking candidly, and answers, " As to its looking particular, I grant it does ; and so does almost every- thing that is serious, or that may any way advance the glory of God or the salvation of souls, if it be per- formed out of a i)uli)it or in the way of common con- versation ; because in our corrupt age the utmost care and diligence has been used to banish all discourse of God, or spiiitual concerns, out of society, as if re- ligion were never to appear out of the closet, and we were to be ashamed of nothing so much as of confess- ing ourselves to be Christians.'" Although the age of women's rights had not yet come, Mrs. Wesley did not hesitate to claim that in the absence of her husband it was not only her duty to attend to the religion of their children, but to take care of the souls of his parish- ioners. " If lam unfaithful," she says, " to Him or to you, in neglecting to improve these talents, how shall I answer unto Him when He shall command me to render an account of my stewardship?'' As for what evil tongues might say of her, she added, " For my own part, I value no censure on this account ; I have long since shook hands with the world, and I heartilv wish I had never given them more reason to speak against me." Her enemies were hard at work, however, and the absent rector was not quieted in his apprehensions by her letters. He wrote again more stringently. ^^gp ^ ^ w--:- BTI ^1 ^■- -™-..-:::: 1 p^-'j >': .J^ "''if^P '" s OBJ^^W™"" i"™nfl^ Ik Jb^^ rfP ••'■i.'^Sf ^BUk. liritolfleifflteww-^* "V ^^^;^l*il„jiP _.. j^,Jf^j)3 ,',.', '.■ '*? H^^&M'« mmSS^-^ m^bH n»;.*^ ";=t.' -^^5=^. ^^ ^W ■■' (; • ^^^H^^mu^^ o .-.. - ""■"('' iiii'lht'/i>''.:!iiiik 4' HHk ^ ■ ■ V !Mt^1 i'&'''SPfK iSffi^B^^ii "^ 1 • ' ■'■■■',-}^^r:_; ipfilSfcjfej5§S4 ll iH^^i[V^ f; :::■.,.:■ '.IP*. 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V a d u> r. a n xi ■Ji 1-5 O HER UNANSWERED LETTER. 155 After taking some days to think it over, Mrs. Wesley- replied again that she was surj^rised that he should be frightened by the silly clamor of a few of the worst men in the parish ; that her meetings had induced many to be regular at church and to reform their way of living, and that the curate who i^retended to be so scandalized would himself suffer from their discontinu- ance, since those who had derived benefit from them would know that they were discontinued through his interference. Finally, she thus referred to her own duty as a wife who had promised to " obey." " If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that 'you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience ; but send me jour positive com- mand, in such full and express terms as may absolve me from guilt and punishment for neglecting this op- portunity of doing good, when you and I shall appear before the Great and awful Tribunal of our Lord Jesus Christ." One would almost imagine we were reading some reply of her son, John Wesley, to the punctilious reprimand of a bishop. Her husband said no more, feeling, no doubt, that he had the worst of the argu- ment. To form a complete estimate of Susannah Wesley, as of any other mother, we must consider her method with her children. Within a few years it is two hundred years ago since she became the wife of John Wes- ley's father. They were married in 1689, when she was nineteen years of age. She bore him nineteen children, of whom thirteen lived to be educated by her, and ten reached maturity. Only three sons grew up to manhood, of whom Samuel, the eldest, 156 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. was thirteen years old when John was born. He became distinguished as a scholar, was sent to West- minster School and to Oxford, and acquired the friendship of Lord Oxford, the Mecsenas of his age, as well as of Addison, Pope, Prior, and Bishop Atterbury. He became Head Master of Tiverton School, but his political opinions kept him from government preferment. Emilia, the next child, was a year younger than Samuel, and was remarkable, like her mother, for beauty and intelligence. Susannah, two years her junior, came next. Then Mary, a year younger, who was deformed through the carelessness of her nurse. She seemed to have been her father's favorite. Mehetabel, but one year younger than Mary, was six at John Wesley's buth. She was the most precocious in intellect, and at eight could read the New Testament in Greek. Others had died, among them a John and a Benjamin, whose names were blended in John's baptismal name. Anne was still an infant at his coming, and Martha, Charles, and Keziah came after him. Mrs. Wesley educated these children herself, John included, until he went to the Charterhouse. He him- self has recorded that besides the care of thirteen living children, his mother transacted business, wrote letters, and enjoyed social conversation. She managed the secular affairs of the rectory, for her husband was a bad financier, and before John was three years old was cast into prison for debt. The tithes and glebe were henceforth managed by her. Had this remarkable woman, whose burdens of maternity would have ex- hausted or killed any ordinary constitution, not thor- THE BEARING OF CHILDREN. 157 oughly understood the science of method and the economy of time, she could not have ruled her house- hold as she did. She had a time and place for every- thing, and allowed no jostling or confusion in the orderly sequence of her daily administration. In those days childi^en were brought up far more strictly than in our own. In America to-day there is far too much laxity and so-called freedom allowed to children. Hence the difficulty which x>arents find in restraining their children when self Mill has become a habit and the animal passions assert themselves. Mrs. Wesley, on the other hand, was strict even to severity, and was too legal and prohibitive a mother. There is a middle course which leaves the children free, because it teaches them to find freedom in law and in obedience. The human being who starts with the resolve that his or her will shall be done on earth is sure to come to grief. But the wings that are clipped and never learn to soar in youth are apt to retain this unnatural con- straint through life. It is a wonder that Mrs. Wesley, who knew^ so well the Gospel which tells of ' ' the per- fect law of liberty," did not allow nature a more spon- taneous share in the mental and moral growth of her little ones. But her opinions on this subject were set and insuperable, and it is better for the child to be severely trained than left to grow up without the sense of law and duty. Mrs. Wesley's great prescrij)tion was to break the wills of her children, forgetting that with many children the will is good and docile from the first, and that to break it is to mar God' s work. But, writing on the will, she says : " As self-will is the root of all sin and misery, so whatever cherishes this in 158 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. children insures their after wretchedness and irre- ligion ; whatever checks and mortifies it i)romotes their future happiness and piety. This is still more evident if we consider that religion is nothing else than the doing the will of God, and not our own ; that the one grand imjoediment to our temporal and eternal happi- ness being this self-will, no indulgence of it can be trivial, no denial unprofitable. Heaven or hell depends on this, so that the parent who studies to subdue it in his child works together with Grod in the rene\\dng and saving a soul. The parent who indulges does the devil's work — makes religion imxDracticable, salvation unattainable." All this is more consonant with, the severer Calvinistic philosoi)hy which John Wesley so strongly opposed Avlien it was urged by White- field, than with the view taken by the Saviour of those little ones whose angels, He said, "do always behold" the face of their Heavenly Father, and whom He deemed the nearest likenesses to the in- habitants of heaven. It is appropriate to note here that her system was successful, and made John Wesley an absolute ruler in the church he founded, beside ren- dering him so punctilious in details and precise in the use of time, that Dr. Johnson, the greatest Christian moralist of his age, thought it detracted from the ami- ability of his character. There is no disputing, however, the truth of Mrs. Wesley's further observations : "In the esteem of the world, they pass for kind and indulgent whom I call cruel parents ; who permit their children to get habits which they know must be afterward broken. Nay, some are so stupidly fond as in sport to teach their chil- THE WESLEY CHILDREN. 159 dren to do tilings which in a while after they severely beat them for doing. When the will of a child is totally subdued, and it is brought to revere and stand in awe of its parents, then a great many childish follies and inadvertencies may be passed by." The rules which Mrs. Wesley laid down for the government of her children may be thus summarized : When the child was a year old, it was taught to fear the rod, and to cry softly, if it cried at all. Wesley, in a sermon on the education of children, commends his mother's dis- cipline in this particular, and urges parents never to give a child the thing it cries for, because to do so is to reward it for crying and to encourage it to cry habitu- ally for whatever it desires. The Wesley children were allowed three meals a day, but the troublesome habit of eating and drinking be- tween meals was jDositively forbidden them. They were washed and put to bed at eight o' clock, the eldei children attending to the younger ones. The whole family were taught the Lord' s Prayer as soon as they could speak, and had to repeat it night and morning at their mother' s knee. Rudeness to each other was never tolerated by her. Six hours a day were sj^ent in study. Loud talMng and playing in the street or garden without jiermission were forbidden. With the exception of Keziah, the Wesleys were not taught to read until they were five years old, and then only one day was allowed them for learning the alphabet, a task which all accomplished except Mary and Anne, who took a day and a half to learn their letters per- fectly. They were taught to sing hymns every morn- ing when school was opened, and at the close of each 160 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. day's work. Tlie elder children read the Psalms for the day out of the Prayer-book, and a chai^ter of the Bible to the younger ones. Such was the discipline John Wesley was bred up in, until at ten years of age he was sent to London and became a scholar of the Charterhouse, where he was admitted on January 28th, 1713-14. At the age of sixteen he left school, and at seventeen entered Christ Church, Oxford. " Terrible," says the Rev. L. Tyerman, one of his biographers, " is t]ie danger when a child leaves a pious home for a public school. John Wesley entered the Charterhouse a saint, and left it a sinner." The Rectory at Ej) worth had caught fire when John was about six years old. His mother " waded through the fire," as she says, but John, who was missing when his father took count of the children, seems to have been rescued by a man who saw him at an upper win- dow, and reached him by climbing up another's shoulders. This was not the only alarming visitation which came upon the rector and his family. While John was at the Charterhouse, his mother and sisters acquaint him with a series of extraordinary and unac- countable disturbances, resembling precisely some of the phenomena of modern Spiritualism. Toward the close of the year 1715, the maid-servant was terrified by hearing at the dining-room door several dismal groans, as of a person at the point of death. Her story was ridiculed, but a few nights afterward strange knockings were heard in different parts of the house. As, according to vulgar superstition, such sounds were never heard by the person whose death tliey betokened, the family said nothing to their father, because he had SUPERNATURAL NOISES. 161 not heard the noises himself, and they feared to alarm him for his own life. At length, however, the disturb- ances became so alarming that none of the household dared to be alone, and Mrs. Wesley informed her hus- band. The sounds consisted of loud rumblings above stairs or below", a clatter among bottles, as if they had been suddenly dashed to pieces, the footsteps of a man going up stairs or down at all hours of the night, sounds like that of dancing in an emjDty room, the door of which was locked, and a knocking about the beds at night, and in different parts of the house. Rats inside the house and mischievous jDersons without were alter- nately the exiDlanations given by the rector and Mrs. Wesley to the children and servants. One night he was himself awakened by nine distinct and loud knocks, which seemed to be in the adjoining room, with a pause at every third stroke. He searched, but find- ing no one, called in a large mastiff for security. But the dog, which upon the first disturbance had barked violently, was ever af terw^ard cowed by it, and seeming more terrified than any of the children, came whining himself to his master and mistress, as if to seek their protection. When the man-servant, Robin Brown, took the mastiff to his room at night, as soon as the latch begun to jar as usual the dog crept into bed, and barked and howled with nervous distress. But, as Samuel Taylor Coleridge observes upon this incident, " Dogs are often seen to catch fear from their owners." Mrs. Wesley seems now to have been convinced that the noises were supernatural, and she begged her hus- band to " try the spmt" by questioning it. One night, therefore, after several deep groans had been 162 THE MOTHER OF JOLX WESLEY. lieard, lie asked it solemnly if anything liad happened to his three absent sons, esj^ecially the eldest, Samuel, whose spirit he su]3posed it might possibly be, in case the young man had died suddenly. Father, mother, and sisters were reassured, however, by the rappings or silences that followed. Henceforth the beautiful and lively Emilia nicknamed the spirit, " Old Jeffrey/' and the children ceased to be so much afraid of the phenomena, although on one occasion the rector testifies that on his asking it into his study after calling it " a deaf and dumb devil,*" the spirit obeyed seem- ingly in bad humor, for Mr. Wesley was pushed vio- lently against the wall by it after entering. This oc- curred to him three times, but to no one else except Emilia, against whom a door was jDUshed violently when there was no one outside. The latches were fre- quently lifted up, the windows clattered, and all the iron and brass rung and jarred when this familiar sx)ii it was around. As these phenomena are those of modern Spiritual- ism in its more eccentric forms, so the explanation of them is equally difficult. Isaac Taylor tries to laugh the spirit out of court, but the accounts of the rector and Mrs, Wesley seem too serious and circumstantial to be ridiculed. Dr. Priestley pronounced it " perhaps the best authenticated and best told story of the kind that is anywhere extant." Southey says that " the testi- mony upon which i t rests is far too strong to be set aside, because of the strangeness of the relation,'' and that " such things may be preternatural and yet not miraculous ; they may be not in the ordinary course of nature, and yet imply no alteration of its laws." S. T. LETTERS OF MOTHER AND SON. 163 Coleridge pronounced the whole thing a conspiracy of the men- and maid- servants. John Wesley, who was just beginning his career at Oxford when the opinion he had already formed that the E]3worth manifestations were of supernatural origin, received a strange confirmation by an adventure of his own, which he narrates in a letter to his mother. He tells her that a Mr. Barnesley, and two other of his fellow-students, had recently seen an apparition in a field adjoining Oxford, and that it had since been ascer- tained that Barnesley' s mother had died in Ireland at the very moment when the spectre had been witnessed. John Wesley was always a firm believer in the supernatural, and what has been called " the night side of nature." Some critics have depreciated him as too superstitious. These strange occurrences at Epworth no doubt set him to thinking, and he found even in the New Testament much to confirm the belief in dreams, apparitions, and preternatural phenomena. His mother, with the philosoi^hic wisdom which was so great a feature of her mental character, writes to him in answer : " Dear Jackey, the story of Mr. Barnesley has afforded me many curious speculations. I do not doubt the fact, but I cannot understand why these ap- paritions are permitted. If they were allowed to speak to us, and we had strength to bear such con- verse ; if they had commission to inform us of anything relating to their invisible world that would be of any use to us in this ; if they would instruct tis how to avoid danger, or put us in a way of being wiser and better, there would be sense in it ; but to appear for no 164 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. end we know of, unless to frighten people almost ont of their wits, seems altogether unreasonable. " The sensible judgment she here expresses is about the conclusion at which the more judicious have ar- rived, touching the " spiritual manifestations" that have troubled the world for the past thirty years. But, indeed, all Mrs. Wesley's letters upon every subject breathe the same candid and judicious spirit. The letters of very talented women are sometimes their best performances, and those of Susannah Wesley will bear comparison for high princii)le and sterling sense with those of any mother' s letters to her children with which we are acquainted. She writes to her illustrous son while he is at Oxford, of j)redestination, which she rejects as decidedly as he did ; of the lawfulness of worldly pleasures ; and even of love, her letter upon which Adam Clarke declares " would be a gem even in the best written treatise on the powers and j)assions of the human mind." In this letter she says : "Suffer now a word of advice. However curious you may be in searching into the nature or in distinguishing the properties of the passions or virtues of human kind, for your own private satisfaction, be very cautious in giving nice distinctions in public assemblies ; for it does not answer the true end of preaching, wliicli is to amend men's lives, and not to fill their heads with un- profitable speculations. And after all that can be said, every affection of the soul is better known by experi- ence than by any description tliat can be given of it. An honest man will more easily apprehend what is meant by being zealous for God against sin, when he hears what are the properties and effects of true zeal, " AN UNPROFITABLE SERVANT." 165 than the most accurate description of its essence." Mrs. Wesley, as Adam Clarke has remarked, "never considered herself discharged from the care of her chil- dren. Into all situations she followed them with her Ijrayers and counsels, and her sons, even when at the University, found the utility of her wise and x)arental instructions. They proposed to her all their doubts, and consulted her in all their difficulties." If religion consist in the faithful discharge of aU the duties of life in the fear of God, and the love of the Saviour, it would not be easy to find a woman with a better claim to the title of Christian than Susannah Wesley. But her letters, toward the close of her long and useful life, indicate that she is not satisfied vrith. her own spiritual condition. " When ye have done all that is commanded you," said Christ, "say. We are unprofitable servants," and she writes to John Wesley, " You did well to correct that fond desire of dying be- fore me, since you do not know what work God may have for you to do ere you leave the world. ... I should be glad to have you with me when I die. But as I have been an unprofitable servant, during the course of a long life, I have no reason to hope for so great an honor, so high a favor as to be employed in doing our Lord any service in the article of death." At other times we find her less despondent, and more hopeful under the consciousness of duty done. "I often think," she writes to him, " that were He always present to our mind, as we are present to Him, there would be no pain nor sense of misery. I have long since chosen Him as my only good ; my all ; my j)leasure, my happiness in this world, as well as in the 106 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. world to come. And although I have not been so faithful to His grace as I ought to have been, yet I feel my spirit adheres to its choice, and aims daily at cleaving steadfastly unto God. Yet one thing often troubles me, that, notwithstanding I know that while we are present with the body, we are absent from the Lord ; notwithstanding I have no taste nor relish left for anything the world calls pleasure, yet I do not long to go home, as in reason I ought to do. This often shocks me ; and as I constantly pray, almost without ceasing, for thee, my son, so I beg you likewise to pray for me, that God would make me better, and take me at the best." This discontent with her oa\ti spiritual condition dur- ing her past life culminated in what the Methodists would call her conversion, at seventy years of age. John Wesley had reached the climax of his zeal, and was preaching in the open air at Moorfields and Ken- nington Common. His mother apx)roved his course, and told him that she had never until recently felt the present forgiveness of sins, or God's spirit bearing wit- ness with our spirit. But when she had taken the communion, and her son-in-law, Mr. Hall, had delivered the cup to her with the solemn words of the Prayer- book, she had felt struck to the heart, and then knew that God for Christ's sake had forgiven her all her sins. Her eldest son, Samuel, who never sympathized with what he deemed the schismatical course of his brothers, wrote to her : " It was with exceeding con- cern and grief I heard you had countenanced a sj^read- ing delusion, so far as to be one of Jack's congregation. HER EPITAPH. IGT Is it not enough that I am bereft of both my brothers, but must my mother follow too ? I earnestly beseech the Almighty to preserve you from joining a schism at the close of your life, as you were unfortunately en- gaged in one at the beginning of it. They boast of you already as a disciple.'' Whether they boasted of her supposed conversion while she lived or not, they alluded to it in the epi- taph which they placed upon her tombstone, calling Iier long and Christian life ' ' a legal night of seventy years," and proclaiming in the third stanza her conver- sion as we have narrated it. Mrs. Wesley died July 23d, 1742. Her last words were : " Children, as soon as I am released, sing a psalm of praise to God." The epi- taph will aptly conclude this sketch of one of the most remarkable mothers of modern times. This is the inscription : " Here lies the body of Mrs. Susannali "Wesley, the youngest and last surviving daughter of Dr. Samuel Annesley. " In sure and steadfast hope to rise And claim her mansion in the skies, A Christian here her flesh laid down, The cross exchanging for a crown. *' True daughter of afiiiction she, Inured to pain and misery, Mourn'd a long night of grief and fears, A legal night of seventy years. " The Father then revealed His Son, Him in the broken bread made known ; She knew and felt her sins forgiven, And found the earnest of her Heaven. 168 THE MOTHER OF JOHN WESLEY. " Meet for the fellowship above, She heard the call, ' Arise, my Love ! ' ' I come,' her dying looks replied. And, lamb-like as her Lord, she died.'* CHAELES LAMB'S MOTHER. Charles Lamb's mother is perhaps the least con- spicuous of all the mothers of modern men of genius. Indeed, she is chietly remembered as the victim of her gentle daughter's insanity, who in one of her paroxysms deprived her of life. Both his parents were of humble origin, his father having begun life as a menial servant and risen to be scrivener in a lawyer's office. His mother was the daughter of a worthy but common- place woman, who was for many years the housekeeper in a gentleman's family. " But although of humble station, his parents," says Sir Thomas Noon Talfourd, " were endued with sentiments and with manners which might well become the gentlest blood ; and fortune, w^hich had denied them wealth, enabled them to bestow on their children some of the happiest intellectual advantages which wealth ever confers." His father, Mr. John Lamb, who came to London when a little boy from Lincoln, entered into the service of Mr. Salt, one of the benchers of the Inner Temple, a widower, who, growing old within its precincts, was enabled to appreciate and reward his devotedness and intelli- gence ; and to whom he became, in the language of his son, "his. clerk, his good-servant, his dresser, his friend, his flapper, his guide, stopwatch, auditor, treasurer." Charles Lamb has given the characters of his father and of Mr. Salt in one of the most exquisite of 170 CHARLES LAMB'S MOTHER. the " Essays of Elia," entitled " The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple." John Lamb had some literary talent and ambition, and j)nblished some poetical effusions which he had written to grace the festivities of the Benefit Society, of which he was a member, with the title of " Poetical Pieces on Several Occasions.'' Elizabeth Lamb, his wife, was a woman of such ma- tronly and commanding appearance, that it was said of her by one of Charles Lamb's playmates, that '' she might be taken for a sister of Mrs. Siddons. " They had three children, John, Mary, and Charles, of whom John was twelve years and Mary ten years older than Charles. The tender devotion of Cliarles to Mary Lamb, and the deep affection that subsisted between them, is an oft-told tale. From which of her parents Mary inherited her occasional insanity does not ap- pear. There was as little in the mother to account for the mental disease of the daughter as there was in the father to account for the genius of the son. Like her husband, whose junior she was by many years, Mrs. Lamb was fond of pleasure. Her tastes were wholly different from those of her two sensitive chil- dren, whom she did not in the least comprehend. She lacked utterly in intuition and imagination, and hence was cruel oftentimes to her nervous daughter. Charles, in writing of her many years after her death, said, " Her mother (Mary's) loved her, with a mother's love ; but in opinion, in feeling and sentiment and dis- position, bore so distant a resemblance to her daughter that she never understood her right — never could be- lieve how much she loved her — but met her caresses, her i)ro testations of filial affection, too frequently with THE HOUSEHOLD. 171 coldness and repulse. Still, she was a good mother. God forbid I should think of her but most respect- fully, most affectionately." ]^o doubt he tried sincerely, and in a sense he did love his mother, and because of her tragic death he held her in tender memory ; but Mrs. Lamb" s nature was so widely different from her son's that he felt no deex3 sentiment of love toward her. She might have lived nearer to her children, had not her mother, a painfully practical and commonplace, though worthy ]3erson, resided with her and influenced her actions. Later there came to the home of the Lambs a sister of Mr. Lamb, who for twenty years was an added note of discord in that otherwise inharmonious family. The household was a discordant one in itself, but it might have been a happier one had not these outside elements been introduced into it. When the mother would have been tender, her mother chided her for spoiling her children, and little Mary grew up accustomed to rebuke and rebuff, where she turned for sympathy and caress. The affection between the brother and sister grew and strengthened, and very early in their youth they learned to suppress their longings for the society of their mother, and to risk no manifestation of feeling that would be repelled. They were poor and not over-ambitious parents, and their outlook upon life was limited and confined. Poor Charles and Mary, with their fine sensibilities and love of the beautiful, tried hard to see everything in its best life, and to look upon their home circle with fond pride. Their imaginations gilded the coarse outlines of vul- garity and poverty with a sunny brightness, and right 172 CHARLES LAMB'S MOTHER. resolutely they tried to believe that things were what they could make them seem, not what they were. The strain was too great for the girl, comj^elled all her days to be in constant contact with those about her. She toiled incessantly, hoping through occupation to find courage and peace. The father grew ill, and the mother had long been in feeble health. Mary was earning her own support and that of the others, in part, with her needle, and her health became impaired. Then the mother's illness increased, and added to the cares of the day was the nursing that had to be given the sufferer a part of each night. The eldest brother, John, a wholly selfish fellow, who would not live at home when he was well, returned there to be nursed through an attack of illness, and Mary' s burdens grew heavier with each suc- ceeding week. Her nervous excitability increased, and there were alarming symptoms of insanity exhibited. But she rallied quickly, and each time redoubled her efforts for those about her. Finally there came a time when she did not rally, and in an acute and sudden at- tack of frenzy she caught up a knife lying on the table, chased a young girl who was sewing with her, and plunged it into her mother's breast, killing her in- stantly. The father, then almost in his dotage, in at- tempting to take the knife from her, was slightly wounded. Long afterward, when recovering from one of her periodical attacks, and while in the asylum, she wrote these pathetic words of her mother in a letter to her brother: "At midnight, when I happen to awake, the nurse sleeping by the side of me, with the noise of the poor mad people around me, I have no MARY LAMB'S LETTERS. 173 fear. The spirit of my mother seems to descend and smile upon me, and bid me live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty has given me. I shall see her again in Heaven ; she will then understand me better. My grandmother, too, will understand me better, and will then say no more, as she used to do, ' Polly, what are those poor, crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking of always ? ' " In one of her letters Mary Lamb speaks of her mother as " a perfect gentlewoman," but the designa- tion is not correct. Mrs. Lamb had no claim whatever to the title, and only the partiality of her daughter led her to use the expression. Had she been a gentle- v.^oman, it would be easier to explain the presence in her two children of rare qualities of mind and heart, which have not been accounted for, and cannot be by the law of heredity in this case. On the subject of her mother Mary Lamb was often morbid ; she grew, how- ever, to speak of her with composure, and in later years with almost a certain hope of seeing her again, as she shows in these lines to her brother, which he translated " almost literally," he says, and with which is closed this fragment. " Thou and I, dear friend, With filial recognition sweet, shall know- One day the face of our dear mother in Heaven ; And her remembered looks of love shall greet With answering looks of love, her placid smiles Meet with a smile as placid, and her hand With drops of fondness wet, nor fear repulse." THACKERAY'S MOTHER. Thackeray's mother, like Lamb's, can claim but a brief mention. He was a man of many minds, and it is impossible to trace his varying characteristics to their paternal source. Thackeray was born at Cal- cutta on July 18th, 1811. His father and grandfather were in the Indian civil service ; his mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in the service of the East India Company. She was married early in India, and was only nineteen when her son, William Make- peace Thackeray, was born. She was left a widow in 1816, with this only child, and was married a few years afterward to Major Henry Carmichael Smyth, with whom Thackeray lived on terms of affectionate inter- course till the Major died. "All who knew William Makepeace Thackeray," says Anthony Trollope, "re- membered his mother well, a handsome, spare, gray- haired lady, whom Thackeray treated with a courtly deference as well as constant affection. There was, however, something of discrepancy between them as to matters of religion. Mrs. Carmichael Smyth was dis- posed to the somewhat austere observance of the evan- gelical section of the Church. Such certainly never became the case with her son. There was disagree- ment on the subject, and jirobably unhappiness at in- tervals, but never, I think, quarrelling. Thackeray's THACKERAY'S MOTHER 175 house was his mother's home whenever she pleased to live in it, and the home also of his stepfather. "It was a newspaper enterprise, entered into with this same stepfather, that cost poor Thackeray his little fortune of five hundred pounds a year. Some of the genius of Thackeray has survived in his eldest daughter. His marriage was a most unhappy one, through no fault of either his or his wife's, but owing to the mental illness of the latter. His daughters were all in all to him, and many will remember his touching reference to them in ' The White Squall.' " 'But when the storm was ended, Its fury all expended, And as the sunrise splendid Came blushing o'er the sea, I thought that day was breaking, My little girls were waking, And smiling, and making A prayer at home for me.' " But his home was broken up by his wife' s affliction, when their children were little more than babies, so far as society was concerned. It was in 1837, when he was twenty-six years old, that Thackeray married Isa- bella, daughter of Colonel Matthew Shawe. She be- came ill, and her mind failed her. "There was a period," says Trollope, " during which he would not believe that her illness was more than illness, and then he clung to her and waited upon her with an as- siduity of affection which only made his task the more painful to him. At last it became evident that she should live in the companionship of some one with whom her life might be altogether quiet, and she has 176 AN INSANE WIFE. been since domiciled with a lady with whom she has been happy. Thus she was, after but a few years of married life, taken away from him, and he became as it were a widower to the end of his days. Three daughters were born to them, of whom Jane, the sec- ond, died when a child. The eldest became Mrs. Rich- mond Ritchie, and the youngest Mrs. Leslie Stephen. The last named died a few years ago.' ' At the time of the publication of Charlotte Bronte' s famous novel, " Jane Eyre," the report was circulated in London that the writer had satirized Thackeray in the character of Rochester, and had even obtruded on the great sorrow of his life. The falsity and the statement were soon made public, but for a time liter- ary and social London accepted as a fact that which the character of " Currer Bell" alone was sufficient of itself to make impossible, even had she not vehemently contradicted the story. CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHj.. Of the many thousands to whom " the mother of the Gracchi" is a familiar phrase, very few compara- tively know anything about the Gracchi or their mother. Yet Cornelia may be called the greatest of all Roman matrons, the daughter of the greatest Roman general of his time, the wife of a vii'tuous and distin- guished statesman, and the mother of two sons, who, with one daughter, were all that reached maturity out of a family of twelve children, whose brilliant talents and tragic endings form two of the most thrill- ing chapters in the history of the later Roman Com- monwealth. If they derived their brilliant qualities from her, she in turn derived them from her father, Publius Cornelius Scipio, to whom the agnomen of " Africanus" was added because he vanquished Hanni- bal and ended the second Carthaginian war at the battle of Zama. The pride of Cornelia in her sons Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Caius Gracchus was shown by the fact that she accounted her maternal rela- tionship to them her supreme claim to honor and re- spect. When left a widow in the prime of womanhood, she refused many advantageous offers of a second mar- riage through the honorable pride she took in her hus- band's memory and in the education of her children ; and when the great King Ptolemy himself, charmed with her virtues, intellect, and accomplishments, offered i78 CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. to make her Ms Queen and the sharer of his kingdom, she refused to exchange Roman widow' s weeds for the splendors of a court. When a companion lady, notic- ing the severe plainness of her apparel, asked her, "Where are your jewels?" Cornelia introduced her sons and said, with a true mother's pride, that they were the only Jewels she could boast of possessing. And when those sons were dead, both of them mur- dered at the Capitol, though at different times, by the exclusive class of landed plutocrats whom they had offended, and their myrmidons, she bore her grief heroically, and when a friend condoled with her, re- plied, ' ' The woman who had the Gracchi for her sons cannot be considered unfortunate." No stronger proof can be adduced of her being esteemed the noblest of Roman matrons than the fact that at her death the people erected a brass statue to her memory, bearing on it the legend, " Cornelia, the Mother of the Gracchi." Although both of her sons were really murdered by a mob, and although the political action which led to this tragic and violent end has not been generally ap- proved even by the modern historians of Rome, Cornelia regarded them as patriotic martyrs, and felt it an honor to have given the lives of two such sons to the Commonwealth. The same feeling supported many a heroic American mother when the tidings reached her that her darling boy — sometimes her only one and she a widow— had been killed on the field of battle. Her anguish might be great, but she subdued it with the thought that she was the mother of a hero and a martyr. The same patriotic j)ride supported her in her widow- THE FATHER OF CORNELIA. ITO hood as that which forbade Cornelia to give way to grief, and to think herself fortunate in being the mother of Tiberius and Cains. Gracchus. In estimating the character of this noble Roman lady, account must be taken of the heroic stock she came from and of the times in which she lived, in many re- spects so different from our own. Her father was the most distinguished member of the illustrious family of the Scipios. Those who have read the majestic narra- tive of the Second Punic War, contained in the Second Decade of Livy's " History of Rome," will remember how great a part he and his brother played in the con- duct of the war. It was the father of Cornelia who, after the disastrous battle of Cannae, when the slaughter of the Roman knights was so great and the panic created at Rome by the news of the catastrophe was so widespread, that if Hannibal, instead of spending some time in " masterly inactivity' ' and gratulations over bis decisive victory, had marched directly to the gates of Rome, there is good reason to believe that he could have surprised and overpowered the Senate and have taken the city — it was Publius Cornelius Scipio, we say, who prevented the desertion of the young nobles from the army and the Capitol, and who .restored courage to the shattered and disorganized legions. On an earlier occasion it is reported of him that he saved the life of his father at l\\e battle of the Ticinus. Publius Cornelius Scipio was only twenty -four years of ag<3 when he was appointed iiroconsul in Spain, and took command of the legions that were sent to opjiose the forces of Hannil)al in that country. Most young gener- als at his age, vain of their new dijrnitv and the absolute 180 CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. power intrusted to them for the time, would have been impetuous and foolhardy, and rushed eagerly to battle on the first sight of the enemy. Not so did the fatlier of Cornelia. He had prudence and foresight as w^ell as courage, and much as he longed to meet in deadly com- bat the Napoleon of that age, who was bound when yet a lad by his fatlier, Hamilcar, at the sacred altars of the gods in Cartilage, to wage against Rome a never-ending warfare, and to cherish against the Roman people an un- dying hatred, yet he counted the cost ; and knowing that the army of Hannibal was far greater than his own and that it was flushed, like those of France under the Corsican adventurer, with rej^eated victories, he avoided the hazard of an engagement, and contented himself with laying siege to Nova Carthage, New Carthage, now the commercial port of Carthagena, and captured that city the same year. This was in the year 210 B.C. Unlike so many of the world's heroes, his success did not render him vainglorious nor the sense of power tyrannical. New Carthage lay wholly at the mercy of its conqueror, but Publius Scipio, when he became master of the city, made it his first business to liberate the Spanish hostages and prisoners of Hannibal whom he found shut up there. Among them he restored to liberty a beautiful Spanish maiden who was languish- ing in prison. From such episodes as this we gain an insight into the magnanimous and really heroic char- acter t)f the mother of Cornelia. So great was the admiration wliich his conduct excited that he was even offered tlie sovereignty of Spain, but as a true repub- lican he refused to accept it. To be the general of a Roman army was to Publius Scipio a greater honor THE BATTLE OF ZAMA. 181 than to occupy a throne. The taking of 'New Carthage, however, was but the beginning of his Spanish cam- paign. During the ensuing three years he took from the grasp of Hannibal every city in Spain, with the exception of Gades, now Cadiz. All this time the ambition of this great general was fixed upon Africa as the scene of his future triumphs, as it actually was. In order to prepare the way for the in- vasion of the Carthaginian territory, he entered into a secret alliance mth Syphax, King of Numidia, who afterward went over. to the Carthaginian side. Publius returned to Rome in 206 B.C., and was chosen consul for the ensuing year. Sicily was assigned him as his province, and his prestige as a commander was now so great that he easily raised an army of volunteers, and in 204 B.C. crossed over into Africa and began the siege of Utica, but he retired into winter quarters on the approach of the Carthaginian general, Hasdrubal, whom Hannibal had sent to meet him. As soon as the spring-time offered Sci^iio a further opportunity, he burned by stratagem the double camp of the enemy, and destroyed the scattered forces. The traitor King Syphax was captured, and Creta surrendered to the Roman conqueror. Later on he encountered the mighty Hannibal himself, who was indeed a ' ' f oeman worthy of his steel. " The battle of Zama, in wliich Pub- lius Cornelius Scipio defeated the Carthaginian general — one of the greatest military commanders the world has ever seen — was fought on October 19th, 202 B.C. In the following year a treaty of peace was signed between Rome and Carthage. On his return home the father of Cornelia received the greatest triumph that 182 CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. had ever been witnessed in Rome. Henceforth the name of " Africanus" was added to his own, much as modern generals are known by the countries or scenes of battle that have made them famous through decisive victories. "Vaulting ambition that o'erleaps itself and falls on the other side" was not a weakness of Scipio, who declined many of the honors that were offered him. He rose, however, by the will of the people to be censor and consul the second time, and in 193 B.C. he w^as chosen ambassador to the court of Antiochus, King of Syria, where he is said to have met his old oj)ponent Hannibal. It is certain that Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus died in 183 B.C., the same year in which Hannibal committed suicide at the age of seventy. Great men seldom escape the tongues of calumny and the machinations of slander. Scipio and his brother, Lucius Cornelius Scipio, surnamed Asiaticus, who was consul in 109 b.c, and whom he accompanied to the war in Syria, were both accused of misapiDropriating moneys which they had received from King Antiochus. Cato was the leading spirit among the accusers of the Scipios. The prosecution of Lucius was successful, but the influence of Cornelia's husband, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus the elder, quashed the indict- ment against his father-in-law, although, for jDolitical reasons, they were never on cordial terms with each other. The fickle breath of poj)ularity, however, de- serted Scipio, and like many another hero who has devoted himself to his country to find it ungrateful in the end, Scipio retired from Rome and public life to his private villa at Liternum, where he died. MARRIAGE OF CORNELIA. 183 Sucli is a brief acconnt of one of the greatest soldiers and nobles of the Roman Rei)nblic in its later days, little more than a hundred years before it became an Empire under the ill-fated Julius and the succeeding Caesars. It will be seen that Cornelia, who was so X3roud of being the mother of the Gracchi, had no cause to blush at being the daughter of Scii^io. From him her courage and her taste for literature were de- rived, although we must not refuse a share of influence to her mother, who was of noble birth and lineage, being the daughter of the famous Emilius Paiilus. Cornelia was the youngest daughter of Publius Cor- nelius Scipio, and was married at an early age to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, who was many years her senior. Comparatively little is known of him, and that little, which is derived chiefly from Plutarch, is not very reliable. Speaking of the Gracchi, he says : " They were the sons of Tiberius Gracchus, who, though he had been once censor, twice consul, and had twice been accorded a triumph, yet was more renowned and esteemed for his virtue than his honors. Upon this account, after the death of Scipio, who overthrew Hanni- bal, he was thought worthy to match with his daugh- ter Cornelia, though there had besn no friendship or familiarity between Scipio and him, but rather the con- trary," Other authorities, as we have seen, make the marriage to have taken place during Scipio' s lifetime, and he is said by Livy to have given his daughter to Gracchus because the latter interfered to save his brother Lucius Scipio from being dragged to prison. It is certain that he was censor in 169 B.C., and* that he favored the popular party in the politics of the state. 184 CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. All the ancient wTiters are fond of omens and i)rodigies, and accordingly Plutarch adds : " There is a story told, that Gracchus once found in his bedchamber a couple of snakes, and that the soothsayers, being consulted concerning the prodigy, advised that he should neither kill them both nor let them both escape ; adding, that if the male serpent was killed, Tiberius should die, and if the female, Cornelia ; and that, therefore, Tiberius, who extremely loved his wife, and thought, besides, that it was much more his part, who was an old man, to die, than it was hers, who as yet was but a young woman, killed the male serpent, and let the female escape, and soon after himself died, leaving be- hind him twelve children born to him by Cornelia. Cornelia, taking upon herself all the care of the house- hold and the education of her children, approved her- self so discreet a matron, so affectionate a mother, and so constant and noble-spirited a vadow, that Tiberius Gracchus seemed to all men to have done nothing un- reasonable in choosing to die for such a woman ; who, when King Ptolemy himself proffered her his crown, and would have married her, refused it and chose rather to live a widow. In this state she continued, and lost all her children except one daughter, who was married to Scix:)io Africanus the younger, and two sons, Tiberius and Caius." The eldest of these two sons was named after his father, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. He was born about the year 166 b.c. Losing his father when he was a little child, he was brought up entirely by his mother' Cornelia and the Greek tutors whom she en- gaged to assist her. It was an age when every edu- STUDIES GREEK LITERATURE. 185 cated Roman deemed it essential to become a good Greek scholar, Cato devoted to Greek literature the learned leisure of his later years, and Cicero not only delighted in the historians, i)hilosophers, poets, and di^amatists of Greece, but was himself an author in the Greek tongue. Cornelia, therefore, a lady of the highest culture and refinement, who had in her the best patrician blood of Scipio and of Emilius Paulus, would naturally be anxious that her sons should be masters of the marvellous language, which, as the vehicle for subtle distinctions and profound ideas, has never been equalled, much less excelled. AVe shall find Cornelia herself, long after both her sons had been murdered, enjoying in the calm retirement of the even- ing of her life these same Greek studies and conversa- tions which she provided for them when boys. Tibe- rius Gracchus when a young man married the daughter of Appius Claudius, chief of the Senate at Rome. Soon after this he distinguished himself under his brother-in-law, the husband of his only surviving sister, Scipio Africanus the younger, at the siege of Carthage, when one of the grandest cities of ancient commerce and civilization was ruthlessly destroyed, according to the military ethics of the time. At about the age of thirty, Tiberius* Gracchus served as questor in Spain. He had, however, conceived the desire of becoming a political reformer, and especially of amending the agrarian laws by which the tenure of property in Italy was governed. Becoming tribune of the people in 133 B.C., he set himself to the formation of a middle class of small landed proprietors with as much ardor as many joatriots and reformers in our own day have dis- 18G CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. jDlayed in j)rocuring a modification of the Irish land laws by giving the tenantry an interest in theu' hold- ings and advocating a peasant proprietary. Tiberius Gracchus aimed at curtailing the immense powers and incomes of the landlords, and as a natural consequence provoked their combined hostility. He was, in pur- pose, the founder of an Italian land league, and might serve as the model for Charles Stewart Parnell to imi- tate. His first step was the j)roprosal of a measure re- viving in a modified shape a long obsolete Licinian law, for the more equal distribution of the public lands. This measure was, of course, hailed with enthusiasm by the country tribes, who would be directly benefited bj' it. But to the same degree that it delighted the small holders, it enraged the wealthy landlords. Cornelia had paid special attention to the training of both her sons in oratory. Both Tiberius and Caius be- came powerful public speakers, the former, who was nine years the senior of Caius, being more distinguished for convincing arguments, keen satu-e, and bitter irony, the latter for impassioned vehemence, which he found it sometimes impossible to restrain. We can well imagine with Avhat telling and tremendous effect the speech of Tiberius, when he proposed his land law, would fall upon a Roman audience.* " The savage beasts," he said, " in Italy have their particular dens, they have their places of repose and refuge ; but the men wlio bear arms, and expose their lives for the safety of their country, enjoy in the mean time nothing- more in it but the air and light ; and liaving no houses or settleinents of their own, are constrained to wander from place to place with their wives and children." CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. CONDITION OF THE PEASANTRY. 187 He told tliem bitterly tliat tlie Roman commanders were guilty of a ridiculous error, when, at tlie head of their armies, they exhorted the common soldiers to fight for their sepulchres and altars, when not any among so many Romans is possessed of either altar or monument, neither have they any houses of their o\vn, or hearths of their ancestors to defend. They fought indeed, and were slain, but it was to maintain the wealth and luxury of other men. They were styled the masters of the world, but in the mean time they had not one foot of ground which they could call their own. Reply to a harangue of this nature, addressed to an admiring and sympathetic people, the landed gentry felt it impossible to answer. They bided their time, however, and secured the services of Marcus Octavius, the other tribune, who had and now exercised the right of veto, and so prevented the bill of Tiberius Gracchus from becoming law. Contentions arose henceforth be- tween the two tribunes, Octavius speaking always in the interests of the landlords, and Gracchus of the im- poverished tenantry. This state of things ill accords with the enchanting pictures which the sweetest of Latin poets, Yirgil, has left us of Roman agricultural and pastoral life. But we must remember that Virgil wrote in the reign of Augustus, the golden age not only of Latin literature but of Italian wealth and plenty. But the condition of the agricultural peasantry was anything but hope- ful, if we are to believe the description given by Plutarch : "Of the lands which the Romans gained by conquest from their neighbors, jDart they sold pub- licly, and turned the remainder into common ; this 188 CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. common land they assigned to such of the citizens as were poor and indigent, for wliich they were to pay only a small acknowledgment into the public treasury. But when the wealthy men began to offer large rents, and drive the poorer people out, it was enacted by law that no person whatever should enjoy more than five hundi'ed acres of ground. This act for some time checked the avarice of the rich, and was of great as- sistance to the poorer people, who retained under it their respective i)ortions of ground, as they had been formerly rented by them. Afterward the rich men of the neighborhood contrived to get these lands again into their own possession under other people's names, and at last would not scruple to claim most of them publicly in their own. The poor, who were thus de- prived of their farms, were no longer either ready, as they had been formerly, to serve in war, or careful in the education of their children ; insomuch that in a short time there were comparatively few freemen re- maining in all Italy, which swarmed with workhouses full of foreign-born slaves. These the rich men em- ployed in cultivating their ground, of which they dis- possessed the citizens." This was the condition of land tenure which Tiberius set himself to reform. It is said that Cornelia urged him to do so, but we can scarcely credit the personal motive which some writers have attributed to her, that she wished her son to do something which would shed importance upon her, because, as she is said to have reproa(;hed him, she was as yet called by the Romans the mother-in-law of the younger Scipio Africanus, rather than the mother of the Gracchi. AYhile referring A FRIEND OF THE OPPRESSED. 189 to this Scipio, who, great as he was in statesmanshij) and military glory, did not live hai)pily with his wife, the daughter of Cornelia, we may mention here that a calumny w^hich was raised against Cornelia by the enemies of the Gracchi at a subsequent date was, that she caused, with the assistance of her daughter, the death of her son-in-law, Scipio, who w^as found dead in his bed. There is no evidence to show this, and it is contradicted by all that has been handed down to us of her character as well as by that of the age, which abhor- red private while i^ractising public assassinations. We may reasonably suppose that so intellectual and noble a woman would take a real interest in the welfare of the oppressed peasantry, and would encourage her sons, from the most generous motives, to become the cham- X^ions of their rights. In our own day we have seen the mothers of the Land Reformers of Ireland do the same thing, and it is possible that some of them have taken Cornelia as theu" ideal mother of patriots. The result of the advocacy of Tiberius Gracchus, however, was as fatal as his motives were good. He caused his colleague, Octavius, to be deposed from his tribuneship, and so put aside the chief obstacle to the passage of his bill. But both the plebeian or popular party whom his proposed revival of a dormant law gratified, and the aristocratic or landed class w^hom it displeased, were composed of heterogeneous elements not easy to control. Those w^ho as provincial governors and military commanders had enriched themselves by rapacity and cruelty were, of course, adverse to any measure in the interests of the jioor, and were not likely to be scrupulous in their efforts to crush it and its ad- 190 CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. vocates. Accordingly, wlien Gracchus, losing his tem- per at the opposition he encountered, x>roposed that all who held national estates beyond the legal amount should immediately give them up, and got the law passed by obtaining his legal authority as tribune, sus- pending the functions of other officers of state, and sealing \\j) the doors of the treasury so that no public money could be drawn, it began to be whispered that he aimed at making himself the tyrant of Rome. A senator gave him warning that the nobility were arm- ing their slaves for an attack upon him and his sup- j)orters. The senators, wrax^ping their gowns around their left arms, and armed with clubs and sticks, marched in a body to the Capitol. Three hundred of the friends of Gracchus were slain, and he himself, en- deavoring to escape, and stumbling over their bodies, was killed by repeated blows on the head. The Romans thought little of murder for political ends, and even Cicero, who was ahead of his time in moral principle, warmly defends the murder of Tiberius Sem- pronius Gracchus. The Senate cast his body into the Tiber, and proceeded to execute with great cruelty his remaining partisans. The political career and unfortunate ending of Caius, the younger of the Gracchi, resembled those of his brother. Plutarch, who, however, was a foreigner, and wrote two hundred years after these events, tells us that he commenced his career as tribune by making inflammatory speeches to the people and bewailing the murder of his brother. Cicero relates that his brother appeared to him in a dream and said, " Why do you tarry, Caius 1 There is no escape ; one life and one CAIUS ENCOURAGED BY CORNELIA. 191 death is aiDpointed for us both, to spend the one and to meet the other in the service of the people." His mother, Cornelia, also encouraged him, it is said, to follow in his brother's footsteps, and carry out his agrarian reforms. So great was the influence of his mother over Caius that he abandoned a measure he had introduced, at her solicitation. "This," says Plutarch, "was very acceptable and pleasing to the people, w^ho had a great veneration for Cornelia, not more for the sake of her father than for that of her children." He resented the least disrespect shown to his mother. "How dare you," he asked of another speaker, in one of his harangues, ' ' presume to reflect upon Cornelia, the mother of Tiberius V ' Caius car- ried out many excellent improvements, especially in the construction and beautifying of the public roads. He became highly popular with the masses. He offended the aristocracy, however, by di\T.ding the public lands among the poorer citizens, charging them a small annual rent, which he paid into the public treasury. The consuls thwarted him in all his measures, and he resolved, by the advice of his friends, to put himself at the head of a body of retainers, who should use force if necessary. Cornelia, it is said, aided him in this by sending privately a number of strangers into Rome, under pretence that they came to work as harvest men. Others declare that Cornelia disapproved of his plan of resorting to violence. The collision came at last. Accounts vary as to the manner of Caius' death. Some say that the slave who attended him, in his endeavor to escape, killed him at his re- quest ; others that he slew his master and then himself 192 CORNELIA, THE MOTHER OF THE GRACCHI. of his owTi volition ; others exonerate his slave, Philoc- rates, from all participation in his murder. His body, like that of Tiberius, is said to have been thro^^Ti into the river, his goods confiscated, and his widow, Licinia, even forbidden to Avear mourning and deprived of her jointure. Three thousand other citizens were also slain. It is much to be regretted that the epistles of Cor- nelia, which Cicero commends as models of literary ex- cellence, have not been transmitted to us. That she was a woman of remarkable virtue, culture, and heroism, there is abundant proof. She lived to see the fickle sentiment of the Romans revering the memory of her sons. She herself always regarded them as martyrs for the good of the i^eople and in the cause of Justice and liberty. The simple language of Plutarch, in his life of Caius Gracchus, describing her retirement at Misenum after the death of her sons, the younger of whom, Caius, was not thirty years old when he was murdered, cannot be paraphrased, and may well con- clude our sketch of Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi. "It is reiDorted," he says, "that as Cornelia, then- mother, bore the loss of her two sons with a noble and undaunted spirit, so, in reference to the holy places in which they were slain, she said that their dead bodies were well worthy of such sepulchres. She removed afterward, and dwelt near the place called Misenum, not at all altering her former way of living. She had many friends, and hospitably received many strangers at her house ; many Greeks and learned men were con- tinually about her ; nor was there any foreign prince but received gifts from her and presented gifts to her NOBLE BEARING OF CORNELIA. 193 again. Those who were conversant with her were much interested when she pleased to entertain them with her recollections of her father, Scipio Africanns, and of his habits and way of living. But it was most admirable to hear her make mention of her sons, without any tears or sign of grief, and give the full account of all their deeds and misfortunes, as if she had been relating the history of some ancient heroes. This made some imagine that age or the greatness of her alflictions had made her senseless and devoid of natural feelings. But they who so thought were themselves more truly insensible, not to see how much a noble nature and education avail to conquer any affliction ; and though fortune may often be more successful, and may defeat the efforts of virtue to avert misfortunes, it cannot, when we incur them, i^revent our bearing them reason- ably." LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. It very rarely happens that the sanity of both the parents of a great man has been doubted. Usually if the father has been irrational in his actions, the mother has atoned for it by patience and prudence. If the temper of one parent has been headstrong and impa- tient of contradiction, that of the other has been long- suffering and conciliatory. The parents of many great men neutralize if they do not equalize each other. If the one is an acid, the other is an alkali ; if the one is passionate, the other is forbearing. Never perhaps in literary history has a great genius been so unfortunate in both of his parents as was George Gordon Byron. It is not only necessary to take a searching look at both of them in order to un- derstand the wayward and ungovernable character of their son, but it is necessary to glance at the idiosyn- crasies both of the father and the son in order to under- stand the character of the mother. Let us begin therefore with a brief account of "Mad Jack Byron," as Captain Byron, the father of the poet, was called by his associates. He was the son of Admiral John Byron, nicknamed " Foul- weather Jack" in the navy, who married Sophia, his first cousin, daughter of John Trevanion, of Cornwall, and Barbara, sister of Frances Berkeley, who married William, tlie fourth Lord Bja-on. These sisters were the daughters THE BYRON FAMILY. 195 of Baron Berkeley, of Stratton. These Berkeleys were noted for impulsiveness and waywardness. New cliaracteristics of this kind were for the first time ob- servable in the offsj^ring of the fourth Lord Byron and Frances Berkeley, and when her sister s daughter mar- ried their son, afterward the Admiral, the Berkeley blood, being equal in each of them, was transmitted in double power to "Mad Jack Byron" of the Guards, the poet' s father and the husband of Catharine Gor- don, his mother. Admiral Byron died on the 10th of April, 1786, in his 63d year, leaving two sons — the poet' s father and George Anson Byron, who distinguished himself in the navy, and was the father of the poet' s successor in the barony — and three daughters, one of whom married General Leigh, and another, by her marriage with the only son of the fifth Lord Byron, became the mother of the heir-apparent to the barony, through whose un- timely death at Corsica, in 1794, the poet succeeded to the peerage. His great-uncle, "the wicked lord," as he was called, seemed to have more than his share of the Byron- Berkeley vices. He cared nothing for family relation- ship, took no notice of "the little boy in Aberdeen" who was to succeed him, and impoverished the estate by illegal sales of property. ' ' Mad Jack Byron' ' has been represented by some as gross and brutal in his manners, but as his son said in a letter, long after his death, " It is not by ' brutality ' that a young officer of the Guards seduces and marries a marcliioness, and marries two heiresses." From him Lord Byron do rives his remarkable beauty of features. His conduct 196 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. shows him to have been an unprincipled libertine, good-natured to himself, and careless of the wrongs he inflicted upon others. When he succeeded in ruining the Marchioness Carmarthen, wife of the heir to the dukedom of Leeds, she was not yet twenty-three, though the mother of three children, and he not twenty- one. She possessed remarkable beauty, and became Baroness Conyers in her own right on the death of her father, the fourth Earl of Holderness. In 1778, when he was twenty-two and her first husband had divorced her, the noble Guardsman married her and they went to France. It is not likely that he ill-treated her, since her life income was £4000 a year, and her death, which took place six years afterward, left ' ' Mad Jack" without a penny. Augusta Byron, afterward the Honorable Mrs. Leigh, and the poet's half-sister, was the only, child of this marriage. It is unnecessary to refute the atrocious charge which was made against Lord Byron's memory in connection with this lialf- sister, for whom he entertained a brother' s friendship, and life-long affection. The adventurous Life Guardsman, now a widower, soon began to cast his eyes around for an heiress to recuperate his fortunes. At Bath, then the fashion- able Avatering-place, he met Catharine Gordon, of Gight, Aberdeenshire, who had £23,000 in land, bank shares, and monej^ Perhaps he thought she had more, or that the amount would suffice for his pleas- ures. He engaged her affections easily, for in spite of her fortune, her unattractive looks and awkward figure had kept her without offers of marriage. They were married in Scotland, in March, 1786, not at Bath, A VAGABOND HUSBAND. 197 as Moore states in his "Life of Byron." Her father had committed suicide, and as she was of age she was mistress of her own actions as well as of her fortune. Early in the following summer he took her to France, and at Paris — his favorite abode — and Chantilly, where he chiefly kept his wife, they soon got through £3000, which was her stock of ready money when they mar- ried, and £600 which she obtained by the sale of her two shares in the Aberdeen Banking Company. For two years after their marriage they were living in London. Mrs. Byron was now frequently without funds to meet necessary household expenses, and she found that when her husband' s creditors were arranged with she would have only a pittance of £150 a year to suj^port the vagabond husband — who, as she now discovered, had only married her for her money — her young babe, the future Lord Byron, and Augusta, the daughter of her husband by his first wife. Here surely were circumstances sufiiciently distress- ing to sour the milk of human kindness even in a natu- rally amiable woman. Acting upon a temper naturally jassionate and irritable, a heart that had been cruelly deceived, an heiress who had been swindled out of her fortune by an unprincipled and dissipated husband, a tongue that had never been taught restraint by educa- tion and self-control, they were enough to drive her half mad, as her father probably was before her when he took his own life. If the poet pleads for pity and sympathy on account of inherited humors, so also does his mother. It is impossible for us, as it proved for him, to feel affection or respect for her, but she was not altogether the fury of which her fits of uncontrol - 198 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. lable passion would lead us to imagine. There are some touches of humanity and motherhood in her actions, when the trials and vicissitudes which " Mad Jack Byron" had brought upon her are calmly re- viewed. And as his conduct to her palliates hers to her son, so does the latter form a mournful apology for that son's wasted and unhappy life. It would need the pen of as keen a satirist as Thack- eray to do justice to the ignominious condition of the dashing Guardsman, when, having squandered his wife's fortune, and brought her and his two children to penury, he writes a begging letter asking her piteous- ly for a guinea ! Yet to such a pass as this did Cap- tain Byron sink, a character as contemptible and with far less excuse than that other retired military man whom Thackeray did draw to the life, the gray-blos- somed Captain Costigan. His sister, Mrs. Leigh, helped "Mad Jack" contin- ually out of her own pin-money, but his wife, with noth- ing to support herself, the future lord, and his half-sis- ter, except the interest of £3000 in the hands of trustees, was often compelled to refuse him the money he asked for his selfish pleasures. A servant had to be kept, and while the duped wife was trying her utmost to econ- omize, the captain insisted that "supplies would soon be coming to him from his kindred in the South and his old friends in France ; and in the mean time wine and meat must be bought for him on credit." Of course his unprincipled demands upon the wife he had brought from affluence to poverty led to sharp recriminations. What right had he, an adventurer who had lived upon his dupes, of whom Catharine AN UNHAPPY COUPLE. 199 Gordon was the most unfortunate, to complain of tlie oatmeal and haggis she set before him '. Plain leg of mutton was more than he deserved, and when he asked for expensive wines and delicacies, to be obtained on credit, she flatly refused. The proofs of her excitable and ungoverned temper are so strong that we may be sure she made things lively for the gallant captain on these occasions. It is said that she scolded him from morning till night, and that to escape this Just punishment of his misdeeds, he took a separate room at the other end of the street. This was after they had left London and gone to live at Aberdeen. Yet, strangely enough, Mrs. Byron wept for him in his absence, although she rated him whenever he ap- peared. It was upon one of these appearances when, finding the ennui of Scottish life insupportable, the captain re- solved to return to France, if he could get the means of doing so, that Mrs. Byron told him that she had not a penny in her pocket, but that even if she had fifty guineas in her hand she would not give him one of them. He was actually mean enough to write her a begging letter for a single guinea, and his son, who al- ways cherished feelings of afi'ection for his father, pre- served the letter, with cynical rather than filial venera- tion. Perhaps one reason why Lord Byron loved his father was that the latter used to lie in wait for the little lame boy and his nurse when the latter was taking him for a walk. He would play with little George and pet him. Such early notice often makes an indelible impression on the hearts and memories of children, and Lord Byron said, in his latter years, " I was not so 200 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. young when my father died but that I perfectly re- member him." He cannot have been more than three years old when he saw his father for the last time. It became neces- sary for Captain Byron to withdraw from Scotland and from British soil, and to save him from arrest by his creditors, his wife and sister, Mrs. Leigh, provided him with the means of escaping to France. This was at the commencement of 1791, and he died at Valenciennes a few months later, in his thirty-sixth year. The late Rev. William Harness, the well-known liter- ary clergyman of London, is authority for the state- ment that Lord Byron, with whom he was on very inti- mate terms, said to him on more than one occasion that "his father was insane, and had killed himself." Tlie clergyman, on investigation, came to the unnatural conclusion that the poet had told him what he knew to be untrue, and that it was one of the freaks of his mor- bid humor thus to "calumniate the blood flowing in his veins." But this is an unnecessary interpretation. Lord Byron may have had reasons for believing that his father committed suicide, as his mother's father had done. The manner of ' ' Mad Jack ' ' Byron' s life had been so eccentric that there is no improbability in sup- posing that when he had squandered his last guinea in France he assisted at his own "taking off." To many it might seem about the best thing he could do, dis- graced in his profession by debt and dissipation, im- moralities and venal marriages, an exile from his own country, and without the ability or industry to earn a living in any other. There was one, however, who mourned his death with CAPTAIN BYRON. 201 sincere affection. It was the hot-tempered wife, whom he had given such just cause to hate him and curse the hour when he first pretended love for lier in order to gain possession of her fortune. On receiving the in- telligence of his death, the poor woman's screams alarmed the neighborhood. Her grief was as uncon- trollable as her temper. Their little son perhaps won- dered even in his precocious infancy of three years old, that his mother should grieve so inconsolably for his father, whom she had quarrelled with so often in his presence. It must be remembered, as some palliation of Captain Byron's conduct, that the greater part of his early edu- cation had been received in France, a country so lax in morals at that time that his youthful debaucheries were not likely to be checked or disapproved. The Byrons had French connections, and Marshal Byron hailed "Mad Jack" as a cousin. Paris was the para- dise of cities to him, and life in Scotland, especially with an ill-tempered wife, seemed not worth living to him. In Paris his elegance, gallantry, handsome face and figure, and lax moral principles were admired by women and men alike. No doubt he contrasted painfully the beauty of his first wife with the homeliness of his sec- ond, and looked back mournfully at the bygone days when Lady Conger' s life income of £4000 a year had been his own. The scolding and unattractive daughter of a Scotch laird was a poor substitute for the beauti- ful peeress, and whatever desirability had attracted to Catharine Gordon vanished when out of her £23,000 he had left her but £3000, which her trustees luckily kept from him. 202 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. According to the descriptions left us of her person and manners, Lord Byron's mother must have been singularly wanting in the ordinary agreeableness of women. " Though she had royal blood in her veins,'' says Mr. Jeaffreson, ' ' and belonged to the superior branch of the Gordons, it would not have been easy to find a gentlewoman whose person and countenance were less indicative of ancestral purity. A dumpy young woman, with a large waist, florid complexion, and homely features, she would have been mistaken anywhere for a small farmer's daughter or a petty tradesman's wife, had it not been for her silks and feathers, the rings on her fingers, and the jewelry about her short, thick neck. At this early time of her career she was not quite so graceless and awkward as Mrs. Cardurcis (in Lord Beaconsfield's Venetia), but it was already manifest that she would be cumbrously corpu- lent on coming to middle age ; and even in her twenty- fifth year she walked in a way that showed how ab- surdly she would waddle through drawing-rooms and gardens on the development of her unwieldy person. In the last century it was not uncommon for matrons of ancient lineage to possess little learning and no accom- plishments ; but Miss Gordon's education was very much inferior to the education usually accorded to the young gentlewomen of her period. Unable to speak any other language, she spoke her mother tongue with a broad Scotch brogue, and wrote it in a style that in this politer age would be discreditable to a waiting- woman. Though she was a writer of long espistles, they seldom contained a capital letter or a mark of punctuation to assist the reader in the sometimes A KIND STEPMOTHER. 20a arduous task of discovering their precise meaning, and though she could spell the more simple words correctly, when she was writing in a state of mental placidity, she never used her pen in moments of excitement with- out committing comical blunders of orthography. To Captain Byron, however, the lady' s temper was more grievous than her defects of person, breeding, and cult- ure. It should, however, be remembered by readers who would do her justice, that Mrs. Byron was by no means devoid of the shrewdness and ordinary intelli- gence of inferior womankind, and was capable of gen- erous impulses to the persons whom, in her frequent fits of uncontrollable fury, she would assail with un- feminine violence, and even with unnatural cruelty." An illustration of this brighter side of her character may be found in the care she took of Augusta, her husband' s daughter by his first wife. It is true that she accepted the offer of the Dowager Countess of Hold- erness, the child' s maternal grandmother, to adopt her, but she treated her with affection and parted from her with unaffected regret. Little Augusta had been her sole companion at Chantilly on those prolonged ab- sences of Captain Byron when he was dissipating in Paris. She had nursed Augusta with motherly solici- tude during an illness in France that nearly proved fatal. The child never forgot this kindness of her step- mother, and when they met, after an interval of thirteen years, the girl manifested her gratitude and affection. This is the half-sister whose name has been immortal- ized by the poet's song. One would gladly pass over, if it were possible, the cmelest and most unnatural episode that seems ever 204 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. to have occurred between Mrs. Byron and her son. After swearing at him on one occasion and loading him with abusive epithets, this momentarily demoni- acal mother taunted her own boy with being ' ' a lame brat" ! Yet, according to Lord Byron's own words, when many years afterward he told the Marquis of Sligo the reasons that made it impossible for him to feel as a son should toward a widowed mother, she herself was to blame for his deformity. " Look there!" he said, "it is to her false delicacy at my birth I owe that deformity ; and yet as long as I can remember she has never ceased to taunt and reproach me with it. Even a few days before we parted for the last time, on my leaving England, she, in one of her fits of passion, uttered an imprecation upon me, pray- ing that I might prove as ill-formed in mind as I was in body." "His look," says Tom Moore, his friend and biographer, " in relating this frightful circum- stance can be conceived only by those who have seen him in a similar state of excitement." On the occa- sion previously referred to, when his mother called him "a lame brat," another biographer records that ' ' at this unnatural gibe a fearful light came from the child's eyes, the light that so often flashed from them . in the coming time. The boy's visible emotion was not lost upon the mother, who probably expected it to be followed by words no less violent than her own. But tlie child surpassed the mother in self-control. For half a minute, while his lips quivered and his face whitened from the force of feeling never to be forgot- ten, he was silent ; and then he spoke five short words, and no more. ' I was born so, mother ! ' he BYRON AT SCHOOL. 205 said, slowly, before he turned away from the woman who dared not follow him." That poor Byron never forgot this terrible scene is clear from the dialogue in "The Deformed Transformed," written at Pisa three years before his death : '■'■Bertha. Out, hunchback ! Arnold. I was born so, mother." The dissipated character of her husband, and the deep injury he had done her by marrying her for her money without the least spark of sincerity in the love he offered her, and the utter selfishness and sangfroid with which he appropriated her fortune, might lead one to distrust the truth of his complaints about her temper. Unfortunately there is too much concurrent testimony to the same effect to make doubt possible. Even if her son could be supposed to exaggerate or misrepresent his mother' s violence, there is abundant independent testimony that she was a woman whom it was scarcely possible to get along with. The Earl of Carlisle, who was the nephew of the "wicked lord," who preceded Lord Byron at Newstead, and was therefore his cousin, was appointed his guardian. But for his mother the boy might have got along well enough with this trustee of his minority, but Mrs. Byron so perpetually thwarted and interfered with his directions that at last the guardian refused to have anything more to do with her, Byron was now twelve years old and was at the school of Dr. Glennie in Dulwich Grove. Dr. Glennie was a Scotch- man with more than the common stock of pedagogue attainments, and amiable withal, but Lord Byron 206 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. never mentions him or liis scliool, where he stayed two years, in his journal or letters. Eighteen years later, in 1817, Dr. Glennie had the courage to express his disbelief in the stories that were circulated to Lord Byron's discredit. There was, therefore, no ill-will "between them, and Lord Byron's silence about his Dulwich days was probably caused by the remem- brance of collisions between his mother and his school- master, in which he, of course, became involved. One habit which Mrs Byron had was that of utterly disre- garding the authority of the master and the discipline of the school by fetching her boy wherever she pleased, and keeping him away as long as it suited her, some- times from Friday until Monday, at other times for a whole week. "Mrs. Byron," wrote Dr. Grlennie to Tom Moore, while speaking most kindly of her son, "was a total stranger to English society and English manners, with an exterior far from prepossessing, an understanding where nature had not been more bountiful, a mind wholly without cultivation, and the peculiarities of northern opinions, northern habits, and northern accent. I trust I do no prejudice to the memory of my countrywoman, if I say Mrs. Byron was not a Madame de Lambert, endowed with powers to retrieve the fortune and form the character and manners of a young nobleman, her son." Both the mother and th^ teacher seem to have appealed to Lord Carlisle, who decided that Lord Byron should pay a weekly visit to his mother from Saturday to Monday, on condition that he return in time for the studies of that. day. But the temper that could not brook the mild expostulations of Dr. Glennie and CATHARINE GORDON'S TEMPER. 207 his wife was not likely to bow to the authority of a guardian, even though that guardian was an earl. "Of Lord Carlisle's last interview with Mrs. Byron nothing is known, save that he left her presence with . a determination to see as little as possible of her in the future. Confessing himself beaten by the virago, with whom he never again condescended to bandy words, the earl said to Dr. Glennie, ' I can have noth- ing more to do with Mrs. Byron. You must now manage her as best you can.' " While at this school one of the boys said to the future poet : "Byron, your mother is a fool !" " I know it!" was the answer. It seems likely that the Byron family were so well acquainted with Catharine Gordon's temper* and ill- breeding that they kept aloof from her as much as possible, even on paper. Although Captain Byron's sister, Mrs. Leigh, had frequently assisted them during his lifetime and had expressed her sympathy with his widow, she gradually ceased from writing to her, and when Lord Byron came into the succession to the peerage and estates by the death of the next heir above him at Corsica, Mrs. Byron was the last person to hear of her boy' s good fortune. When the intelli- gence reached her it came in a manner that declared to all Aberdeen how little she was esteemed by her husband' s people. For the news, which should have been sent promptly from IS'ewstead, she was indebted to the gossip of a neighbor. If she received the as- tounding intelligence at a tea-party it is not difficult to imagine the resentment and humiliation that qualified her delight when an eager demand for her informant's 208 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. authority for the staggering announcement provoked expressions of lively astonishment at her ignorance of a matter that had been known for more than a month to every one else. Of course, her neighbors and the Byron kindred now began to look more kindly upon the mother of the embryo peer and heir to the barony. Five years later, when her son became Lord Byron on the death of his great-uncle, who died on the 19th of May, 1798, Catharine Gordon Byron obtained the pension she had long tried for of £300 a year on the Civil List. While Lord Byron was at Harrow and Cambridge, his mother resided at Southwell, at Burgage Manor. There, although he was no longer a mere boy, she re- newed hostilities with him whenever he came to spend a vacation with her. Some of the incidents narrated of their quarrels would be simply ludicrous if it were not shocking to contemplate such relations between a mother and son. Perhaps he provoked her with coldness or cynicism, but in the strife of tongues he seems to have had more decency and self-control than his mother. Even if the principals had kept their own counsels, the servants of the house of course carried the news of each battle from kitchen to kitchen. But Mrs. Byron herself would go forth crying, after each engagement, to tell the neighbors what a wretched, ill- used mother she was, while Byron, as he did all his life, made every one he met the confidant of his domestic grievances. His mother's father he knew had committed suicide, and he believed that his own father had done the same. It was not unnatural, there- fore, for him to feel some apprehension lest his mother, A FIGHT BETWEEN MOTPIER AND SON. 209 after one of her paroxysms of temper, should attempt to take her own life. But it was odd that she should feel the same fear on his account. An apothecary in Southwell, says a well-authenticated story, received early intelligence of a more than usually desperate quarrel between Lord Byron and his mother from the young lord himself, who entered his shop one night hurriedly and begged him on no account to sell Mrs. Byron any drug that could prove fatal. The son had not been long gone before the mother paid the man of pestle and mortar a visit to give him a similar caution in reference to her son. Soon after this absurd incident, their neighbors, the Pigotts were sitting up late one evening in their draw- ing-room, when Lord Byron paid them an unexpected visit to beg they would give him a bed for the night, as he had resolved to be off to London in the morning without bidding his mother good-by and never to see her again until she had begged his pardon for her violence. It seems that on this occasion Mrs. Byron, who had already made her son familiar with the tongs as weapons of war, had attacked him with the poker. Lord Byron took up his abode at Newstead Abbey in September, 1808, when he was four months under age, and spent much of his time there as a luxurious bachelor until the June of the next year, when he started for Greece. He would not allow his mother to live there until he had left, and it was after his return and while in London at a hotel that the tidings reached him from Newstead that his mother was seriously ill, and next morning that she was dead. This was on August 1st, 181 1. On the morrow he set out for 'New- 210 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. stead and wrote to his friend Pigott on the road : " I am told she was in little pain, and not unaware of her situation. I now feel the truth of Mr. Gray' s observa- tion, ' That we can only have one mother ! ' Peace be with her." "The right feeling of these words is moderately ex- pressed," says Mr. J. C. Jeaffreson, the author of " The Real Lord Byron," an excellent life of and apol- ogy for him, ' ' but there was no moderation in the grief to which Byron gave way at Newstead for a brief hour, after hearing the particulars of his mother's death, which was the result of apoplexy, caused by a fit of violent rage at the magnitude of an upholsterer' s bill. In the middle of the night, hearing a noise in the chamber of death, Mrs. By, the waitihg-woman of the deceased lady, entered the apartment, where she found Lord Byron sitting by the side of his lifeless mother. ' O Mrs. By,' he exclaimed, bursting into tears, ' I had but one friend in the world, and she is gone.' To account for the vehemence of this grief for a mother whom he had regarded with an aversion at the same time natural and most unnatural — the mother of whose cruelty he had spoken with passionate re- pugnance to the Marquis of Sligo, as they were dress- ing after swimming in the Gulf of Lepanto, . . . we must remember the way in which Byron's memory, sensibility, and imagination acted upon one another. Coarse, harsh, violent creature though she was, the woman who had nursed her little step-daughter Au- gusta with affectionate devotion in France had not been wanting in the same womanliness to her own child in his time of infantile sickness. In a certain A MOTHER'S CURSE. 211 way, slie had loved him ; and now the recollections of long- remembered and remote exhibitions of maternal tenderness rose to his mind and unmanned him." He had called many a lost companion an "only friend,'' and even wrote of his Newfoundland dog : "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise ; Ineverkneinhutone, and here tie lies," But we need not accuse him of insincerity in his sor- row for his mother. To a noble mind, as Byron's nat- urally was, the very faults of a mother would endear her memory and awaken the pity which is akin to love. The death of a parent is a terrible remembrance of filial duties neglected, of slights and disrespect, of hardness and of words of reproach, which, whatever the prov- ocation, should never be uttered by a son to a mother. One of the first touches of humanity in Shakespeare is the restraint which Hamlet puts upon himself when he appeals to the conscience and better nature of his mother. A mother's curse has ever been thought to have unearthly horror in it, so also, to our thinking, has abuse and imprecation from a son to a mother, A mind like poor Byron's would naturally feel, as he looked on the dear face, tliat he might have soothed in- stead of irritating her, and have done more than he had done to repair the sufferings his father had inflicted upon her. That midnight hour when Lord Byron sat and wept in silence beside his dead mother' s cofiin was one of the most solemn scenes which imagination can picture. How must the dreadful past have risen up like a horrible dream before his memory. How gladly would he now call her passionate and distempered 212 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. spirit back, and say, "Mother, let us forgive and for- get the past. You shall be henceforth to me a mother, and I will be to you a son." How gladly* would he have asked pardon on his knees for angry words and mocking irony. But the dead face had no forgiveness any more than it had pain or anger on it. The troubled spirit had ceased from troubling ; the fierce passion was at rest. He had not seen her — that would add to the sharpness of his grief. As he had once left her house without wishing her good-by, so had she at last left his on the last lonely journey, never to return. The past, the irreparable past, might well wring that son's heart with agony and make him cry with the exceed- ing bitter cry of filial bereavement and affection, "I had but one friend in the world, and she is gone." But how strange and inexplicable was Byron' s char- acter. " The violence of his grief for his mother," says Jeaffreson, " was naturally of no great duration. In- stead of following her coffin to the grave, he watched the hearse and train of mourners from the Abbey door, and, as soon as they were out of sight, ordered his ser- vant (Young Rushton) to fetch the gloves. AVhile the service was being read over Catharine Gordon B^a-on, her son was sparring with the servant, throwing, as the boy noticed, unusual force into his blows. Doubtless in the exercise he sought escape from men- tal distress, due in some degree to filial affection, and also in some degree to uneasiness at feeling so little re- gret for his mother' s departure. In a few minutes, as though the exercise had failed in its object, he sudden- ly threw down the gloves, and went from the servant' s sight." FEELING BETWEEN MOTHER AND SON. 213 Tom Moore, in his ' ' Life of Byron, ' ' takes perhaps too favorable a view of his conduct as a son. ' ' The general tone of the noble poet' s correspondence with his mother is that of a son performing strictly and conscientious- ly what he deems to be his duty without the intermixt- ure of any sentiment of cordiality to sweeten the task. . . . That such should have been his disposition tow- ard such a parent can be matter neither of surprise nor blame, but that, notwithstanding this alienation, which her unfortunate temper produced, he should have continued to consult her wishes and minister to her comforts with such unfailing thoughtfulness as is evinced, not only in the frequency of his letters, but in the almost exclusive appropriation of Newstead to her use, redounds assuredly in no ordinary degree to his honor, and was even the most strikingly meritorious from the absence of that affection which renders kind- ness to a beloved object little more than an indulgence of self. "But, however estranged from her his feelings must be allowed to have been while she lived, her death seems to have restored them to their natural channel. Whether from a return of early fondness, and like all- atoning power of the grave, or from the prospect of that void in his future life which this loss of his only link with the past would leave, it is certain that Byron felt the death of his mother acutely, if not deeply. "That, notwithstanding her injudicious and coarse treatment of him, Mrs. Byron loved her son with that sort of fitful fondness of which alone such a nature is capable, there can be little doubt, and still less that she was ambitiously proud of him. Her anxiety for 214 LORD BYRON'S MOTHER. the success of Ms first literary essays may be collected from the pains which he so considerately took to tran- quillize her on the appearance of the hostile article in the Review. As his fame began to brighten, that notion of his future greatness and glory, which, by a singular process of superstition, she had entertained from his very childhood, became proportionately con- firmed. Every mention of him in print was watched by her with eagerness ; and she had got bound togetli- er in a volume a collection of all the literary notices that had then appeared of his early poems and satires, written over on the margin with abbreviations of her own, which to my informant appeared indicative of much more sense and ability than from her general character we should be inclined to attribute to her." Finally, in judging this unhappy mother, let us re- member that her father was a suicide, that she was cer- tainly demented during her fits of passion, and that as the ancients held anger to be a brief madness, so the chronic anger in Catharine Gordon Byron may well be taken to indicate a chronic insanity *of temper. THE MOTHER OF THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. There are, of course, different estimates of what constitutes human greatness, and while every one would allow that Sir Isaac Newton was a great man, because everybody has heard of him, and he added vastly to the mathematical and scientific knowledge of the world, there are probably very few of our readers who ever heard of the Rev. John Newton, and of those who have met with his name in the familiar letters of Cowper and Mrs. Unwin, few perhaps would allow him any claim to the title of a great man. Yet, if there be moral heroes in the world as well as great statesmen, warriors, poets, and philosophers, and if, as we are told upon the authority of "the wisest of men," he that ruleth his own spirit is greater than he who taketh a city, we think that the Rev. John New- ton must be admitted to a place in the roll of human greatness. Indeed, the man who emancipates himself from the degrading bondage of vice and profligacy must have some elements of real greatness in him, even though he himself would disclaim any part in his own progress from death to life and from darkness to light. John Newton is probably best known to those who are familiar with the favorite hymns of the hymn-lov- ing English as the joint author with the poet Cowper and others of the "Olney Hymns." It was when 21G THE MOTHER OF THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. Cowper resided with the Unwins at Olney that he made his first acquaintance with tlie Rev. John New- ton, who became curate of Olney and subsequently rector of the united parishes of St, Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, in the city of London. After his conversion he wrote several theological works which obtained a great fame and circulation for the power and pathos with which he insisted upon the ne- cessity of personal holiness and faith in every human being who would be at peace with God and enjoy the hope of a happy immortality. Of them the most fa- mous is his autobiography, in which he gives with humiliating candor the painful excesses of his earlier life as ^ sailor, and we may add pirate, for he was deeply engaged in the African slave-trade, long after it ceased to be tolerated by the laws of his country. Like his dear friend, the afflicted but saintly Cowper, he lost his mother in childhood, John Newton, her only child, being only seven years of age when she was taken away from him by the hand of death. She was always of a weak and delicate constitution, yet she devoted herself with a whole-souled energy to the education of her bo}^ He speaks of her as "a pious and experienced Christian," " in communion with the church of which Dr. Jennings was pastor," and as such she must have taught her little son the Script- ures, which at last, after long years of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, were to make him wise unto sal- vation. It was from her undoubtedly that he inherited the poetic faculty which is clearly visible in those favorite hymns which he composed at Olney, such as "Rejoice, believe in the Lord," "I asked the Lord A MOTHER'S EARNEST DESIRE. 217 that I might grow," and "Begone, unbelief, my Saviour is near." At three years of age she began to teach him to read, and with so much success that when he was five years old he could read with facility and ease any ordinary book. At that time he describes himself and others describe him as a gentle, docile, and affec- tionate child, more fond of his books and thoughts than of out-door sport. It was her heart's desire that he should devote his life to the ministry of God, and had his mother lived there can be no doubt that the good seed sown by her would never have been choked by the tares of sin and dissipation. He says himself, in his autobiography, when reviewing this period of his life: "How far the best education may fail in reach- ing the heart will strongly appear in the sequel of my history ; yet I think, for the encouragement of pious parents to go on in the good way of doing their part faithfully to form their children' s minds, I may prop- erly propose myself as an instance. Though in proc- ess of time I sinned away all those early impressions, yet they were for a great while a restraint upon me ; they returned again and again, and it was very long before I could wholly shake them off, and when the Lord at length opened my eyes, I found great benefit from the recollection of them. Further, my dear mother, beside the pains she took with me, often com- mended me with many prayers and tears to God, and I doubt not but that I reap the benefit of those prayers to this hour." By the time John Newton was six years of age he was studying Latin, and would have continued his studies and no doubt proceeded in due time to a uni- 218 THE MOTHER OF THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. versity, or at least a theological and clerical seminary, had not the mother, who was so devoted to her only child, died at the most critical time of his young life. His father was captain of a merchant vessel, and soon married again, and tlien the little lad was sent to school, where he remained a little over three years, and then, when he was but ten years old, his father took him to sea with him. Those who know anything of a seafar- ing life, and how much danger there is in it to moral restraint and religious lorinciple, notwithstanding the proverbial kind-heartedness of sailors, can imagine what an ordeal the life of a cabin-boy was to the mother- less child of ten. In this way he spent some years in an unsettled mode of life, the grace that a good mother had implanted in him dying out, and all evil and cor- rupt affections taking root in him. Then succeeded years of profligacy, dissipation, and sensual vice ; then his bondage in Africa, and then his rescue and conver- sion. But through it all the memory of his mother arose fresh and fragrant, and the still small voice of conscience reiterated her instructions until her prayers prevailed, and her fallen, reckless sailor boy renewed the promises of his infancy and became in the ministry of the gospel the providential means of converting thousands of others to God. John Newton was, as we have seen, a remarkably precocious child, being able to read and write with fa- cility at an age when most children are only beginning to talk and learn their letters. His autobiography and other writings, after he became a religious man and was ordained a clergyman of the Church of England, show him to have been a man of really great mental A WORTHY SON. 219 ability. The learning displayed in some of his books upon Scripture and ecclesiastical history is the more remarkable because he never enjoj^ed the advantages of a university education, and such a life as he had led would be incompatible with habits of study and the acquisition of learning. After his conversion, however, he made up for lost time, and was remarkable for his devotion to the studies of his profession. It is perhaps chiefly in the will power that the greatness of such a character appears. Those who know how diflBcult it is to give up even a trilling habit and to forego some little luxury can imagine what a tremendous will power must be exerted by a man past middle life when he suddenly throws off the sensual appetites and pleasures that have enthralled his manhood and becomes in every way the opposite of what he was. If such a little battle with one's self is difficult, what must be a prolonged war, or a wholesale revolution. Except that his mother died in his early childhood, John Newton' s case resem- bles in many ways that of St. Augustine. Both were given over to the same vices and unbelief and profanity. Both conquered themselves, and became new men by the grace that worked on a receptive will. John IN'ewton had not as profound a mind as St. Augustine, but he received Christianity with as entire a self conse- cration and devoted the latter half of his life to convert- ing those who had been notorious sinners like himself. He was deeply respected by the clergymen and laity of all the religious denominations in England, and his name is well known in this and every other country where evangelical religion has gained a hold upon the people. His friends included all the leading Christian 220 THE MOTHER OF THE REV. JOHN NEWTON. philanthropists of his time, but perhaps the sweetest glimpses of him which we now obtain are during the time when he was curate of Olney, enjoying the high companionship of Cowper and writing those hymns which are still sung by sailors, such as he was, upon every sea and in many a village church and peasant's cottage. They will remain as long as the English lan- guage lasts, and when we read them or hear them sung it is pleasant to think that but for the influence of the good mother, whom he lost too soon, but whose prayers and memory remained the saving impulses of his life, and alone saved him from utter and everlasting ruin, he would never have learned a hymn, still less have written one. THE MOTHEE OF MARTIN LUTHER. Four hundred years ago, on the 10th day of November of this year, there was born in Eisleben, a small town in Saxony, at eleven o' clock in the night, " the solitary monk who shook the world." Margaret Lindemann, daughter of a peasant of Neu- stadt in the bishopric of Wurzburg, and wife of John or Hans Luther, would have been unknown to fame, and have had no title to " a name to live," but for the infant, whose long career was one long "struggling toward the light," whom she travailed with in birth on that November night. She herself was so uncon- scious of "entertaining unawares" the angel of the churches of the Reformation, that Melanchthon, the learned, gentle, and devoted friend of Luther, tells us that when he questioned her as to the time of Martin' s birth, she answered that ' ' she well remembered the day and the hour, but was not certain of the year." However, the point was settled by James Luther, a brother of Martin's, who said that in the firm opinion of all the family Martin Luther was born on St. Mar- tin's eve, the 10th of November, 1483. It was a Mon- day, and the next day, Tuesday, the father, full of joy as was the mother, and as well they might be be- cause a "man was born into the world," carried him to the neighboring church of St. Peter, and had him baptized, naming him Martin after the saint on whose eve he had been born. 222 THE MOTHER OF MARTIN LUTHER. Luther's mother had been originally a servant at the baths, says An din, the French author of Luther's history, and by no means friendly to his opinions, but he admits that Margaret Lindemann had always been favorably known as a virtuous, chaste, and God-fear- ing girl. John Luther, whom she married, some time after he became a miner, managed to purchase out of his savings a plot of ground, and we find him subse- quently filling a petty magistracy, delegated to him by the friendship and esteem of his fellow-townsmen. Martin was the eldest of seven children, two of whom died of the plague, which desolated Europe in the commencement of the sixteenth century. One of the surviving daughters married Nicholas Emler of Mans- feld, whose name occasionally occurs in Luther's cor- respondence, and who had often carried Martin in his arms to the house of George Emilius, and went again to fetch him. Fifty years after, when Nicholas was an old man, Luther reminded him of those early acts of kindness, and presented him with a book on the blank leaves of wliich he had commemorated them. Another sister apparently became the wife of John Rubel, a scribe or notary. The arms of Luther's father — for the German peas- antry had arms as well as the wealthier citizens — were simply a hammer on a granite block. Martin was never, in after life, ashamed of his parents. Gretha is the familiar form for Margaret, as Hans is for John, and Luther has consecrated the endearing names of his parents in his formula of marriage service — "Hans, wilt thou take Gretha?" John Luther, despite his poverty, did not make his SEVERE DISCIPLINE. 223 children work for their daily bread, but sent them to schools. He was very ill once, and his priest, after offering him religious consolation, suggested that he should leave a legacy to the church, John Luther said, "I have many children, I will give what I have to them, they need it more/' He was a God-fearing man, and he believed that religion meant more than profession — it meant the leading a good life and the right performance of his duty to those who were de- pendent upon him. John Martin worked hard, and his wife shared his cares. Wlrile he went forth in the mornings with his pick into the mine shafts, she went to the forest to gather and carry fagots to their little home. Their poverty required that they should work constantly, and this they did, treating their children kindly and fulfilling their duty toward them, but showing them no special tenderness. They were very strict in their training, and Luther mentions that one day, for merely stealing a hazelnut, his mother beat him till the blood flowed ; and he said that he had such fear of his father that he always hid in the chim- ney-corner when he had done anything to anger him. We must not judge of this severe discipline by the more civilized and Christian method of training chil- dren in our own times. The principle that to spare the rod was to spoil the child was carried to the point of cruelty four hundred years ago, especially in Ger- many, where an almost feudal and worse than Jewish system of subjection prevailed. Fear rather than love was the motive of obedience which parents and teachers appealed to in children. Often indeed, it is narrated, that when Luther's father had punished 224 THE MOTHER OF MARTIN LUTHER. liim with more than usual severity, his mother took him to her arms and kissed his tears of pain and hu- miliation away. But kisses alternating with stripes are not" a healthy parental discipline for children. We have, unhappily, poor Luther' s own words against the system in which he was trained. "My parents," he says, " treated me cruelly, so that I became very timid ; one day for a mere trifle my mother whipped me till the blood came. Tliey truly thought they were doing right ; but they had no discernment of character, which is yet absolutely necessary, that we may know when, on whom, and how, punishment should be inflicted." At school poor Martin's back did not fare much better than at home. His master, he tells us, flogged him fifteen times in one day. "It is right," he says tenderly, when narrating this cruel severity, "to pun- ish children, but at the same time we must love them." These early experiences no doubt hardened him to en- dure afflictions in after life, but they left that sense of injustice which is the saddest of all reminiscences of childhood. When his father and mother left Eisleben, to live at Mansfeld, which was only five leagues distant, little Martin Luther w^as but six months old. The mines of Mansfeld were then much celebrated. It was in that town and on the banks of the Vipper that he learned his first boyish sports, and developed his early powers of mind and body. Referring to that time, he writes : " My parents were very poor. My father was a wood- cutter, and my mother has often carried the wood on her back, that she might earn wherewith to bring us INFERIOR POSITION OF WOMEN. 225 children up. They endured the hardest labor for our sakes." These words need to be read in juxtaposition with the stories of their parental severity. The mother, even the good Christian mother of those days, was a slave to the husband, and the husband followed the brutal roughness of the times. Blows were little thought of, and the rod was considered the best medi- cine for youthful minds, and the best encouragement to youthful energy. A Saxon wife in Margaret Lu- ther's social position would have as soon thought of buying an expensive dress without her husband's leave as of dictating to him, even by the gentlest re- monstrance, how to bring up a son. Whatever the Hans of that period did seemed right in the eyes of Gretha. It was a Jewish rather than a Christian sys- tem of domestic management. When Abraham would offer up Isaac, he did not ask Sarah's opinion. And when John Luther laid the whij^s upon his boy, we may be sure that his hausfrau went on with her sew- ing or washing, with few maternal pangs for the sting- ing cuticle of her little lad. Happily, we have out- grown this Spartan system of severity ; but is not our modern method of humoring, pampering, coaxing, and complimenting children even worse in its effect upon their character ? If Luther's parents were stern and strict, and visited each trivial fault with chastisement, they did not spare themselves or begrudge their labor in providing for his education. The little Luther, at six years of age, could read and write with ease, and was encouraged by both his parents to study dili- gently. M. Audin, strongly prejudiced as he is 226 THE MOTHER OF MARTIN LUTHER. against Martin himself, praises Luther's mother for her careful training of her children, and says she was an ornament to her neighborhood. By her prayers and industry she wrought out a good life-work. Of his father he adds: "Hans was one of those fine German peasants, of whom the type is still to be found in Upper Saxony. Devoted to labor and prayer, at- tached to his family, and to his daughter especially, he never murmured at Providence, even when another child was sent him. He delighted to recreate him- self of an evening over a large Jug of beer, listen- ing to some biblical narrative, which James read to him out of one of the volumes reluctantly lent to them by the fathers of the monastery — for books were as costly as they were rare. He went to rest betimes, said his prayers, and knelt at the foot of Martin' s bed entreating God that his child might grow up in the fear of the Lord.'' To the same effect Gustave Pfiger and other earlier biographers of Luther speak of his father. It is not easy to decide whether one or two sisters of Luther lived to maturity. While one, and only one is mentioned by Audin as marrying John Rubel, another, if she be not the same, at a different time is mentioned by Merle d'Aubigne as marrjing Nicholas Emler. Luther's father seems to have been on friendly terms with Melanchthon, for we find his name as one of the invited guests at Melanchthon" s marriage, sitting at the wedding banquet among "Hel- lenists, doctors, and men of science and learning." It was from the earnings of his miner's forge, with its two furnaces for iron at Mansfeld, that Hans Luther PARTING OF MOTHER AND SON. 22 '^ placed Ms son at school. " It was from a miner's fireside," says Mathesius, "that one who was destined to recast vital Christianity was to go forth : an ex- pression of God' s purpose, by His instrumentality, to cleanse the sons of Levi, and refine them as gold in His furnace." When, through his integrity, prudence, and public spirit, John Luther was made one of the council of Mansfeld, he and his devoted wife kept open house to the ecclesiastics and scholars of the vicinity. There social meetings of the citizens were often held, and the great questions that then began to' agitate the beginning of the sixteenth century were doubtless frequently discussed, and the inquiring mind of the boy Martin Luther must not only have been set to thinking, but have been filled with a noble ambition to do service to God and to humanity by his future life. The virtuous example of his father and mother made their mark upon his memory, and helped to mould his conscience. AVhen he had learned the rudiments of sacred and secular knowledge at the Latin School of Mansfeld, in 1497 his parents sent him to the school of the Franciscans at Magdeburg. The mother parted with her noble boy in tears, but ac- quiesced in the father s judgment that his already re- markable abilities should be given a wider opportu- nity. A new world of light and science was breaking on the world, and Martin had already shown the spirit of inquiry and the perseverance that make the success- ful scholar. He was now fourteen, and his earliest and latest friend, John Reinecker, accompanied him to his new school. His parents' means, however, were still inadequate to his entire support, and after the fashion 228 THE MOTHER OF MAETIN LUTHER. of students then, and to a time long subsequent, the boy had to beg alms in his play hours to obtain suffi- cient food. He tells the story himself, with his con- stant candor and honesty. " I was accustomed with my companions to beg a little food to supply our wants. One day, about Christmas time, we were going all together through the neighboring villages, from house to house, singing in concert the usual carols on the infant Jesus born at Bethlehem, We stopped in front of a peasant' s house, which stood detached from the rest, at the extremity of the^ village. The peasant, hearing us sing our Christmas carols, came out with some food which he meant to give to us, and asked in a rough, loud voice, ' Where are you boys ? ' Terrified at these words, we ran away as fast as we could. We had no reason to fear, for the peasant offered us this assistance in kindness ; but our hearts were no doubt become fearful from the threats and tyranny which the masters then used toward their scholars, so that we Avere seized with sudden fright. At last, however, as the peasant still continued to call after us, we stopped, forgot our fears, ran to him, and received the food he offered us." He had scarcely been a year at Magde- burg when his father and mother, hearing of the diffi- culty he found in supporting himself there, sent him to Eisenach, where they liad relatives, and where there was a famous school. But the relatives there took little notice of him, and he was obliged, as at Magde- burg, to sing in the streets for his daily bread. How imj^ressionable Luther must have been to a mother's influence is proved by hi^ own saying, written on the margin of liis Bible, " There is nothing sweeter BEGGING FOR BREAD. 229 than the heart of a loious woman." The memory of one who had been almost a second mother to him sug- gested the touching remark. Often when at Eisenach the poor student, when he asked for bread, received harsh words. More than once, after these rebuffs, he shed tears of bitterness in secret. One day, especially, he had been repulsed at three houses, and was about to return to his lodging hungry, when he stood in silence before an honest burgher's house. His thoughts were sad enough. It seemed, for the moment, as if all hope of pursuing his studies further was at an end, and young Luther saw nothing left him but to go back to Mansfeld and work at the mines. Suddenly a door oj)ened, and a woman ap- peared upon the threshold. It was the wife of Conrad Cotta, a daughter of the burgomaster of Eilfeld. Her name was Ursula, and the chronicles of Eisenach called her the pious Shunammite, because her kindness to the young prophet of the Reformation resembled that of the Shunammite woman in Scripture who gave the bread of hospitality to the prophet Elijah. She had long noticed the poor student, and heard with pain the rough answers often given him by her neighbors. She had been touched also by the sweetness of his voice, and when she beheld him overwhelmed with sorrow near her door, she beckoned him to enter and spread a table for him. Com-ad, her husband, approved her action, and was so much pleased with Luther that a few days afterward he took him to live in his house. This time was a parenthesis of joy, an oasis of refreshing and of i^eace in the wilderness of his early life. Ills whole nature expanded under the kindly shelter gi\'en 230 THE MOTHER OF MARTIN LUTHER. liim by this noble Cliristiaii woman and her husband. Here, besides pursuing his severer studies, the Saxon lad, in whose nature the soul of music dwelt, learned to play the lute and flute. With his lute he often ac- companied his fine alto voice, and not only solaced his own hours of despondency, but delighted his second mother, Ursula Cotta, who was extremely fond of music, with his melodies. Luther was passionately fond of music even to old age, and composed both the words and music of some of the most beautiful of German hymns. Nor was music the only art he loved. He knew the inspiration of the eye as well as of the ear. Although he disapproved of the miraculous, which popular superstition assigned to images and pictures, he had a sincere admiration for everything that was beautiful in painting, sculpture, or architecture. Whatever could inspire great thoughts and lift the heart to God was sacred to him. Luther was not the man to despise the works of the great masters of painting any more than of. music. Even the prejudiced M. Audin admits that Luther disapproved the destruction of images. " Luther," he says, " was indignant, not from a poetic affection for art, but for the sake of the liberty of which he was at interv^als the enlightened apostle." The three great loves of Luther were for flowers, little children, and music. Once when his fellow monks found him insensible in his cell from study and priva- tion, they summoned a musician, who played some old familiar strains. The poor monk revived, and his spirit came to him again. Of his love for children, his long, deep sorrow for his own dear daughter Magdalen THOUGHTFUL OF HIS MOTHER. 231 is proof. His gentle words should find an echo in every parent's heart. " Never be hard with children. Many a fine character has been ruined by the stup»id brutality of pedagogues. The j^arts of speech are a boy's pillory. I was myself flogged fifteen times in one forenoon over the conjugation of a verb. Punish if you will ; but be kind too, and let the sugar-plum go with the rod." Again, "Be temperate with your children ; punish them if they lie or steal, but be just in what you do. It is a lighter sin to take pears and apples than to take money. I shudder when I think of what I went though myself. I had a terrible time of it, but she meant well." That Luther thought often and with sincere affection of his mother was proved by his anxiety after he be- came an Augustinian monk, and started w^ith his knaj)- sack on foot from Germany across the Alps to Italy, on the occasion of his first visit to Rome, to reach the Eternal City by St. John's Eve; for, says he, "you know the old Roman proverb, ' Happy the mother whose child shall celebrate mass in Rome on St. John's Eve.' Oh, how I desired to give my mother this happiness ! but this was impossible, and it vexed me greatly to find it so." His entering holy orders had been a blow to the worldly expectations which his ^ parents had formed for him. The law and d wealthy marriage was what his father hoped for, and on hearing that his son had suddenly become a monk, he Avas very angry, and wrote to him declaring that he disowned him as a son. Luther dedicated his book on monastic vows to his father subsequently, and credits him with sincere apprehension for his spiritual as well as 232 THE MOTHER OF MARTIN LUTHER. worldly welfare in becoming a monk. The promise of a brilliant career wliich Martin had given at the Uni- versity of Erfurt might well excuse the bitter disap- pointment of his parents. But the ties of blood are not so easily severed. Luther himself says, in a ser- mon preached at Wittenberg, that when the plague visited Mansfeld and carried oil two of his brothers, some one told his father, " The monk of Erfurt is also dead." This led to his restoration to his fathers affection. He still blamed him, however, for what he deemed disobedience to his father and mother, and added, " God grant that you may not have mistaken a delusion of the devil for a sign from heaven." His poor mother must often have thought of her heroic son in after times with deep anxiety, and re- membered him daily in her prayers. She lived until the year 1531, surviving her husband scarcely a year. Her last years were made comfortable by the small in- dependence which was secured to his parents by their son. She was buried beside her husband in the churchyard of the little village in which they had lived and reared their worthy children. Few men have ever had more hair-breadth escai)es than he. . But for the Elector of Saxony he must have lost his life between Pope Leo the Tenth and the in- furiated priesthood and Charles the Fifth, who was his bitterest enemy, but who, when standing by his grave and urged by those around him to have the bones (jf the arch-heretic dug up and burned, replied nohl j-, ' ' I war not with the dead." It was from the Emperor that the Elector had exacted a safe-conduct for the solitary monk, when summoned to the Diet at Worms. THE DIET AT WORMS. 233 Foul play was no doubt intended, according to the re- ligions ethics of those times, and a friendly warning was given to Luther that he had already been con- demned by the council, that his books had been burned by the hangman, and that it would be certain death for him to go. Luther did not wish to die, and he tells us that he trembled ; but his usual courage never forsook him, though the flesh was weak and he answered, " Not go to Worms, say you ! I will go if there are as many devils in Worms as there are tiles upon the roofs of the houses." " The roofs," says an eloquent historian, " when he came into the city, were crowded, not with devils, but with the inhabitants, all collecting there to see him as he passed. A nobleman gave him shelter for the night ; the next day he was led to the Town Hall. " No more notable spectacle had been witnessed in this x>lanet for many a century — not perhaps since a greater than Luther stood before the Roman Procurator. ' ' There, on the raised dais, sat the sovereign of half the world. There, on either side of him, stood the archbishops, the ministers of state, the princes of the empire, gathered together to hear and judge the son of a poor miner who had made the world ring with his name. *' The body of the hall was thronged with knights and nobles — stern, hard men, in dull, gleaming armor. Luther, in his brown frock, was led forward between their ranks. The looks which greeted him were not all unfriendly. Tlie first article of a German's creed was belief in courage. Germany had had its feuds in times past with the Popes of Rome, and they were not 234 THE MOTHER OF MARTIN LUTHER. without pride that a i^oor countryman of theirs should have taken by the beard the great Italian priest. They had settled among themselves that, come what would, there should be fair play ; and they looked half admiring and half in scorn. ' ' As Luther passed uj) the hall, a steel-clad baron touched him on the shoulder with his gauntlet. ' Pluck up thy spirit, little monk,' he said ; ' some of us here have seen warm work in our time, but, by my troth, nor I nor any knight in this comi^any ever needed a stout heart more than thou needest it now. If thou hast faith in these doctrines of thine, little monk, go on, in the name of God. ' " ' Yes, in the name of God,' said Luther, thro wing- back his head, ' in the name of God, forward.' " With the same spirit he had previously conducted himself at Augsburg, before the cardinal legate, whom the Pope had sent to try him. When Luther asked him to point out his errors, he answered haughtily, that he came to command, not to argue. Entreaties, threats, and bribes were tried in vain. The poor Ger- man woodcutter and miner's son, the half -starved and ill- clad mendicant monk of the Augustinian order, de- fied the proudest pontiff that ever occupied the i)apal throne. "What," said the cardinal legate, "do you think the Pope cares for the opinion of a German boor ? The Pope' s little finger is stronger than all Germany. Do you expect your princes to take up arms to defend you — you, a wretched worm like you ? I tell you, no ! and where will you be then — where will you be then f Luther answered, " Then, as now, in the hands of Almighty God." ,.i_ JfhiW&aiii-,^^ LUTHER AT HOME. THE HOME CIRCLE. 237 Now that four hundred years have passed since Martin Luther first saw the light in his cradle at Eisleben, it is surely time to put aside ecclesiastical prejudice and to judge of him fairly and impartially by his life and by his works. His enemies have repre- sented him as coarse and sensual, a glutton and a vdnebibber. The truth is that Luther was one of the most abstemious of men, a salt herring and a crust of bread being his ordinary dinner. He married because he regarded the celibacy of the clergy as one great cause of the corruption of Christendom, and he knew that to convince his followers of the Christian lawful- ness of marriage for all, he must himself set them an example. We have in his ' ' Table Talk' ' one of the most delightful books in the world, full of wit, good sense, and charity. If Luther sometimes spoke coarsely, it was the habit of his age. He chose a nun for his wife, because he was a priest who had wrongly, like her, taken vows of celibacy. She had neither money nor beauty to recommend her, but he found her a faithful wife and mother. His home life was beautiful, and the domestic circle, after his children grew up, was an exceedingly happy one. With his famUy about him in the evening he would talk or read to them, or if so inclined he would play to an admiring audience ui^on the lute, an instrument which he handled with some degree of skill. We have seen his love for children, for flowers, for music. "Children," he said, "imagine heaven a place where rivers run with cream, and trees are hung with cakes and plums. Do not blame them. They are but showing their simple, natural, nn- 238 THE MOTHER OF MARTIN LUTHER. questioning, all-believing faith." One day, after din- ner, when the fruit was on the table, the children were watching it with longing eyes. ' ' That is the way," he said, "in which we grown Christians ought to look for the Judgment Day." Music he called ^' the grandest, sweetest gift of God to man. Satan hates music," he added ; " he knows how it diives the evil spirit out of us." Long before the science of botany was heard of, Luther divined the jDrinciple of vegetable life. "The principle of ^narriage," he said, ' ' runs through all creation ; and flowers as well as animals are male and female." A garden was to Luther's eyes a vision of Paradise. One day, in spring time, as he was watching the budding jjlants and trees, he exclaimed : " Praise be to God the Creator, who out of a dead world makes all alive again. See those shoots, how they bear germ and swell ! Image of the resurrection of the dead ! Winter is death, summer is the resur- rection. Between them lie spring and autumn as the period of uncertainty and change. The j)roverb says, ' Trust not a day Ere birth of May.' Let us pray our Father in heaven to give us this day our daily bread." At another time he said : " If a man could make a single rose, we should give him an empire ; yet roses and flowers no less beautiful are scattered in pi;ofusion over the world, and no one regards them." At another time : " We are in the dawn of a new era ; we are beginning to think something of the DEFAMED AND SLANDERED. 239 natural world which, was ruined in Adam's fall. We are learning to see all around us the greatness and glory of the Creator. We can see the Almighty hand, the Infinite goodness, in the humblest flower. We praise Him, we thank Him, we glorify Him ; we recog- nize in creation the power of His word. He spoke, and it was there. The stone of the peach is hard ; but the soft kernel swells and bursts it when the time comes. An egg — what a thing is that ! If- an egg had never been seen in Europe, and a traveller had brought one from Calcutta, how would all the world have won- dered." Such was the son of Hans and Margaret Luther, and if one were a spiritualist and could believe that the spirits of the past are conscious of the jDresent, then might the peasant mother feel proud, on this 10th day of November, to see Germany, England, and Americo, keeping high festival for her son, whom she named after St. Martin. He has been more cruelly defamed and slandered than any other character in history ; but even Hallam, who accuses him of being an antino- mian, only because he believed in the exuberant grace of God, admits that " his soul was penetrated with a fervent piety, and his integrity as well as purity of life are unquestioned." His influence ux^on his own nation to this day is proof of his greatness. Bossuet's misrep- resentations and misquotations of Luther, which misled Hallam, are thoroughly exploded by Archdeacon Hare. " In the highest qualities of eloquence, in the faculty of presenting grand truths, moral and spiritual ideas, clearly, vividly, in words which elevate and enlighten men's minds, and stir their hearts and control their 240 THE MOTHER OF MARTIN LUTHER. wills, Luther seems incomparably superior to Bossuet, almost as superior as Shakespeare to Racine.'' The same learned and candid wiiter absolutely annihilates Sir William Hamilton's charges against Luther, whom he yet calls " great and good, " which he could not have been if they were true. But the great Scotch logician stole his spurious thunder against Luther from Bossuet, who is proved to be wholly untruthful in his statements and inaccurate in his references. A reputation that has stood the criticism of four hundred years is not likely to be swept away. So long as German and English civilization exist, the name of Martin Luther will be honored as an apostle of liberty and a witness against hypocrisy and lies. THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSON. The conditions of life in tlie Sonth sixty years ago differed greatly from those of to-day. They were founded on different institutions and sentiments than those which obtain at the present time, and cannot be judged by any other standards than their own. The institution of slavery, for instance, opx)osed as it was to the genius of republican institutions, changed the character and altered the habits of that part of the population of the country under its influence. It freed a large proportion of the people of the South from the necessity of labor, and left them in enforced idleness. It was a curse in this respect, and again for the reason that it made labor degrading, because performed by slaves, and further, for the reason that it lowered the moral tone of those who came in immediate contact with it. Of the many vices which were the direct out- growth of idleness, none became more prominent in the South than that of gambling. Men whose slaves tilled the land for them, whether they were at home or away, and who were secured from want by the result of slave labor, had time to gamble ; and the " debts of honor" that were paid in the South in fifty years would have made all the poor of that section independent. The race-course became another avenue through which the idle class could expend their energies and their money. This class, to which the father of General 'U2 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSOX. Thomas Jackson belonged, was the one from which the patrons of the turf and the gaming-table were recruited. He was a well-born Virginian, and a man of considerable wealth, and his profession, that of the law, was one that yielded him a good income when he married Julia Neale, of Parkersburg. His father left him a handsome estate, which he squandered. The biographers of his son tell us that " he played high and lost," and when he died his wife and children owed the one room that sheltered them to charity. He was induced to indorse for some friends, and this was another way in which his patrimony and his pro- fessional income were swallowed up. He is credited with having had j)leasing manners and a generous dis- position, but his fellow-men who consider these quali- ties an offset to higher ones have very vague ideas of the sacred obligations which he, as a man and a hus- band and father, owed to society. There have been and there now are fathers who deem their duty to their children ended when they have given them existence, and their responsibility over when their offspring are fed and clothed. Such men are unworthy to fill the human relationships they do, and as a matter of fact they rarely fill them. Tliey assume them thoughtlessly, and fail in their obligations. A man remiss in his duties as a father rarely leaves behind him such a son as Thomas Jack- son, and truth compels the statement that to his mother was Jackson indebted for his leading character- istics. Jonathan Jackson destroyed the happiness of his wife and blighted the future of his children by his failure to provide for them, and it is impossible to THE SIN OF GAMBLING. 243 look upon liim as a genial or a generous nature. He was a selfish man, and a stranger to that quality higher than geniality or generosity — justice. The lands that he gambled away made their subse- quent owners rich. Yet the admirers of his son, who knew that that son at the age of eight years w^as a wan- derer and an outcast, because of his father's unfaith- fulness, have seen fit to gloss over his selfishness and use the language of apology in spealdng of his faults. The baleful sin of gambling has never been adequately punished, and in the South as nowhere else, except on the continent of Europe, it has been most indulgently treated. There it is elevated to the position of a recog- nized occupation, and whether indulged in as a pastime or as a i)assion too strong to be combated, it is tolerated. A habit as debasing as drunkenness, it is even more degrading in its effect. Where the drunkard is weak of will and demoralized intellectually, the gambler is cruelly unjust and selfish at heart. The effects of his vice upon himself are reflected in his children to the third and fourth generation of restless, discon- tented, and extravagant men and women. The utter degradation of the moral man through this vice affects all who come in contact with him, and his domestic relations are poisoned thereby. His wife and children do not rise up and call him blessed, and his descend- ants remember him only with shame. There never was a gambler who made a happy home. His house is the churchyard of hope and ambition, and from it do not come the fearless of spmt and the confident of heart. There never was a gambler who was venerated 244 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSON. as a parent by his children, and there never was one whose death was mourned as an irreparable loss^ or whose memory was sincerely cherished. Jonathan Jackson died when his son Thomas was three years of age. Previous to his death he lost a young daughter, and his widow and three children faced life without a dollar when his funeral expenses were paid. There was no money, no home, and no brightness in the future of his family, who had been robbed to pay his debts incurred for the benefit of others without his wife's knowledge and consent, and who had gaml^led away what a man of right principle would have considered not his own, but his wife's and his children's. A true man, who takes upon himself the responsibilities of husband and father, no longer considers himself or his future apart from them. They are the hostages he has given to fortune, and his best years are dedicated to their care and protec- tion. None but cowardly and unformed natures would assume the sacred office of parent with any less unself- ish intentions, "and a higher civilization than ours will make this all-important subject one of early and care- ful consideration. Had the law recognized Mrs. Jack- son as an equal in tlje marriage contract, it would not have been possible for her husband to have left her destitute and her children beggars. She sheltered herself through the kindness of the Masons, and tried to keep her little flock together b}^ taking in sewing and teaching a small school. The struggle was an unequal one, and her strength wasted away. She is described as having been a very hand- some and graceful woman, and unusually cultured. A SECOND MARRIAGE. 245 Much of the talent her children possessed they in- herited unmistakably from her. She was extremely religious, and was naturally a happy person. The anxiety of mind she endured caused her great depres- sion at times, and she suffered torture in anticipation of the separation from her children that seemed inevi- table. Her husband' s relatives appear to have taken a negative interest in her, and she struggled and sor- rowed on for three vears after her husband' s death. There is no earthly anguish to be compared to that in- flicted by poverty under the circumstances of this mother's life, and it can only be felt by a mother ; it is unintelligible and inexplicable to all others. All that kept her up was the fervent faith she had in God. A suitor in the person of a Mr. Woodson, a man greatly her senior in years, and almost as poor as her- self, appeared, and to the surprise of her friends won her consent to a marriage. Her husband's family in- terfered, and tried to prevent what they probably saw was a mistake, but she married him. Mr. Woodson lived in another county, and as he was unable to provide for her little sons and daughter, she was perforce compelled to ask their father's kindred to take them. Little Thomas was the youngest child, and he was six years old at this time. The parting with him, her idol, was the hardest of trials. He was a pretty, blue-eyed boy, who claimed her attention and responded to her tender affection and endearments. Even this little child had to be given up, and the de- scription of tlie parting is most touching. So bitter was the pain to his mother that the event was im- pressed upon the little boy's memory indelibly. His 246 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSON. own distress was pitiful. A faitliful old slave, who had belonged to his father, was sent to take him from his riiother to his uncle's house, his new home. The child was to ride behind him on horseback, and early in the morning " Uncle Robinson" came for him. The poor mother made all the excuses she could for delay ; she put up with her own hands a lunch for her little boy to eat on the way, and the colored man was en- treated to be thoughtful of him. The mother, with white face and quivering lips, kissed her boy good-by, and he was lifted up and placed on the horse. The kind-hearted slave heard a last injunction and started, but before he had gone far he was called back by the agonized mother, who took her boy again in her arms and gave way to such an outburst of weeping that the scene was never obliterated from the child's memorv. He heard the sobs of his broken-hearted mother through all his life, and they saddened every year of it. The picture of this unfortunate young mother's grief is very touching, but practical minds can but* note the inexcusableness of her position, and conclude that much of her troubles were of her own making. She was not true to herself ; perhaps she did not know how to be, but at all events a loving mother should have seen her duty clearer than to have married a man who demanded the sacrifice she made for his sake. It is very pathetic to read of her parting with her little children, particularly with her youngest son, but the folly of such suffering is too apparent to awaken great sympathy. A man who was willing to accept such a sacrifice was unworthy of it, and a woman of more practical ideas would have declined his hand promptly. DEATH OF MRS. JACKSON. 247 She married, separated herseli from her children, who were themselves seiDarated from each other, and in a year she gave birth to a son and — died. Her little boys and her only daughter were sent for when it was seen that she was dying, and the sight of them gave her comfort in her last hours. Little Thomas sat upon her bed beside her, prattling in his delight, and she forgot the nearness of death in the presence of her long-absent boy. Her rapidly failing strength was a cruel admonition that she must soon die, and her children were gathered about her bed to take their last fond farewells. The end came quickly, and when all was over they were sent back to their adopted homes, never more to be united again. Thomas, though the youngest, was so deeply affected that he said years afterward " the wholesome impres- sion of her dying instructions and prayers, and of her triumph over the grave, have never been erased from my heart." Mrs. Jackson was certainly a Christian woman, and she ineffaceably impressed her own spiiit of prayer upon this child. His life was a perfect exemj^lification of her beliefs and hopes. He remembered her with tenderness all his life, and idealized her beauty and sweetness of disposition. She suffered in health, and her misfortunes had made her too emotional for her worldly interests. Many of the trials which she attributed to the will of her heavenly Father were of her own making, and were the result of her own want of confidence in herself. She had been taught to con- sider her relationship as wife and mother of paramount importance, and her own welfare of no moment. The 248 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSON. false doctrine inculcated in women that they are (jf themselves nothing as compared to the sacred offices they fill is pernicious and soul-destroying, and they need to learn no lesson so much as that expressed in Hamlet by old Polonius to the players : " To thine own self be true, And it shall follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. ' ' Neither wifehood nor motherhood are greater than womanhood, nor do they change a woman's char- acter ; her feelings may be deepened in consequence, but she remains the same, and is greater in herself than in her wifely or maternal office. Let us then put away the false and hurtful teachings with which women have been indoctrinated always, and better the world by eradicating them. Women have crucified themselves long enough on the altar of wifehood and maternity, and filled the world in consequence with discordant and unhealthy children. They have erro- neously mistaken the teachings of mere human beings for the utterances of Christ, and have dethroned them- selves through mistaken zeal. The mother of Thomas Jackson should have lived to the fulness of years, and been to her children a guide and friend. Her education in the direction of woman' s duties was wrong, and she accepted marriage a second time in violation of every duty she owed herself. As to her duty as a mother, it stands to reason that a wo- man who was physically unable to take care of herself was unfitted to again assume the office of maternity. The calamities that followed were dei3lorable. The THE THREE CHILDREN. 249 babe whose birth cost her her life lived an invalid and died of consumption, and the three children whom 'she had given up in order to marry again were bereft of a mother's love, and to their j)angs of sex:)aration was added the misery of complete orphanage. Surely the fate of woman was never sadder or more to be regretted than that of the mother of Stonewall Jackson. The eldest son, Warren, was a rebellious boy, and his short life was full of unhappiness. The daughter, more fortunate in her home than either of her brothers, grew to womanhood in the house of an aunt. Little Thomas went from his mother to live with a sister of his father, and his adopted home was near Clarksburg. He remained there a year, a quiet and subdued child. For some reason his uncle was stern to him, and one day, when only eight years old, he, without saying a word to any one, walked the four miles that lay between his home and Clarksburg, and unannounced appeared at the house of Judge Jackson, a cousin of his father's, and asked Mrs. Jackson for his dinner. The child as he sat at the table, calmly eating the food that was placed before him, said to his hostess, " I have quit Uncle Brake ; we don't agree, and I shall not go back any more.' ' His cousin expostulated with him, and tried to persuade him to return. He de- clined to do so, and this cousin permitted him to leave her house for that of another relative in the town. At this relative's house he stayed all night, and there made the same announcement that he should return no more to his uncle's home. The stranQ:e indifference of these relatives to the little wanderer cannot be ex- plained. The child was a mere babe in years, and yet 250 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSON. they let Mm go from them, the last one knowing that he -proposed to walk a journey of eighteen miles to where his brother was, and yet opposed no objection and ai)parently offered no assistance. If the mother with her sx)irit-eyes saw the little fellow in his hour of neglect and wanderings, what must have been her feel- ings regarding him I And how must she have grieved over the fate that de23rived him of the care of a parent in his infant v^ears ! The long journey was accomx)lished at last, and Thomas reached the home of his uncle, Cummins Jackson, where he had the pleasure of being united to his brother again. The uncle was a father to the two boys, and four years were passed happily in his house. Tlien the unhappy disposition of the eldest brother caused trouble, and on his refusal to attend school regularly his uncle became indignant. The lad announced his determination to leave his adox)ted home, and his relative not only permitted him to go, but to take his brother, then twelve years of age, with him. The two children, not knowing what else to do, went to the house of an uncle of their mother s. They were hospitably treated, but the disobedience of the eld- est brother again caused a quarrel, and he left this home taking with him the now thoroughly wretched Thomas. Long months passed before the children were heard of again. They went down the Ohio River on a llat- boat, and then down the Mississippi until they reached a lonely island opposite the south-western corner of Kentucky. They had earned their food by first one occupation and then another until they landed on this island, and there they cut wood for the Mississippi RETURN OF THE WANDERERS. 5251 steamers. They suffered for the barest comforts of life, and both children had chills and fever. They remained throughout the summer in this unhealthy place, and in the autumn, when it was apparent that they were unable to get well, they were advised to go back to their friends. A kind-hearted steamboat captain who knew them gave them their x)assage back to Virginia, and little Thomas, thoroughly sick of his experiences and determined not to be subjected to his brother's will any longer, returned to his uncle's home and was welcomed back by his relatives. Warren sought a home with his aunt, Mrs. Brake, with whom Thomas had made his first home, and died of consumption, which disease had been developed by his hardships. Thomas never left his Uncle Cummins again until he went to West Point. He became a great favorite with this bachelor uncle, and his life was happier than it had been before since his mother's death. He renewed his studies with increased ardor, and manifested a strong desire to obtain an education. His sister lived in another county with a sister of her mother, and Thomas rarely saw her, though he was devoted to her. It is said that the first money he ever made he invested in a silk dress for her. He began to earn his living long before he should have left school, and when he sought the appointment to West Point his friends did not consider him sufii- ciently advanced to secure the i^lace. Nothing daunt- ed, he made application, and while awaiting the reply of the Congressman who had the appointment to make, he reviewed his studies, aided by a lawyer neighbor, who acted as his tutor. Growing impatient 252 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSOX. of the delav of the official, he induced his uncle to let him go to Washington and make a personal effort. The energy and determination of the lad j)leased the official, who went with him to the War DexDartment and secured his commission for him. From there he went to West Point, where he had a hard time at first owing to his previous want of train- ing, but his personal character won him the respect of the instructors, and his steady efforts enabled him to surmount the difficulties that lay in his pathway. He said of himself years afterward that he had resolved to be great and good, and he x)ossessed a nature that enabled him to accomplish his resolution. He was remarkable for his strict truthfulness and a high stand- ard of morals. Already he was become the j)raying son his mother had hoped he might be. Jackson was graduated from the Military Academy in 1846, and as the war had broken out between Mexico and the United States he was at once ordered to take the field. He was breveted captain for his bravery at the battle of Churubusco. His conduct throughout the war was such as to commend him to the respect and admiration of his superiors. The only falsehood he ever remem- bered telling in his life was during this war. He was leading his men through a pass infested by Mexican bandits, when they became panic-stricken and refused to go forward. The bullets were flying about them, when he called to them to follow him, exclaiming, " Don't you see there is no danger ?" There was great danger and he well knew it. By the time that he was elected a member of the corps of professors at the Virginia Military Institute at VISITS HIS MOTHER'S GRAVE. 253 Lexington, in 1851, his Christian character was well established. All his comrades in arms knew him to be morbidly sensitive on the subject of his duty and responsibility as a professing Christian, and respected him for his unaffected and true piety. In 1853, two years after he was established in Lex- ington, he was married to Miss Eleanor Junkin, and for the first time in his life had a home. For fourteen months they lived together, when Mrs, Jackson died. Some time after that event, in order to compose his mind and regain his health, he visited Western Vir- ginia and spent some weeks with his relatives. While there he went to his mother's grave, and in a letter which he wrote from Lexington to his uncle after his return, he says : " I stopped on my way to see the Hawk's Nest, and the gentleman with whom I put up was at my moth- er's burial and accompanied me to the cemetery for the purpose of pointing out her grave to me. But I am not certain that he found it ; there was no stone to mark the spot. Another gentleman who had the- kind- ness to go with us stated that a wooden head- or foot- board with her name on it had been put up ; but it was no longer there. A depression in the earth only marked her resting-place. When standing by her grave, I experienced feelings with which I was until then a stranger. I was seeking the si)ot partly for the purpose of erecting something to her precious memory. On Saturday last I lost my j)orte-monnaie, and in it was the date of my mother's birthday. Please give it to me in your next." In 1857 Major Jackson was married a second time, 254 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSON. his wife being Miss Mary Ann Morrison, the daugliter of a Presbyterian clergyman. Soon after his marriage he became the hai^py OA\Tier of a home, where he lived the pleasant years that intervened before the war broke out. When war came npon the country he j^re- pared for the conflict, and soon was called ux^on to take up arms in defence of his native State. The cause for which General Jackson fought and died was long ago overthrown. He went into the strife believing that the doctrine of State sovereignty was the essential bulwark of the liberties, not only of the Southern people, but of all the States of the Union. The doctrine was defeated at the jDoint of the bayonet, and the Union was maintained. General Jackson, conscientiously took up arms against the government, and he fought with the same ardor that he prayed. His career as a soldier has been admired by all nations, and his character as a man was beautifullv svmmetri- cal and noble. His history abounds in evidences of humanity and kindly thought of others, and of all the military heroes of the South none will be remembered by posterity with greater admiration and resx:)ect than Stonewall Jackson. His jDersonal character secures him the true fame that is his, and, aside from his ex- ploits as a commander, in which he was always suc- cessfid, he was the ideal soldier in that he shared every danger with his men, was with them in suifering, and was generous in his praise of their exploits. The night before the battle of Manassas, after a long march, his tired soldiers were halted at. two o'clock in the morning for a rest. They were so weary that no senti- nels were posted, and Jackson, when he learned that HIS TITLE OF STONEWALL. 255 « his camp was unguarded and was asked if some of the men should not be w-akened, rei)lied, " Let the poor fellow^s sleep. I will guard the camj) myself." And during the rest of the night he walked guard or sat on the fence w^atching over the safety of the worn-out men who lay on the ground slumbering after their long march. Such acts as this endeared him to his soldiers and made him the most popular commander, next to Lee, in the Confederate army. His title " Stonewall " was given him on the day of the battle of Manassas. For hours his command lay motionless, exposed to the death-dealing fire of the enemy, which caused sad havoc in their ranks. Jackson rode back and forth in front of his line cheering his men with his calm demeanor and his animated spirit. General Bee's command, which was not far from Jackson's, com- menced to fall back before the terrific blaze of fire that came from the enemy. It was then that Jackson called to him to give them the bayonet, and the gallant Bee, dashing back to his wavering men, pointed to Jack- son's command and exclaimed, " There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Rally behind the Vir- ginians. Let us determine to die here and we will conquer. Follow me." These words became memo- rable because they were the last he uttered. In a few moments he was killed as he headed the charge against the foe. Jackson's troops, obeying their commander's order, charged with bayonets, yelling as he had directed like furies, and won the day. That night as the sol- diers talked of the events of the day he was called the stone wall that saved the field, and soon the word was associated indelibly with his name. 256 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSON. The day after the battle a crowd was assembled about the post-office in Lexington, Virginia, awaiting the opening of the mail. Jackson's pastor was among them, and a letter was handed to him which he saw w^as in Jackson's handwriting, and he at once exclaimed to the anxious grouj) that he could give them the facts in a moment. The letter read : " My Dear Pastor : In my tent last night, after a fatiguing day's service, I remembered that I failed to send you my contribution for our colored Sunday-school. Inclosed you will find my check for that object, which please acknowledge at your earliest convenience, and oblige Yours truly, "Thomas Jackson." Considering the circumstances this was one of the most remarkable letters ever penned. Men who heard it turned and stared at each other in surprise, and be- fore night that letter was as widely known and as much commented upon as the news of the victory at Manassas. The only daughter of General Jackson, and his only child, was named after his mothei. In April, 1863, writing from his camp to a friend, he said : ' ' I have a daughter, and have named her Julia, after mother. I don't suppose you have any recollection of my mother, as she has been dead nearly thirty years. In the summer of 1855 I visited her grave in Fayette County." On his death-bed that sad Sunday morning, the 10th of May, this little daughter w^as brought to his bed- side to receive his last embrace. " As soon as she ap- peared in the doorway, which he was watching with his eyes, his face was lit up with a beaming smile, and DEATH OF GENERAL JACKSON. 257 he motioned her toward him, saying fondly, ' Little darling ! ' She was seated on the bed by his side, and he embraced her, and endeavored to caress her with his poor lacerated hand, while she smiled upon him Avith infantile delight. Thus he continued to toy with her, until the near approach of death unnerved his arm, and unconsciousness settled down upon him." His dying experiences were not widely different from those of his mother. Her perfect faith and serenity in the face of the last enemy of humanity called forth from her husband the remark, "No Chris- tian on earth, no matter what, evidence he might have had of a happy hereafter, could have died with more fortitude. Perfectly in her senses, calm and delib- erate, she met her fate without a murmur or a strug- gle. Death for her had no sting ; the grave could claim no victory. I have known few women of equal, none of superior merit." On his death-bed her son said to his chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Lacy, who had just arrived at his tent : " You see me severely wounded, but not dejoressed, not unhappy. I believe that it has been done accord- ing to Grod' s holy will, and I acquiesce entirely in it. You may think it strange, but you never saw me more perfectly contented than I am to-day, for I am sure that my heavenly Father designs this affliction for my good. I am perfectly satisfied that either in this life or in that which is to come I shall discover that what is now regarded as a calamity is a blessing. And if it appears a great calamity (as it surely will be a great inconvenience) to be deprived of my arm, it will result in a great blessing. I can wait until God, in His own 258 THE MOTHER OF STONEWALL JACKSON. time, shall make known to me the object He has in thus afflicting me. But why should I not rather re- joice in it as a blessing, and not look on it as a calam- ity at all ? If it were in my power to replace my arm, 1 would not dare to do it unless I could know it was the will of my heavenly Father. " He added that he thought when he fell from the litter that he should die upon the field, and gave him- self into the hands of his heavenly Father without a fear. He declared that he was in possession of perfect peace, while thus expecting immediate death. ' It has been,' he said, ' a precious experience to me that I was brought face to face with death, and found all was well.' " All was well to him as he neared the end of his pil- grimage and approached the unseen world to which his mother had passed through as terrible an affliction and fierce a battle as that in which he received his last wound. She escaped from her conflict and left her children broken-hearted ; her son was removed from his great duties and left millions of mourners and a nation to regret his death — a nation which will never forget the Christian soldier " who passed over the river to rest under the shade of the trees" in the land be- yond death. THE MOTHER OF COWPER. There are some men who from early boyhood seem to be peculiarly sensitive to the moral and intellectual influence of women. The gentleness and sympathy with which that influence is accompanied makes a deeper and more lasting impression on their heart than the more solemn if not sterner precepts inculcated by the father. Cowper had a nature of this kind, and the greatest misfortune that could possibly have be- fallen his clinging and over-sensitive mind was to lose his mother, as he did, at the age of six. Some have gone so far as to attribute to this loss all his subsequent mental sufferings. But such a view is inconsistent with what we know of human nature, and especially of the elasticity and recuperative spirits of children. Even of grown persons, what a modern poet has said is true, that " Nothing is permanent with man. For grief and pain are transitory things not less than joy ; And though they leave us not the men we have been, Yet they do leave us." If this remedial influence of time be true of mature grief, much more is it so of the early years, when impressions are less fixed and feelings less deep-seated. That he suffered acutely in his child's heart for her loss, and that he cherished through life the tenderest 200 THE MOTHER OF COWPER. affection for her memory, is proved, indeed, by his letters, as well as by the beautiful poem which he com- posed on receiving her picture — the only one extant — from his cousin, Mrs. Bodham. " I have lately," he says, in a letter to Mrs. King, " received from a female cousin of mine residing in Norfolk, whom I have not seen these five-and-thirty years, a picture of my own mother. She died when I wanted two days of being six years old ; yet I remember her perfectly, find the picture a strong likeness of her, and because her memory has been ever precious to me, have written a poem on the receipt of it ; a poem which, one excepted, I had more pleasure in writing than any I ever wrote. That one was addressed to a lady (Mrs. Unwin), whom I expect in a few minutes to come down to brealvfast, and who has supplied to me the place of my own mother — my own invaluable mother — these six-and- twenty years." Cowper's affection for Mrs. Unwin, which is here ex- pressed, and her long solicitude and devoted friendship for him, illustrate our remark that his was a nature that was drawn by his feelings to seek the consolation of noble female friendship irresistibly. But for Mrs. Unwin' s care, his lot in later life would have been far more desolate and gloomy than it was. In another letter Cowper again speaks of the happiness his mother' s picture has given him. " I am delighted, ' ' he says, " with Mrs. Bodham' s kindness in giving me the only picture of my mother that is to be found, I sup- pose, in all the world. I had rather j)ossess it than the richest jewel in the British crown, for I loved her with an affection that her death, fifty-two years since, hau MEMORIES OF HIS MOTHER. 261 .not in the least abated. I remember her, too, young as I was when she died, well enough to know that it is a very exact likeness of her, and as such to me is in- valuable. Everybody loved her, and with an amiable character so impressed upon her features, everybody was sure to do so." In thanking his cousin Ann for the gift, he says, " Every creature that bears an affinity to my mother is dear to me ; and you, the daughter of her brother, are but one remove distant from her. I love you, therefore, and love you much both for her sake and for your own. The world could not have furnished you with a present so acceptable to me as the picture you have so kindly sent me. I received it the night before last, and viewed it with a trepidation of nerves and si)irits akin to what I should have felt had the dear original presented herself to my embrace. I kissed it, and hang it where it is the last object that I see at night, and of course the first on which I open my eyes in the morning. She died when I completed my sixth year, yet I remember her well, and am an ocular witness to the great fidelity of the copy. I re- member, too, a multitude of the maternal kindnesses which I received from her, and which have endeared her memory to me beyond exx)ression. ' ' This was after the lapse of more than half a century since his mother's death, and it illustrates the power of memory on the affections, which we are generally apt to undervalue, but which, in a nature as intellectual and meditative as Cowper's, is often as great as the power of the living presence. The poem which he wrote on looking at the picture is too long to quote entire. It will be found in most large volumes of 262 THE MOTHER OF COWPER. selected poems. We take from it tliose passages wliick seem to shed the most vivid light upon the affectionate relations between the mother and the child. He recalls the tender accents of her voice in the opening lines, and then the sweet smile that accompanied her words to him. " O that those lips had language ! Life has passed With me but roughly since I heard thee last. Those lips are thine — thy own sweet smile I see The same that oft in childhood solaced me ; Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, Grieve not, my child ; chase all thy fears away !" For the moment her presence seems about him and before his eyes. Presently memory takes him back to the dark, sad hour of a child's bereavement and loneliness when he realized that her voice was hushed and her sweet smile stereotyped by death. " My mother ! when I learned that thou wast dead, Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? I heard the bells tolled on thy burial day ; I saw the hearse that bore thee slowly away ; And, turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went. Till, all my stock of infant sorrow spent, I learned at last submission to my lot ; But, though I less deplore thee, ne'er forgot." That the child' s grief was intense we mav learn bv his allusion to the well-meant assurances of the servants that she would soon return to him. "Thy maidens, grieved themselves at my concern, Oft gave me promise of thy quick return ; POETICAL ALLUSIONS. 263 What ardently I wished, I long believed, And disappointed still, was still deceived. By expectation every day beguiled, Dupe of to-morrow, even from a child." Mrs. Cowper, whom lier niece, Lady Walsingliam, described on her monument in Barkhampstead church, of which his father was rector, as " the best of mothers and the kindest wife," was only thirty-four years of age when she died on November 13th, 1737. The further allusions in the poem give us delightful rvlimpses of the tender familiarity and playfulness of her little son toward her. How many other happy children's lives does it reflect, the mother's protection of her little one, and she herself the last vision at night and the first at daybreak. " Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid ; Thy morning bounties, ere I left my home, The biscuit or confectionery plum ; The fragrant waters on my cheek bestowed. By thy own band, till fresh they shone and glowed." He remembered even his mother's dress, how he clung to it and played with it. " Could Time, his flight reversed, restore the hours. When, playing with thy vesture's tissued flowers ; The violet, the pink and jessamine, I pricked them into paper with a pin (And thou wast happier than myself the while, Would'st softly speak, and stroke my head and smile) ; Could those few pleasant days again appear, Might one wish bring them — would I wish them here ? I would not trust my heart, the dear delight Seems so to be de^red. " 264 THE MOTHER OF COWPER. He recalls his first attendance at the villaoe dav- school, for he was not sent to boarding-school until after his mother's death. . . . "the gardener Robin, day by day, Drew me to school along the public way, Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapped In scarlet mantle warm, and velvet capped." It does not appear with any certainty from which of his parents Cowper inherited his physical weakness and his nervous or mental trouble. That it was an inheritance there can be little doubt. There was no originating cause in his own life, as we may know from the fact that the only one suggested by his biographers is grief for the death of his mother. It is not unusual, in the mysterious dispensations of life, that the same beloved parent from whom a child derives its choicest intellectual gifts leaves it also a heritage of woe in some hereditary ailment, physical or mental, and often both. It is probable that this dear mother transmitted to her boy a tendency to brain trouble, of which she was herself unconscious ; for such insidious dis- eases will attack one generation and one person while they leave others alone. If this be so, a new light of pathetic tenderness is cast upon Cowj^er's poem on gazing upon the picture of lier who gave him life with all its sorrows as well as its sublime affection, and who, looking upon him from the canvas when past the prime of manhood and a lonely and afflicted man, rekindles the sweet memories of life's early morning and in- spires him with the Christian's hoj)e of being reunited to her in that brighter world where there is no COWPER'S INHERITANCE. 265 mental obscurity, nor bodily sickness, but wliere the angels . . . " minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow." There was intellect and indeed genius in both branches of his parental stock. His mother, whose maiden name was Anne Donne, daughter of Roger Donne, of Ludham, was descended from the famous satirist and divine, Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, whose poems and sermons are read with admiration even in our own day. His father was one of the chap- lains of King George the Second, and came of a very ancient and noted family. We must not wholly dis- connect Cowper's physical and mental maladies. He had to be taken from his first school for a distemper of the eyes, which at one time threatened total blind- ness. Like Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and other men of genius, he inherited bodily disease. Such affections are often allied to nervous irritability, melancholia, and religious despondency. They are, like St. Paul's " thorn in the flesh," a constant irritant to the nervous system, and clog to the freedom of the spirit. THE MOTHER OF GOETHE. The motlier of Goethe, like tlie mother of the first Napoleon, was only eighteen when he was born. At seventeen she had married a man whom she did not love, from that sx)irit of filial obedience which is so i:)ecu]iarly German. Goethe inherited many peculiari- ties of his cold and methodical father's character. -He is described by those who knew him as an honorable and truthful man, imperious and capricious in the government of his household, with a pedantic love for curious knowledge, and some eagerness in imparting it to others. He was distinctly the respectable citizen, and if he did not win the love of others, including his young wife, he deserved and won their respect. His son inherited his method and order, as he did his erect figure and measured gait. But his genius was his own by inherited right. His father could not bequeath it to him, for he did not possess it himself. Neither can it be said from the evidence of her letters that Goethe's mother was a woman of genius. Some of them are quite commonplace and trivial, and she sometimes descends to platitudes, and what would now be called cant, especially when stringing Scripture texts not very relevantly together under some recent bereavement. There are hundreds of women who have no such son as Goethe, who write far better letters with far brighter and more original ideas in them than INHERITANCE FROM HIS MOTHER, 267 Goethe's motlier. But the laws that seem to govern the transmission of intellectual and moral qualities do not warrant us in expecting in the parent the devel- oped inspiration that we often find in the offspring. It is safe to say that one or other of Shakespeare's parents must have had in germ, although probably hidden under a bushel of rustic ignorance and practical labor for daily bread, some at least of those vast and universal qualities and thoughts which made him the myriad-minded proj^het and poet of all time. So in the intellectual make-uj) of Goethe, whom the greatest of modern English statesmen, William Ewart Glad- stone, declares to have taught him deeper and truer and more valuable life-lore than all other authors, we may be certain that the germ of his great genius was latent in one or other of his parents, or in both. Without depreciating the valuable habits of precision and order and the love of learning which he derived from his father, there can be no question that it was the mother who set the wheels of his imagination in motion, and that he inherited from her little store of quick observation, vivacity, good-humor and youth- fulness, the wit and elasticity of feeling that illumine and pervade his writings. If Goethe's mother was not the very ideal in all re- spects of what we should imagine the mother of such a genius to have been, yet, as George Henry Lewes, the best of Goethe's biographers and the most appreciative of his critics, assures us, she was " more like" what we conceive as the proper parent for a poet than her hus- band and his father was. Indeed, Mr. Lewes takes, perhaps, a more admiring view of her than her letters 268 THE MOTHER OF GOETHE. justify. He says that " she is one of the pleasantest figures in German literature, and one standing out with greater vividness than almost any other. Her simple, hearty, joyous and affectionate nature en- deared her to all. She was the delight of children, the favorite of jDoets and princes. To the last retaining her enthusiasm and simplicity, mingled with great shrewd- ness and knowledge of character, Fran Aja, as they christened her, was at once grave and hearty, dignified and simple." Although her culture was not very deep nor very extensive, yet she had made herself ac- quainted with the best books in German and Italian ; and when the vivacity and thoroughgoing healthy mental vitality which she shows in her correspondence are considered, one can well understand the remark an admiring and sympathetic writer made after an inter- view with her : " ISTow I understand how Goethe has become the man he is." The relations which they bore to each other, indeed- owing to her being little more than a child when she became his mother — were rather those of playmates, or older sister and little brother, than of mother and child. "I and my Wolfgang," she said, "have al- ways held fast to each other, because we were young together. ' ' It was thus that, as Mr. Lewes says, " one of the kindliest of men inherited his loving, happy nature from one of the heartiest of women." "Hearty" is just the word to describe Katherine Elizabeth Goethe, who, as the town clock of Frankfort-on-Main struck the hour of noon, on the 28th day of August, 1749, gave birth to Joliann AYolfgang Goethe. One of his GOETHES MOTHER. A MUTUAL PASTIME. 271 biographers, Yiclioff, says : " All the freshness, the wit, and the humor we find in Groethe, all the depth of feeling and the poetry, were foreshadowed in his mother's character." This is a just description, and accords with our view expressed above, that only the germ and seed, not the flowers and fruits, of genius were in the mother of this marvellous boy. Goethe himself has told us that he learned from his mother the love of stories and poems that appealed to the imagination. She herself has given in prose a more particular account of this mutual pastime. "Air, fire, earth, and water I represented under the forms of princesses ; and to all natural phenomena I gave a meaning, in which I almost believed more fer- vently than my little hearers. As we thought of paths which led from star to star, and that we should one day inhabit the stars, and thought of the great spirits we should meet there, I was as eager for the hours of story-telling as the children themselves ; I was quite curious about the future course of my own improvisation, and any invitation which interrupted these evenings was disagreeable. There I sat, and there Wolfgang held me in his large black eyes ; and when the fate of one of his favorites was not according to his fancy, I saw the angry veins swell on his tem- ples, I saw him repress his tears. He often broke in with, ' But, mother, the princess won't marry the nasty sailor, even if he does kill the giant.' And when I made a pause for the night, i^romising to con- tinue it on the morrow, I was certain that he would in the mean time think it out for himself, and he often stimulated my imagination. When I turned the story 372 THE MOTHER OF GOETHE. according to his plan, and told liim that he had found out the denouement^ then he was all fire and flame, and we could see his heart beating underneath his dress ! His grandmother, who made a great pet of him, was the confidante of all his ideas as to how the story would turn out ; and as she repeated these to me, and I turned the story according to these hints, there was a little diplomatic secrecy between us which we never disclosed. I had the pleasure of continuing my story to the delight and astonishment of my hearers, and Wolfgang saw with glowing eyes the fulfilment of his own conceptions, and listened with enthusiastic ap- plause. " Through this story-telling, and even the harmless deception practised through the intervention of the be- loved grandmother as mutual confidante, the mother exercised a very powerful effect in stimulating the original genius of the youthful auditor. The fairy tales of the nursery bear an indelible imj^ression. Aged authors and statesmen recall at fourscore the feelings of delight with which they first read or heard the " Arabian Nights" and " Robinson Crusoe." No gift of nurse, mother, or sister is more valuable and at the same time more rare than that of a good raconteur of children' s stories, or an original inventor of them. We can weave the plot as she goes on. The imagina- tion, which includes the exercise of reason, as in the tracing of cause and effect, the conjecture of the out- come of complex circumstances, the moral judgments which the youthful listener passes upon the several characters, and the anticipation of the ultimate result, is the faculty which more than any other divides man THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY. 273 from the beast. The horse, the dog, and the elephant, and some others of the lower orders of sentient creat- ures, no doubt possess an infinitesimal or initiatory germ of this fjiculty. But with man it is the supreme source of intelligence, hapi3iness, and morality. The chambers of imagination are none other than the house of God and the gate of Heaven. The late Lord Bea- consfield declared that lack of imagination was the chief cause of suicide. Perhaps an excess or distortion of it is quite as frequently so. But as a lightener of physical and worldly burdens ; as the fount and origin of hope — for it has no other ; as the sunshine that lights the dark corners and broken windows of this hard, suffering life of ours, and bids us look onward and upward to the distant mountains of deliverance and freedom — imagination is heaven's greatest gift to man, the magic wand which can bring "water from the rock, and honey out of the stony rock," and which alone can " make the wilderness to blossom as the rose." Take away Shakespeare's imagination, and there is no Shakespeare. Take away Goethe's imagina- tion, and there is no Goethe. If this be true, as it unquestionably is, how awful is the responsibility of parents in choosing the early . choir leaders, so to speak, of the nursery, those whose Homeric songs and stories, like those of the old trouba- dours, awaken the responsive echoes from the hearts of children. A vicious or feeble imagination in the storv- teller of the nursery is perhaps worse than none at all, because the impressions it leaves on the white surface of the young child's mind do not tend to educate, but to pervert and embarrass the right ascension of this noble 274 THE MOTHER OF GOETHE. faculty. Nursery rhymes, with their hideous jingle and senseless Jargon, and nursery stories, with their fabulous instead of parabolic element, are a hindrance, not a help to the healthy growth of imagination in children. Goethe's mother possessed the great gift of story- telling and i^lot-weaving in a remarkable degree. Her own perceptions were as quick as intuitions, and her own nature was full of sunshine, kindness, and the enthusiasm of humanity. Her own words describe her better than any analysis which could be made by others. "I am fond of people,'' she wi'ites, "and that every one feels directly, young and old. I pass without pretension through the world, and that grati- fies men. I never hemorallze any one, always seek out the good that is in them, and leave what is bad to Him who made mankind, and knows how to round off the angles. In this way I make myself happy and com- fortable." " Order and quiet," she says in one of her letters to Freiherr von Stein, " are my principal char- acteristics. Hence I despatch at once whatever I have to do, the most disagreeable always first, and I gulp down the devil without looking at him. When all has returned to its proper state, then I defy any one to surpass me in good humor." No doubt a robust constitution and a naturally ex- uberant flow of animal spirits made Frau Rath, or Fran Aja, as she was called, the good-humored and magnetic woman that she was. Not only, as Groethe writes, did he inherit "Von Miitterchen die Frohnatur, Die Lust zu fabuliren"— A CLEVER WOMAN. 275 " From mother dear the frolic soul, The love of spinning fiction" — but that radiant sense of happiness and contentment which sparkles in all his life. Her picture, or rather bust, gives us a good idea of the jovial, intellectual, life-enjoying housewife, who picked up all she knew from insight and experience of men and things, not from regular study. She disclaimed for herself all literary pretensions. " I have never written even an ABC book," she says, in a letter to her son, "and my genius will in future guard me against any possi- bility of the sort." In another place she trusts that •' the good God will not think me so low that T should reach the depth of keeping a journal. Forbid it, Heaven !" That Frau Rath Goethe was not an ordinary clever woman is proved by the affection for herself with which she inspired persons of every variety of occupa- tion and talent and difference of worldly rank. It ap- pears also from the terms of playful endearment with which she is addressed by them, as well as by the familiar footing on which she stands with them. The Grand Duchess of Saxe- Weimar, the Princess Anna Amalia, was her frequent correspondent, and it is amusing to contrast the freedom and ease of the body of Frau Rath's letters with the German deference to rank with which they invariably close. There is some doubt as to the origin of her sobriquet of Frau Aja. Goethe himself does not clearly explain it, neither do her own letters. Its inward meaning is always taken for granted. Diintzer explains it as having been sug- gested at a dinner-party by the recollection of the 276 THE MOTHER OF GOETHE. legend of the children of Haimon, and conferred on Fran Rath because she went down to the cellar to fetch wine for the Counts Stolberg who were dining with her son. Those romantic young noblemen at once recalled the similar scene in the Haimons kinder, where their mother, Frau Aja, brings wine from the cellar for her sons, who have returned to the castle in disguise. They greeted Frau Rath, as she brought them the good cheer, by the name of the good mother in the legend. Herr Rath Goethe, her husband, died in 1782, and Goethe's mother was free to choose her own mode of daily life. In a letter written in March, 1783, to the Grand Duchess of Saxe- Weimar, she thus describes it : " In the morning I attend to my little housekeei^ing and other business matters, and then my letters get themselves written. No one ever had such a droll cor- respondence. Every month I clear my desk out, and I never can do so without laughing. Inside the scene is that of heaven — all class distinctions done away with, and high and low, saints, publicans, and sinners, in a heap together ! A letter from the pious Lavater lies without animosity by the side of one from the actor Grossmann. In the afternoon my friends have the right to visit me ; but they all have to clear out by four o'clock, for then I dress myself and either go to the play or else pay calls. At nine I am back again home." In the earlier days of her widowhood she writes to the same' great friend : " All future Joys must be sought for among strangers and out of my own house, for there all is still and vacant as in the churchyard. It was far otherwise LETTERS FROM FRAU RATH. 277 once ! But since tliroiigliout nature notliing remains in its own place, but whirls into the eternal rolling cir- cle, how can I suppose that I am to be an exception ? Frau Aja exx)ects nothing so absurd. Who would dis- tress himself because it is not always or because the sun now (in October) is not so warm as in July ? If the present is only well used, and no thoughts entertained of how things might be otherwise, one gets fairly through the world, and the getting through it is — all said and done — the main thing." She seems resolved on her own account to get through life pleasantly enough, for she adds : " Herr Tabor (your Highness will remember the name at least) has provided sj)len- didly for our amusement. The whole winter we are to have the play ! Won't there just be fiddling and trumpeting ! Ha ! I should like to see the evil spirit who dare trouble me with melancholy I Just one Sir John Falstaff would put him to the rout. We had such a gaudium with the old dog." This Latin word frequently occurs in her letters, as do such other phrases used with mock solemnity, ' ' per secula seculorum,'''' '■''lirum larum^^'' '■'- summa sum- maruiTi,'^'' etc. Merck, the poet, had stayed some days with her, and had written a letter to his and her friend Wieland which he forgot to post. This occa- sioned a characteristic letter to Wieland from herself : "Dear Son : Merck was three days with us. When he was gone I searched in his room and cleared it out, which in the case of poets is a very necessary task, as you can sufficiently judge by the letter which preceded this. For that poor letter would have lain where it 278 THE MOTHER OF GOETHE. was, and never have readied its place and destination, had Fran Aja had less insight into the poet nature. But, thank God, she is not yet out of practice, though for these three years Herr Wolfgang Goethe has no longer gladdened her house, but allowed the light of his countenance to shine at Weimar." Frau Rath, always the trusted friend and confidante of the young, wi^ote some charming letters to Friedrich von Stein, then a lad of eleven, who subsequently cor- responded with Goethe himself. In one of her letters she sends him two silhouettes of herself, and says : ' ' In person I am reasonably taU and reasonably stout ; have brown hair and eyes, and could represent tolerably well the mother of Prince Hamlet. Many persons — among them the Princess of Dessau — declare there could be no mistake about Goethe being my son. I do not find it so, but there must be something in it. it has been said so often." Indeed, the good and gleeful mother never fails to think with pride of the genius and fame of her wonder- ful boy, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, whom she lived to see the greatest man in Germany. Friiulein von Goch- hausen, famous for her wit and her deformity, who was lady-in-waiting to the Grand Duchess Anna Amalia of Weimar, was fond of writing what is called in Germany " knuttel-vers," or what we should call nonsense- verses or doggerel. She often wrote in this rhyming mood her letters to Frau Rath, and the latter replied in the same dialect. « " In Versemachcn habe nicht viel gethan, Das sieht man diesen wahrlich an, A SKATING SCENE. 279 Doch habe ich geboren eiii Knabeleiu aclion, Das thut das alles gar trefilich verstehn." " No great things have I done in rhyme, As you may judge at any time ; But I a handsome lad can claim, "Who knows full well the tuneful game." Of the pride she took in him, the following anecdote of his boyhood, as told by herself, is proof : '' The morning was bright and frosty. Wolfgang burst into the room where I was seated with some friends. ' Mother, you have never seen me skate, and the weather is so beautiful to-day. ' I put on my crim- son fur cloak, wliich had a long train and was closed in front by golden clasps, and we drove out. There skated my son, like an arrow among the groups. The wind had reddened his cheeks and blown the powder out of his brown hair. When he saw my crimson cloak, he came toward our carriage, and smiled coax- ingly at me. 'Well,' said I, 'what do you want T ' Come, mother ; you can't be cold in the carriage ; give me your cloak.' ' You won't put it on, w^ill you ? ' ' Certainly.' I took it off ; he put it on, threw the train over his arm, and away he went over the ice like a son of the gods. Oh, Bettina, if you could have seen him ! Anything so beautiful is not to be seen now ! I clapped my hands for joy. ISTever shall I forget him, as he darted out from under one arch of the bridge, and in again under the other, the wind carrying the train behind him as he flew." How deep and tender was the natural affection of Goethe himself while yet a child, the following brief 280 THE MOTHER OF GOETHE. anecdote will serve to show. The small-pox had carried off his little brother Jacob. To the surprise of his mother, Johann Wolfgang did not shed a tear, for he believed with a young heart's trust that God had taken little Jacob to dwell with Him in heaven. His mother, not understanding the cause of his equanimity, asked him, " Did you not love your little brother, then, that you do not grieve for his loss ?" He ran up to his room, and from under the bed drew a quantity of paper on which he had wTitten stories and lessons. "All these I had written," he said to his mother, " that I might teach them to little Jacob." He was then only nine years old. Although Frau Rath Goethe could not be 2:)ersuaded even by her son to leave her native Frankfort-on-the- Main and take up her abode with him in Weimar, their love for each other was never broken. In August, 1797, he took his wife Christiane Yulpries and their son August to visit her. And when on one occasion in later life he found an old letter from his mother, he said, " It reminded me in a strange manner of many peaceful passages of my youth, and circumstances con- nected with my family and native town. ... I was taken by surprise and thrown back upon myself ; a thousand images started up before me. ... As a sick person or prisoner forgets for the moment his pains and troubles, while listening to some tale that is being related to him, so was I also carried back to other spheres and other times." Among the peculiarities of Goethe' s highly sensitive nature was one which he distinctly inherited from his mother, the shrinking from painful and affecting scenes, A SUNNY NATURE. 281 spectacles, and conversations. Her letters abound with expressions of the desire to get along pleasantly and jovially to the end of life. Only now and then to Lavater, the x>rophet and iDhysiognomist, does she express a sense of the awful sorrows and chastenings of life. Her nature shrinks from the contemplation of the trials and sufferings of others. Even on the death of her daughter Cornelia, her meditation is chiefly introspective, and she cries in pity for her own feelings as a mother, " Oh, dear Lavater ! the poor mother had much, much to bear." So Falk relates that w^hen Goethe heard that he had looked upon Wieland in death, and " thereby procured myself a miserable even- ing and worse night, he vehemently reproved me for it." " Why," said he, " should I suffer the delightful impression of the features of my friend to be obliterated by the sight of a disfigured mask ? I carefully avoided seeing Schiller, Herder, or the Duchess Amalia in the coffin. I, for my part, desired to retain in my memory a picture of my departed friends more full of soul than the mere mask can furnish me." But neither in the mother nor the son did this repugnance to painful scenes and memories arise from want of heart, but rather from an excess of sensitive affection. Those who had known Goethe' s mother never forgot or ceased to love her. ' •' How did we hang upon her lips," says one, " when in her joyous yet earnest man- ner she related to us, then girls of twelve or fourteen, a story by Wieland, or recited a poem by her son ! How intense was her attachment to her friends ! How efficient a mediator and helper, how faithful and dis- creet a confidante was she !" " How many hours of 282 THE MOTHER OF GOETHE. intimacy," says another, "have I passed with her nailed to my chair, listening to stories !" Frau Rath herself has vividly described her Satur- day evening cu'cle of listeners. To one of them, Crespel, during his temporary absence from Franlvfort, she writes : " Yesterday would have been a great pleas- ure to you. A thousand pities that you are sitting in Ratisbon ! Eight young maidens were mth me. We played ' Stirbt der Fuchs so gilt sein Balz ' (' When the fox dies his skin counts ' ), and that brought forfeits and made much merriment. Then there were stories told and enigmas given ; in one word, there was great fun. All wished that j^ou were back again." The game referred to derived its name from Goethe's song with that title. It is also known as " Jack's Alight," or " Bonhomme vit Encore," and consists in passing a lighted stick rapidly from hand to hand, the one in whose hand it goes out paying a forfeit. In those vivacious years the good Frau Rath loved also to sing her son's song of " The King and his Flea," and the guests who drank her choice old wine joined in the chorus. But as the shadows of old age gathered around her, her spirits became more subdued, tran- quillized by a deep trust in God. Dr. Robert Keif, writing of Frau Rath, tells a pathetic story. "When Goethe, in 'Wilhelm Meister,' had thrown the letters and conversations of Friiulein von Klettenberg into the foam of the Bekenntnisse einer schlinen Seele, the Frau Rath copied with her own hand for her son, from the TheologiscJie Annalen, a re- view of those pages, and added the following words : ^" My criterion is Psalm 1:3,' His leaf also shall not DEATH OF FRAU RATH. 283 wither.' It certainly did not occur to my dear Kletten- berg that after so long a time her memory should still grow green and blossom and bring blessings to after generations. Thou, my dear son, wast destined by Providence for the preservation and dissemination of these unfading leaves. God's blessing and a thousand thanks for it ! And as it is clearly to be seen from this narrative that no good seed is lost, but bears fruit in its season, let us not be weary in well-doing, for the har- vest will reward us with full barns." Frau Rath's death was somewhat sudden, and occurred on the 13th of September, 1808, when she was seventy-seven years old. Her faithful servant Lischen was with her at the last. Death did not take her by surprise, for she had j)rearranged all the details of her funeral, even to the wine and biscuits for the mourners. She was buried in the old Frankfort Friedhof, where her gravestone was erected some years later. We cannot conclude this sketch of her, derived from her own letters and several indei)endent sources as to its incidents and general characteristics, better than in the words of Gr. H. Lewes : " To the last her love for her son, and his for her, had been the glory and sus- tainment of her happy old age." THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. *' This shall be the story of a man," says Lieutenant Sir William Napier, at the opening of his " Life and Opinions of General Sir Charles James Napier," his brother, who " never tarnished his reputation by a shameful deed ; of one who subdued distant nations by his valor, and then governed them so wisely that English rule was reverenced and loved where before it had been feared and execrated. For thus nobly acting, the virulence of interested faction was loosed to do him wrong ; honors were withheld, and efforts made to depreciate his exploits by successive governments; nevertheless his fame has been accepted by the British people as belonging to the glory of the nation." The fame of Sir Charles Napier is indeed well pub- lished the world over, and scarcely less famous was the Napier who wrote his life, his younger brother, who with an elder brother, George, formed a triumvirate of military heroes such as the world has rarely seen. It is natural for the student of modern history to ask who were the i)arents of such men, and especially who was their mother. The positive records regarding her are few, but they are the more suggestive and interesting from their incompleteness. Lady Sarah Lennox, the mother of the Napiers, was daughter of the second Duke of Riclimond, who was a grandson of Charles the Second, and married Lady A STRANGE WEDDING. 285 Sarali Cadogan, whose father was the favorite general of the famous Duke of Marlborough. It seems almost incredible to our nineteenth century civilization that the marriage of this nobleman when Lord March, dur- ing his father's lifetime, and a mere youth at college, should have been a bargain to cancel a gambling debt which his father was unable to meet. " The young Lord March," writes Sir William Napier, " was brought from college, the lady from the nursery, for the ceremony. The bride was amazed and silent, but the bridegroom exclaimed, ' Surely you are not going to marry me to that dowdy ? ' Married he was, how- ever, and his tutor instantly carried him off to the con- tinent. Lady Sarah went back to her mother, a daughter of Wilhelm Munter, States Councillor of Holland. " Three years afterward Lord March returned from his travels, an accomx^lished gentleman, but having such a disagreeable recollection of his wife that he avoided home, and repaii^ed on the first night of his arrival to the theatre. There he saw a lady of so fine appearance that he asked who she was. ' The reign- ing toast, the beautiful Lady March.' He hastened to claim her, and they lived together so affectionately that, one year after his decease, in 1750, she died of grief." The daughter of this mamage, Sarah Lennox, was born in 1746, and inherited the remarkable beauty of her mother. At fifteen years of age she appeared at court. George the Third had succeeded his grand- father George the Second in 1760, and on the fourth of June in the following year the first anniversary of his 286 THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. accession to tlie English throne was kept with much splendor at St. James's. The suri^assing beauty of Lady Sarah Lennox was then fii'st observed by the young king as well as by his courtiers. Horace Wal- pole, the great literary gossip of the times, wTote to Lady Ailesbury, that " the birthday exceeded the splendors of Haroun Alraschid and the Arabian Nights, when people had nothing to do but to scour a lantern and send a genie for a hamper of diamonds and rubies. Do you remember one of those stories where a imnce has eight statues of diamonds, which he overlooks because he fancies he wants a ninth, and to his great surprise the ninth joroves to be pure flesh and blood, which he never thought of i Somehow or other Lady Sarah is the ninth statue, and you will allow has bet- ter white and red than if she was made of pearls and rubies." The young king did not soon forget the lovely girl whom he first saw at this anniversary. Two years later he feU deeply in love with her, and although he had already been captivated for a time by the beauty of Hannah Lightfoot, a Quakeress, he became far more earnestly enamored of Sarah Lennox. Her brother-in- law, Henry Fox, afterward Lord Holland, noticed the king's feelings toward her, and encouraged her to recip- rocate them by all the strategy in his power. She is said to have been herself in love with Lord Newbottle, afterward Marquis of Lothian, but it was natural for one of her age and position to be dazzled for the moment at the splendid possibility of becoming Queen of Eng- land. "It is well known," writes Sir Nathaniel Wraxall, " that before his mamage the king distin- a o GO 5 p as a CO W DC C THE KING'S FAVORITE. 289 gnished by his partiality Lady Sarah Lennox, then one of the most beautiful young women of high rank in the kingdom, Edward the Fourth or Henry the Eighth in his situation would have married her and placed her on the throne. . . . But the king, who, though he admired her, did not desire to make her his wife, subdued his passion by the strength of his reason, his principles, and his sense of public duty." That the king had no desire, however, to make Lady Sarah Lennox his wife would seem to be contradicted by other testimony. Some attributed his breaking off with her to jealousy of Lord ISTewbottle. According to the Grenville papers. Lady Sarah "found herself deprived of a crown and of her lover, Lord Newbottle, who complained as much of her as she did of the king." It is perhaps to be regretted that George the Third did not follow his inclinations and marry Lady Sarah, since there was no law at that time in England to pre- vent the sovereign from marrying Ms subject. He was probably counter-influenced by Lord Bute and his own mother, the Princess Dowager of Wales. It is certain that at the time he took little pains to conceal Ms passion from those about him. He made the friend and kinswoman of Lady Sarah, Lady Susan Strang- ways, Ms confidante. According to the account which, more than six years afterward, Thomas Pitt related to George Grenville, " His Majesty came to Lady Susan Strangways in the drawing-room, and asked .Iier in a wMsper if she did not think the coronation would be a much finer sight if there was a queen?" She said "Yes." "He then asked her if she did not know 290 THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. somebody who would grace the ceremony in the prop- erest manner V At this she was much embarrassed, thinking he meant herself ; but he w^ent on and said, ' ' I mean your friend, Lady Sarah Lennox. Tell her so ; and let me have her answer the next drawing-room day." On another occasion Lady Susan told the king casually that she was about to leave London for a while. " But you will return in the summer for the coronation ?" said the king. "■ I hope so, sk," was the reply. "But," continued the Mng, "they talk of a wedding. There have been many projDosals, but I think an English match would do better than a foreign one. Pray tell Lady Sarah Lennox I say so." Even when the king was consenting to an arrangement of marriage with Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz, George Grenville writes that " Lady Sarah used to meet the king in his rides early in the morning, driving in a chaise with Lady Susan Strangways ; and once, it is said, that wanting to speak to him, she went dressed like a servant-maid, and stood among the crowd in the Guard-Room to say a few words to him as he passed by." There is a picture, we do not remember by what painter, of Lady Sarah Lennox, attired as a shepherdess, and with a rake in her hand, taking her share with the haymakers at Holland House. She stayed there con- stantly while the court remained in London, and its X)roximity to St. James's Palace enabled the youthful king to ride there on fine mornings, in the hope of meeting her in the gardens and paying her his hesitat- ing but impassioned compliments. The era at which she bloomed into surpassing beauty was remarkable MARRIAGE OF THE KING. 291 for the lo'celiness of some of its women. Tlie two Miss Gunnings, who came from Dublin to London, and used to draw crowds around them in the street and park, must have been very beautiful or they would not have bewitched the nobility as they did. But even the Duchess of Hamilton and Lady Coventry were not as classical in their style of beauty as Sarah Lennox. Beside the picture of her as a haymaker, Sir Joshua Reynolds has left us her portrait, in which she is sacri- ficing to the Graces dressed in classic drapery. George Selwyn's " Correspondence" also contains a half-length portrait of her on a smaller scale, which must satisfy the most fastidious critic of female beauty that hers was unsurpassed. This was the charming girl whose sister Caroline was the wife of Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, and who won the heart though not the hand of George the Third, then a young man of twenty -two. He who in after life showed so much obstinacy seems to have been unduly influenced in the matter of marriage. His council voted against the marriage, and the king obeyed them. When he did actually marry the future prolific mother of two kings of England and a large array of princes and princesses, Lady Sarah Lennox was one of the ten bridesmaids to the queen, and her friend. Lady Susan Strangways, was another. The courtiers who witnessed the marriage watched the young king's face for the emotion they expected to see in it. An incident which happened at the drawing-room on the day following disturbed him for the moment. Among those presented to theu' Majesties was the aged Earl of Westmoreland, who was partially blind. He unluckily mistook Lady Sarah 292 THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. Lennox for the new queen, and was only prevented by those around him from kneeling and paying homage to her. That the king did not soon forget the impression she had made upon his heart was shown many years later, when he attended one of the performances of the charming actress Mrs. Pope, who was thought to bear a striking resemblance both in face and manner to Lady Sarah Lennox. He seemed to be transported to the old days of his love-making, and forgetting that his prudish and snuff-taking queen sat beside him, he was heard to murmur to himself, ' ' She is like Lady Sarah still." The pedigree of the mother of the Napiers was as romantic as her career. William Fraser has written and published at Edinburgh two volumes of memoirs and charters of the ancient family of " The Lennox." He says that after Charles the Second had revived the dukedom in the new line of Lennox and Richmond, the Lennox estates were sold, and his descendants, the later Dukes of Lennox, have possessed theu' Lennox title entirely separated from every acre of the Lennox territory. It must suffice for Sarah Lennox's pedigree that she had royal blood in her veins, being descended nearly in equal degree from Henry of Navarre and Charles the Second. The latter was her great-grand- father, and her gi'eat-grandmother was the notorious Louisa de Queronaille, the rival of Nell Gwynne, his French mistress, who exercised so powerful and disas- trous an influence over him, and whom he created Duchess of Portsmouth. To this French current in her veins we must attribute the vivacity and sprightli- A DIVORCED WIFE. 293 ness of this pretty creature, and perhaps also her fond- ness for admiration and her moral weakness in her earlier life. A sad story, though, alas, not an uncom- mon one, especially in the times in which she lived, when woman's virtue was lightly thought of, clouds her early married life. Having lost, as we have seen, her lover, Lord !N'ewbottle, through his jealousy of the king's attentions to her, and having lost the king on his marriage mth Charlotte Mecklenburg Strelitz, she her- self married Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, a sporting man of the time, whose marriage with, her was dissolved by the House of Lords in 1776. There were no divorce courts in England in those days, and the House of Peers alone had the power of annulling a marriage. Moreover, as the law then stood, the husband alone could be the plaintiff, since unfaithfulness to the mar- riage vow did not give the wife a legal ground of com- plaint, although the same crime on her side enabled him, though at considerable exj)ense, to get his union with her dissolved. The reason of this injustice was that the line of descent might be preserved, which the husband's adul- tery would not affect, but which might be mixed and broken by that of the wife. It was thought but just that a husband should be sure he was the father of the children born by his wife. Only the upper and richer classes had any chance, however, of obtaining a divorce from Parliament. The middle and poorer classes had to shift for themselves as best they could, when unequally yoked with a partner who proved unfaith- ful. The fact that Sir Charles Bunbury, who was sel- dom called by his first name, " Thomas," was able to 294 THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. get rid of Sarali Lennox as a wife, is sufficient proof that slie had erred and wronged him. Otherwise, the cowardly and disgusting boast of the Duke de Lauzun in his infamous "Memoirs" would have no power to blight a woman's reputation with persons of honorable feeling. Thomas De Quincey, keen in his analysis of human character, has justly said of this French liber- tine and scoundrel, " On the hypothesis most favorable to the writer, the basest of men, he is self -denounced as vile enough to have forged the stories he tells, and cannot complain if he should be roundly accused of doing that which he has taken pains to prove himself capable of doing." > The genuineness of the Duke de Lauzun' s memou's has been much disputed, and some have held that while the book is authentic its narrations are false. Others have deemed the book itself spurious on account of the atrocious character of its contents. The best historical critics, however, accept the work as a genuine produc- tion of the infamous French nobleman. Those who wonder at the furor which the beauty of Mrs. Langtry has excited in this country as well as in England, ought to study the beauties of the reign of George the Third, of whom Sarah Lennox was one of the chief. The two Miss Grunnings, whose faces are the only ones that can challenge hers for loveliness, were the untitled daughters of an Irish gentleman, John Gunning, Esq., of Castle Coote, by Bridget, daughter of Theobald Bourke, Sixth Viscount Mayo. Marie, the elder sister, was born apparently in 1733, and Elizabeth, the younger, in the following year. \Ylien they first appeared in court in 1751, the one TWO BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. 295 was in lier nineteenth, the other in lier eighteenth year. There is probably no instance of female beauty caus- ing so ridiculous an idolatry as theirs did. Horace Walpole writes to Sir Horace Mann : " These two Irish girls, of no fortune, are declared the handsomest women alive. I think their being two so handsome and both such perfect figures is their chief excellence, for, singly, I have seen much handsomer women than either ; however, they can't walk in the Park, or go to Yauxhall, but such crowds follow them, that they are generally driven away." Their marriages were romantic enough. The first to marry was Elizabeth, the younger, who on the 14th of February, 1752, became the wife of James, Duke of Hamilton, who fell in love with her at a masquerade, and whom Horace WaljDole describes as " hot, de- bauched, extravagant, and equally damaged in his fortune and person." Three weeks later Maria Gun- ning became Countess of Coventry. The great letter- writer adds : " The world is still mad about the Gun- nings ; the Duchess of Hamilton was presented on Fri- day ; the crowd was so great that even the noble crowd in the dining-room clambered upon chairs and tables to look at her. There are mobs at their doors to see them get into their chairs ; and people go early to get places at the theatres when it is Ivnown they will be there. Dr. Sacheverel never made more noise than these two beauties." And again, a few weeks after- ward : " The Gunnings are gone to their several cas- tles, and one hears no more of them, except that such crowds flock to see the Duchess of Hamilton pass that 296 THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. seven hundred people sat up all night in and about an inn in Yorkshire, to see her get into her post-chaise next morning." The Duke of Hamilton died on the 17th of January, 1758, but his widow did not long remain a duchess dowager, for on the 3d of March of the following year she became Duchess of Argyle. She died on the 20th of December, 1790, but her elder sister, Maria, Lady Coventry, died on the 1st of October, 1760, at the early age of twenty-six. Her death was caused by the use of cosmetics, the joaint she plastered her pretty face vdth checking j)erspu'ation and causing mortification. She lived latterly with the curtains of her bed closed around her, that her disfigurement might not be seen and talked of. Neither of these beauties could compare in intellect, even if they could in physical beauty, with the m.other of the Napiers, who was born in London on the 14th of February, 1745, and was therefore twelve or thirteen years their junior. Of the ten unmarried daughters of dukes and earls who were Queen Charlotte's brides- maids, Walpole says that Lady Sarah was " by far the chief angel ;" and again, alluding to her performing the part of Jane Shore in some private theatricals at Holland House, he says : " When Lady Sarah was in white, with her hair about her ears, and on the ground, no Magdalen by Correggio was ever half so lovely and expressive." Her marriage with Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury took place on the 2d of June, 1762, Avlien she was in her eighteenth year. His estate was at Barton, in Suffolk. He was the sixth baronet, and was born in May, 1740. LADY SARAH'S LETTER. 297 In Ids youth he held the appointment of secretary of legation at Paris, and subsequently that of secretary to Lord Weymouth when Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. He died at his house in Pall Mall, on the 21st day of March, 1821, in his eighty-first year. Many circum- stances rendered him a remarkable person in his day, and his figure was familiar on all the thoroughfares of London. He was the prince and father of the turf, and his stud was the finest in England. He made large sums by betting, and that he was prudent in his gam- bling may be inferred from a letter from Lady Sarah to George Selwyn, in which she says : " Sir Charles games from morning till night, but he has never yet lost a hundred pounds in one day. He gives break- fasts and dances, and is quite the beau gargon here. He sends his compliments to you both, and says he will write to both, but I do not believe a word of it, so I write en attendant. I do not comprehend how I have the courage to scribble away at such a rate to ' Mr. Selwyn the wit,' but you see the effect of fiattery. You have shown such partiality to me that I am per- suaded you are very glad to hear from me, even though you must go through so long a letter. At the end I shall not say pray excuse this scrawl, but only beg you will burn my letters, as I particularly dislike any- body's keeping them a minute after they are read, and I will run the risk of your thinking me, xerj tiresome, for the sake of obliging you, who are politeness itself, to answer all my letters, if I write ever so often." This was wi-itten on August 8th, 1767, at Spa, of which she adds : " I like this place very much. I dance every other night, and it agrees very well with me, for I am 298 THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. in very great spirits. We have got two very agreeable men, lately arrived, two counts — brothers. The eldest is a very handsome, agreeable, grand coxcomb ; the youngest a very pretty, lively young man of eighteen, who is just recovered of his wounds in a duel fought for his mistress. Q'' est tres hlen dehuter dans le monde^ in my opinion. The men that we see most are this young Polander, two Danes, a Hanoverian, a Frenchman, a Swiss, and a Dutchman. The last is very stupid, and we only admit him for variety ; but really the rest are a very tolerable set ; at least they are very well bred if they are not very clever, and that is no small merit here, where Lord Fortrose, a mad brother of Mr. Shaw Stewart's, and a pack of Irishmen are hallooing and swearing about the town all day. To do them justice, they are very good-humored, but not very agreeable. I really must end this amazing long- letter, with an excuse for making you pay as much as I fear you will for this. Adieu : My respects and compliments to all my friends at Paris.'' The Frenchman here referred to was perhaps the dastard who bragged afterward in print that he had triumphed over her virtue. His vile book can unhap- pily be proved to be genuine. Tom Moore in his diary writes : " Sat next to Ladv E. Stuart : she tokl me that the Memoirs of the Due de Lauzun (which of course she did not care to have read) were supposed to be genuine, bat not true. Lord Thanet saw nothing- improbable in them, but found them dull from tlieir probability." Thackeray says in " The Virginians,'"' with unmistakable allusion to him, " Tliere lived dur- ing the last century a certain French duke and marquis MARRIAGE OF LADY SARAH. 299 who distinguished himself in Europe, and America likewise, and has obliged posterity by leaving behind him a choice volume of Memoirs, which the gentle reader is especially warned not to consult. Having performed the part of Don Juan in his own country, in ours, and in other parts of Europe, he has kindly noted down the names of many court beauties who fell vic- tims to his fascinations ; and very pleasing, no doubt, it must be for the grandsons and descendants of the fashionable persons among whom our brilliant noble- man moved, to find the names of their ancestresses adorning M. le Due's sprightly pages, and their frail- ties recorded by the candid writer who caused them. It is some comfort to know that the chivalrous Due de Lauzun perished by the guillotine in the days of the first French Eevolution." Sarah Lennox was happily childless by her marriage with Sir Charles Bunburv, and her true life as a wife and mother, as well as a noble and suffering woman, dates really from her divorce from him. Only a short time elapsed before the Hon. George Napier, who traced his descent from the great Montrose, and from Napier of Merchiston, inventor of logarithms, offered her an honorable love. She accepted him, and for half a century her life was one of purity, happiness, and peace. " The sins of the fathers," says her son, Sir William Napier, " are visited on the children." Lord Napier, grandson of the mathematician, lost his lands fighting for Charles the First ; he reclaimed them at the Restoration from Charles the Second, but was offered, it was said, a dukedom without revenue instead ; it was refused ; total neglect followed, and 300 THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. the faithful man died absolutely destitute — even starv- ed. Now a descendant of the ungrateful, dissolute monarch, whose merry life made others so sad, was united to a descendant of the despoiled loid, and they and their children were to struggle with poverty. Had the confiscated lands been restored, the Napier inheri- tance would have been vast, for the lost estate is said to have comprised all the ground covered by the new town of Edinburgh up to the tower of Merchiston. In a world in which the habitual impurity of man is readily forgiven, provided he has money and influence to keep the sepulchre of his life duly whitewashed by hypocrisy and secrecy, but where one false step by a flattered, deceived, and forsaken woman is regarded as a stain that cannot be wiped out, so that in nine cases out of ten she is forever banished from the circles of so-called respectability, it is refreshing to find one man noble enough, like George Napier, to love and offer marriage to a noble woman in si)ite of her misfortune, and one woman wise enough to be grateful for such a man's trust, and to show her sense of his generous pro- tection of her by a life of pure devotion to him and to their children. Such, from the date of her second mar- riage, was the true repentance of a nobler life as exhibited by Sarah Napier. In her thoughtless youth, passed at a time when French immorality had cor- rui)ted English life, she had her day of sorrow, but although the last years of her life were spent in total l)lindness, she then realized in inward peace the prom- ise, " At evening time there shall be light," Childless by her first marriage, she became the mother of many childi-en by her second. If Cornelia, MOTHER AND SONS. 301 the Roman matron, was proud of being the mother of the Gracchi, Sarah Nai)ier had not less cause for being proud of her sons. The greatest of them, the late Sir Charles James Napier, bore in features and the expres- sion of the eyes, at sixteen years of age, a remarkable likeness to what his mother had been at the same age. His life and diary are full of affectionate letters and greetings to his mother. " Your letter, dearest mother, surj)rised me by suffering a wish to keep the foolish quarrel a secret from my father ; by no means. But no more of this : it is hateful to think how near foolish passion was involving me in a desperate duel." " January 1st. Happy new year and many of them to my dearest mother." And when, while he was in Greece in 1826, he received the tidings of his mother's death, on the 20th of xA.ugust in that year, aged eighty- one, we read that the dreadful calamity bowed him to the dust. The tenor of his long correspondence must speak for the depth of his affliction ; no Journals or letters describing his feelings exist ; his grief was silent. The event brought him at once to England, where he remained for several months, sorrowing in secret, yet presenting his usual firm front to adver- sity. His military career was a splendid one, and Corunna, Virginia, and India were the chief scenes of his valor. The small British army were retreating before the French from Astorga to Corunna. They beheld the ■wintry sea, but no friendly squadron was upon it to rescue them. The terrible explosion described by Sir William Napier took place, and then " stillness, slightly interrupted by the waves of the shore, sue- 302 THE MOTHER OF THE NAPIERS. ceeded, and the business of war went on/' Charles and William kept together, and as they were going into the battle a wounded officer on a stretcher was carried by, and when Charles asked who it was, he was told, ".It is Captain George Xapier, mortally wounded." This was his brother, but he recovered from his wounds. In that battle of Corunnafell Sir John Moore, a cannon ball " breaking the ribs over his heart, and tearing the muscles of the breast into long strips, interlaced by the recoil from the dragging of the shot ;" and no sigh or groan escaped the dying man's lips, but only, " I would rather my sword should go out of the field with me," and the last words : " I trust the people of England will be satisfied : I hope my country will do me jus- tice." Charles Napier himself was shockingly muti- lated, and his life was saved by the intercession of a little drummer-boy. The blind mother in England wept when she heard of her wounded son being a pris- oner of the French, who treated him with chivalrous kindness. In the war with us of 1812 he again saw active ser- vice, and he records in his diary that he could not kill an enemy who asked for quarters in the mother tongue, because it seemed like killing one of his own countrymen. But the grandest of his triumphs was as the victor of the bloody battle of Meance, when with two thousand seven hundred English and native troops he routed twenty thousand intrenched Belooches and Sikhs. The battle was fought on the 17th of February, 1843, and by it Scinde was subdued and subjected to British rule. He and his brothers lived to a good old age, as their blind mother, the once beautiful and frail LADY SARAH'S ANCESTRY. 303 court beauty, Sarah Lennox, had done, who was the last great-granddaughter of Charles the Second and the aunt of Charles James Fox, as well as the mother of the Napiers. JEAN PAUL RICHTER'S MOTHER. The influence of a good mother on a great man's life is often like a gleam of sunlight falling upon some grand picture, which would else remain in shadow and have its finest touches unrevealed. While it is the light that beautifies the picture, it is the picture which makes us conscious of the light. So it was with Jean Paul Richter's mother and himself. We should scarcely be conscious of her silent influence, sejDarated as they were after his father, the good pastor's death, but for the allusions he so often made to her, and the tender and playful letters — playful but never silly — which he writes to her. If Jean Paul Richter had no other title to a " name to live" than his words, " To the man who has had a mother all women are sacred for her sake," his memory would deserve to be immortal. It would be difficult among the works of genius to find a soul more thoroughly domestic than that of Jean Paul Richter. Home was the garden in which his intellectual and moral nature grew, and home affections were the flowers that filled his early life with fragrance and beauty. Goldsftiith has pictured the country pastor and parsonage so pathetically in the " Vicar of Wakefield," that even Goethe declared it to be the sweetest pastoral story in any language ; but where, even in Goldsmith, who, like Jean Paul Richter, was a poor country pastor's son, shall we find a picture more A PASTOR'S HOME. 305 exquisite in its simi)licity tlian this wliicli describes liis early home, his father studying his sermons before the dew is off the fields, and his mother at evening bringing them their simple meal. " The morning sparkled,'' he writes, " with the undried dew, when I carried his coffee to my father in the pastor's garden, lying outside the village, where, in a small pleasure-house, open on every side, he committed his sermon to memory. In the evening our mother brought us, for our second meal, the salad prepared by herself, and currants and raspberries from the garden. It belongs to the unac- knowledged country pleasures, that of being able to sup in the evenings without kindling a light. After we had enjoyed this, my father seated himself with his pipe in the open air ; that is, in the walled court of the parsonage, and I and my brother sprang about in our night-gowns in the fresh evening air, as freely as the crossing swallows above us. We llew nimbly here and there, till, like them, we bore us orderly to our nests." To the genial springtime in the country parsonage Jean Paul looked back with pleasure in after life. *' It is merely necessary in villages," he says, " to draw away the curtain of snow from the earth for its joys to begin. The' city has its pleasures only in the winter ; ploughing and sowing are a countryman's pleasure- harvest, and for a pastor who does his own farming they open new scenes to his secluded sons." Those sons helped the farmer-pastor in sowing, planting, and haymaking. " My father," he adds with pride, " did not stand by the field laborers as a taskmaster (al- though they were feudal tenants), but as a friendly OG JEAN PAUL RICHTER'S MOTHER. ouij shepherd of souls, that would take part at the same time with nature and with his spiritual children." This happy time of childhood and rural contentment did not last long. Good Pastor Richter died when Jean Paul was sixteen years old. The boy, who in his autobiography describes himself as deeming the young swallows happy because they could sit so secretly and safely through the night in their walled nests, and to whom the pigeon-house on the roof was a miniature " Louvre or Escurial," was henceforth to fight his own battles, make his own homestead, and win his own bread. Yet he never forgot the widowed mother, who employed her lonely hours in spinning to relieve her poverty. Dearly, like many other mothers, had she wished that her son, who had been placed by his father at the gymnasium or public college at Hof, should follow the profession of a clergyman. About three years before he died, Pastor Richter had removed from the earlier parsonage above described to Swarzenbach on the Saale. Hof was about six miles distant. He went thence to the University of Leipsic in 1781, when he was eighteen years of age. Here he touchingly writes to a friend: "Do you know what especially impels me to industry ? Precisely what you have said in your letter — my mother. I owe it to her to endeavor to sweeten a part of her life, that otherwise has been so unfortunate, and to lessen by my help and S3^mx)athy the great sorrow she has suffered through the loss of my father. . . . Were it not for my mother, I would never during ray whole life take a public office." While his mother was urging him to become a pastor like his father, Jean Paul himself was growing en- AN AFFECTIONATE SON. 307 thusiastic with the thought of becoming an author. He writes his mother that should he succeed in this, their poverty would soon be over, and when she asks, in deep anxiety, what sort of books he means to write, he answers : " They are neither theological nor judicial, and if I should tell you the titles it would signify noth- ing. They are satmcal, droll books. Indeed, I cannot but smile when you make me the edifying offer to listen to my preaching in the Spital Kirche in Hof. Tliink you, then, it is so much honor to preach 1 This honor, however, can any poor student receive, and it is easy to make a sermon in one's dreams ; but to make a book is ten times more difficult." Success came at last, although not in financial mag- nitude. It is, however, pleasing to note that the first money he received for literary work he gave to the "good mother," as he called her. " The whole ful- ness of his joy and success was poured out for his mother, who needed indeed this balsam of filial love. The moment he received the thirty ducats, he set out to walk from Schwartzenbach to Hof, where his mother then lived. On his way, by the light of the stars, he thought of his mother's astonishment, her joy and her pious gratitude to heaven, and entering late at night the low apartment where she sat spinning by the light of the fire, he poured the whole golden treasure into her lap !" The mother thus tenderly beloved died in 1797, when Jean Paul was himself thirty-four years old. One of the keenest self-reproaches of his kindly and filial nature was that he had treated too lightly the symp- toms of her approaching dissolution, and that owing to 308 JEAN PAUL RICHTER'S MOTHER. his delay on the journey to Hof to see her, he received intelligence that she was no more. The strong affection he felt for her is a proof that, if not a great woman, she was a good one, and had shown herself a true mother to her illustrious son. MADAME NECKER, THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAEL. Suzanne Curchod, afterward Madame Necker and mother of Madame de Stael, was born in the parsonage of the village of Grassier or Grassy, on the borders of the Yand country and France. Her father, Louis Antony Curchod, was the Protestant pastor of the Swiss village, and the only child of his marriage with the beautiful Mile, d' Albert de Nasse was baptized in the little Protestant church at Grassy on the 2d of June, 1737. She lived to be one of the most remark- able women of an eventful time, as her daughter, Madame De Stael, did after her. From her mother Suzanne Gurchod inherited great personal beauty. She came of a good family in Dauphiny, and her parents, who belonged to the Southern noblesse, were natives of the little city of Montelimart. They were among the number of those Protestant families w^ho left France on account of the persecutions they were subject to in the reign "of Louis XV. They settled at Lausanne, in Switzerland, where the beauty of their daughter made a strong impression. An old friend of her mother's recalled those early days long afterward to Madame Necker. " I was at Lausanne," she wrote, "when the beautiful Mile, d' Albert arrived there. Xothing was talked of but her beauty, and the merit which had led her to renounce the comforts which she 310 THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAfiL. had enjoyed in her own country ; and afterward she preferred the late M. Curchod, with little fortune and great deserts, to another very wealthy suitor. " If Suzanne Curchod inherited beauty as well as virtue from her mother, she had not less reason to feel grateful to her father for the care he took of her educa- tion. He taught her Latin and perhaps a little Greek himself, and supplied her with teachers of the natural sciences and the refined arts. She borrowed works on geometry and physics from the professors at Geneva or Lausanne, and one of her instructors, M. Lesage, wrote to her some years after her marriage, "If you miss the conversations that we used to hold on physics, I miss them equally because you understood admu'ably well the explanation I gave you of my system, which made me- presume that you would also master very weU the proofs by which I support it. " The Swiss village and the quiet parsonage might seem a narrow world for the early days of one whose salon in later years at Paris, when she was the wife of the rich banker and Controller-General of France, was a centre of attraction to the leading spirits of the age. But a village or hamlet near some city which is an intellectual and literary centre catches the healthy contagion of it. Crassy was fed with news and knowl- edge from Geneva, and many were the young preachers of that famous seat of Calvin who were glad to preach and expound Scripture for Pastor Curchod, in order that they might enjoy the conversation and admire the beauty of his daughter. The congregation perhaps did not suspect the cause of their being privileged to listen to so many youthful ministers from Geneva or A YOUNG GIRL'S LOVERS. 311 Lausanne. But the Rev. Messieurs Isaac Cardoini and G. Francillon bound themselves in writing to the fair object of their ministrations, " to come and preach at Grassy in presence of the very amiable Miss Suzanne Curchod every time that she should require it, without waiting to be asked, besought, urged, and conjured, since of all pleasures the sweetest to them was to oblige her on every occasion." As Grassy is situated about two leagues from the shore of the Lake of Geneva, and the coach from Geneva to Lausanne did not pass that way, Pastor Gurchod used to lend his horse, Grison by name, to his clerical assistants on Monday morning, and as the horse had to be returned, the borrower had always a pretext for another visit. Madame ISTecker was at this time unskilled in the ways and devices of the world, and accepted gladly and innocently all the homage of admiration she received. A more experienced friend, however, thought some of the young preachers too expressive, and wrote to Suzanne severely : " You have many adorers, who, under pretext of coming to preach for your father, come to court you. Does not sound reason tell you that as soon as they have done preach- ing you should drive them away with a broomstick or keep yourself concealed?" Very proper advice, no doubt ; but if Suzanne Gurchod had acted upon it, we fear her father would have found few youthful substi- tutes in the village pulpit of Grassy. It was the fortune of Suzanne Gurchod to make friends and lovers both by her intelligence and her beauty. The most noteworthy episode of her unmar- ried life was the passion she inspired in one of the 312 THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAEL. greatest writers of modern times. Edward Gibbon, the historian of tlie " Decline and Fall of the Koman Empire." Gibbon was bom in 1737. and at the age of sixteen he was sent by his father to the Eev. Mr. PaviUai'd's boardin2:-school at Lausanne. Durins: his stay here he became acquainted with ^llle. Curchod. Tlier became natiiiullv in love with each other, and were engaged to become man and wife. Her parents assented to the entra^ement, but Gibbon's father was unrelentingly opposed to it. Rousseau and others have blamed Gibbon severely for breakino: off the engagement in obedience to his father, but we must remember that he was at that time wholly dependent upon him for support, and that the English view of filial dutv was much more stringent then than it is now. Mr. James C. Morrison, in his life of Gibbon in '' Enfflish Men of Letters," savs : " It would be diffi- cult to explain why, excej)t on that principle of deci- mation bv which Macaulav accounted for the outcry a^rainst Lord Bvron. Gibbon's solitary and innocent love passage has been made the theme of a good deal of malicious comment. The parties most interested, and who, we may presume, l-mew the circumstances better than any one else, seem to have been quite satis- fied with each other's conduct. Gibbon and Mile. Curchod, afterward Madame iXecker. remained on terms of the most intimate friendship till the end of the former's life. This might be supposed sufficient. But it has not been so considered bv e^il ton2:ues. Mile. Suzanne Curchod was bom about the year 1740 : her father was the Calvinist minister of Crassy. her mother a French Huguenot who had preferred her religion GIBBON'S EARLY LOVE. 313 to lier country. She had received a liberal and even learned education from her father, and was as attrac- tive in person as she was accomplished in mind. ^ "" She was beautiful with that pure original beauty which depends on early youth' ' (Sainte-Beuve). In 1757 she was the talk of Lausanne, and could not appear in an assembly or at the play without being surrounded by admirers ; she was called La Belle Curchod. Gibbon' s curiosity was piqued to see such a prodigy, and he was smitten with love at first sight, " I found her," he says, " learned without pedantry, lively in conversa- tion, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners." He was twenty and she seventeen years of age (her great- grandson Othenin d* Haussonville is mistaken in saying she was born in 1737, the same year as Gibbon) ; no impediment was placed in the way of their meeting, and he was a frequent guest in her father" s house. In fact. Gibbon paid his court with an assiduity which makes an exception in his usually unromantic nature. " She listened," he says, "to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart." ^Ye must remember that this and other rather glowing passages in his memoirs were written in his old age, when he had returned to Lausanne, and when, after a long separation and many vicissitudes, he and Madame Necker were again thrown together in an intimacy of friendship which revived old memories. Letters of hers to him show this in a striking light. He indulged, he says, his dream of felicity, but on his return to England he soon discovered that his father would not hear of this "strange alliance," and then follows the 314 THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAEL. sentence which lias degraded him in the eyes of some persons. " After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." What else he was to do under the circumstances does not appear. He was wholly dependent on his father, and on the Continent, at least, parental authority is not regarded as a trifling impediment in such cases. Gib- bon could not have married Mile. Curchod as an exile and a pauper, if he had openly withstood his father's wishes. " All for love" is a very pretty maxim, but it is apt to entail trouble when practically applied. Jean Jacques Rousseau, who had the most beautiful sentiments on paper, but who in real life was not always a model of self-denial, found great fault with Gibbon's conduct. Gibbon, as a plain man of rather prosaic good sense, behaved neither heroically nor meanly. Time, absence, and the scenes of a new life, which he found in England, had their usual effect : his passion vanished. " My cure," he says, " was acceler- ated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheer- fulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship and esteem." The probability, indeed, that he and Mile. Curchod would see each other again must have seemed remote in the extreme. Euroj)e and England were involved in the Seven Years' War ; he was fixed at liome, and an officer in the militia ; Switzerland was far off ; when and where were they likely to meet ? They did, contrary to all expecta- tion, meet again, and renewed terms not so much of friendship as of affection. Mile. Curchod, as the wife of Necker, became somewhat of a celebrity, and it is chiefly owing to these last named circum- GIBBON AND SUZANNE. 315 stances tliat the world lias ever heard of Gibbon's early love. Gibbon's own acconnt of his affection for Suzanne Cnrchod, in his "Autobiographic Memoirs," ought, however, to be read in full by those Avho wish to form a dispassionate judgment of his conduct. " I hesi- tate," he says, "from the apprehension of ridicule, when I approach the delicate subject of my early iove. By this word I do not mean the x)olite attention, the gallantry, without hope or design, which has originated in the spirit of chivalry, and is interwoven with the texture of French manners. I understand by this pas- sion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks the possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice ; and though my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of 'Mile. Suzanne Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. Her mother, a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. The profession of her father did not extin- guish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived content with a small salary and laborious duty, in the obscure lot of minister of Grassy, in the mountains that separate the Pays de Yaud from the county of Burgundy. In the solitude of a sequestered v-illage he bestowed a liberal and even learned educa- tion on his only daughter. She surpassed his hopes 316 THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAEL. by her proficiency in the sciences and languages ; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and the erudition of Mile. Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity ; I saw, and loved, r found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in man- ners ; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to make her two or three visits at her father's house. I passed some happy days there, in the mountains of Burgundy, and her parents honor- ably encouraged the connection. In a calm retu-ement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom ; she listened to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Grassy and Lau- sanne I indulged my dream of felicity ; but on my return to England I soon discovered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that with- out his consent I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate ; I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son ; my wound was insen- sibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship and esteem. The minister of Grassy soon afterward died ; his stipend died with him ; his daughter retired to Geneva, where, by teaching young ladies, she earned a hard subsist- ence for herself and her mother ; but in her lowest dis- tress she maintained a spotless reputation and a digni- MARRIED TO NECKER. 317 fied behavior. A rich banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had tl^e good fortune and good sense to dis- cover and possess this inestimable treasure ; and in the capital of taste and luxury she resisted the tem]3tations of wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indi- gence. The genius of her husband had exalted him to the most consi^icuous stations in Europe. In every change of i^rosperity and disgrace he has reclined on the bosom of a faithful friend ; and Mile. Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker, the minister, and perhaps the legislator of the French monarchy. ' ' Thackeray remarks, in one of his novels, that the lover who can analyze his feelings sufficiently to put them into artistic language, and who remembers in his agony that sorrow rhymes with to-morrow, cannot be very far gone. The calm analysis of Gibbon, although after a long interval, and the prudential view he took of the situation, compel us to think, in spite of biog- raphers and sentimentaKsts, that his love for Suzanne Curchod had no very gi-eat depth. She, however, appears really to have suffered much, on their separa- tion, and one letter of hers, which he aj^pears to have returned, perhaps at her request, or to assure her that her confidence in his honor was not misplaced, has an air of genuine feeling in it. Love-letters, however, scarcely bear resurrection after a burial of some hundred and thirty years. We are disposed to think that Suzanne Curchod' s love for Gibbon was more serious than his affection for her. At any rate, it is a comfort to know that both recovered sufficiently to become friends in after life. In 1790, when the deckers had fled from France to Switzerland, 318 THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STA£L. and at Lausanne Gibbon was then living, M. Necker was in great dejection, not only at the loss of place and power, but at the feelings of animosity shown him by the other French exiles. The JNeckers became Gib- bon's chief friends so long as he remained in Switzer- land. They lived at Coppet, within easy distance of Lausanne, and their interchange of visits was frequent. Madame Necker w^rote to him frequently, as if to show that the wound in her heart was healed, and that his treatment of her was forgiven. " You have always been dear to me," she %\Tites, " but the friendshij) you have shown to M. Necker adds to that you inspire me with on so many grounds, and I love you at present with a double affection. . . . Come to us when you are restored to health and to yourself ; that moment should always belong to your first and your last friend, and I do not know which of those titles is dearest to my heart. . . Near you, the recollections you recalled were pleasant to me, and you connected them easily mth present impressions ; the chain of years seemed to link all times together with electrical rapidity : you were at once twenty and fifty years old for me. Away from you, the different places which I have inhabited are only the milestones of my life telling me of the dis- tance I have come." It was during his visits to the Neckers that Gibbon became acquainted with the future Madame de Stael, their daughter. As a child she was so fond of Gibbon that she formed the innocent design of marrying him, in order that her parents might constantly enjoj" the pleasure of his company and conversation. Like most brilliant and virtuous women, Madame M. CORREVON'S LETTER. 319 ZS'ecker was not only a great favorite with the literary- men of Paris and Geneva, after her marriage with the great financier, but she might have chosen other suitors than he, had she been as frivolous as most girls of her age. When the news that she was really about to marry M. Necker, the great banker of Paris, spread through Switzerland, where both he and herself were well known, she was naturally congratulated by all her old friends. Among the first to offer his felicita- tions was M. Moultou. " I resign," he wrote, "with great pleasure, into M. Necker's hands the sad office of censor over you, with which you have kindly endowed me." Only one of her old friends seems to have felt aggrieved — M. Correvon, a lawyer of Yverdon. She had perceived his regard for her, and had really thought of him in case her brilliant marriage with the banker had never taken place. The dejected lawyer complained, x>erhaps not wholly without reason, of having been so long fed upon false hopes. " I readily IDerceive," he wrote to her, " with reason enough, that you have been regarding me only as a miserable last resort, and that you seized with eagerness the first opportunity which presented itself of establishing yourself at Paris or elsewhere." He wound up his disconsolate letter, however, by saying : " But why trouble your joy with reminders of the ]3ast. I pardon you very sincerely, mademoiselle and my dearest friend, all your actions, and pray God to pour out bountifully of His richest benedictions upon yourself, your dear husband, and all your descendants. I beg of you not to forget me utterly, and to grant me a friendship which may exempt me from all caprice. Be 320 THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAEL. persuaded tliat I should esteem myself infinitely happy if opportunity were to occur when I might give you proofs of mine, which will end only with my life ; but when one has the good fortune to marry a man who has thirty -five thousand francs a year, one has no longer need of help from anybody. I believe him to be worthy of you, since you have selected him. Enjoy, then, the happiness which Heaven has prepared for you both." M. Necker seems to have been an excellent husband and most estimable man. Had he been otherwise, how- ever, as M. Correvon with true legal sagacity say ■ in the above letter, an income of thirty-five thous nd francs a year places a woman out of the need of sym i- tliy, Suzanne Curchod was well pleased with her p i- pects, and wrote to Count Golowkin : " I marry a i ..n whom I would believe to be an angel if his attachmc nt to myself did not prove his weakness." The elderly bridegroom himself was not less en- tented. " Yes, sir,' ' he writes to Moultou, in acknc .vl- edgment of his congratulations, " your friend as accepted me, and I believe myself as happy as a man can be. I do not understand how you yourself are to be congratulated, unless it should be as my friend. Will money, then, always control opinion ? It is a shame. Does not he who gains a virtuous, lovely, and sensible Avife make a good affair of it, whether or not he be seated upon money-bags V Like many of the great bankers of London, Antwerp, and other cities, the house of Thellusson & Necker was situated in a narrow and obscure street, known as Michel-le-Comte Street. But its extreme gloom was -T^ SUZANNE NECKER, THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAEL. AN EGOTIST'S LETTER. 323 soon atoned for by its interior illumination, the first men of France and indeed of Europe delighting to honor the Parisian financier and his "wife with their company. Of many who were glad to avail themselves of this hospitality and of more substantial favors at the hands of the powerful banker, there are some whose compli- ments to the qualities of Madame Necker wear the aspect of flattery. We must remember, however, that the paying of compliments is natural to the French, and especially to the French of the eighteenth century. Foremost though not greatest of these flatterers was Marmontel, an author of even less money than insin- cerity. In the memoirs written by him, as he says, for the instruction of his children, we find a constant reference to Madame Necker. As a specimen of French egotism, his account of their first meeting is delightful. " It was at a town ball," he writes, " quite a singular circumstance that I made Madame Necker's acquaintance ; she was then young, and quite pretty, with a dazzlingly fresh complexion, dancing badly, but with all her heart. Hardly had she heard my name pronounced when she came up to me with a naive air of joy. ' In coming to Paris,' she said to me, ' one of my desires was to become acquainted with the author of " Moral Tales." I little thought to be so fortunate as to meet you at this ball. . . . Necker,' said she, calling her husband to her side, ' come and help me to induce Mr. Marmontel, the author of '•Moral Tales," to do us the honor of coming to see us.' M. ]^J"ecker was very civil in his invitation, and I accepted it." In return for all favors bestowed upon 324 THE MOTPIER OF MADAME DE STA^L. liim and liis family by M. Necker, Marmontel wrote poems in i^raise of Madame Necker, as lie did subse- quently of lier daughter, the future Madame de Stacl. Madame Necker replied in verses of more point than his own, but those of neither are worth quoting, being- gilt rather than gold, like most others of that gilded age. Friday evening in each week was the occasion of the famous receptions in the salon of INladauie Necker. The Abbe Morellet, another of the Comptroller- GeneraFs mendicants, was a constant attendant, as was the Abbe Raynal. A more distinguished guest than any of these was the famous Grimm, whom INIadame d'Epinay's memoirs and his own literary correspond- ence, esx>ecially with Catharine of Russia, have pre- served in literature to our own day. He was one of the famous dinner-party at which seventeen sat down at Madame Necker' s table, and proposed to erect a statue to Voltaire by public subscrij^tion. Grimm cherished some grudge against Madame Necker on account of her religious opinions, the sincerity of which he doubted. " Hyixitia Necker,'' he wrote, in speaking of her " System of Nature," " passes her life with freethinkers, but is devout after a fashion of her own. She would like to be sincerely Huguenot, or Socinian, or Deistic rather ; for the sake of being something she assumes to be responsible for nothing." After one of their little controversies, and in reply to a letter from Madame Necker, Grimm, however, tells her that she has made him shed tears like a child, and disavows the thought of censuring her for her views. The letters of Grimm to Madame Necker are among the best in her correspondence. During the whole of LETTER FllO.M GlilMM. 325 his long journey into Prussia and Russia in comx)any with Diderot, Grimm wrote to her constantly. He writes to her from St. Petersburg, from Catharine's court, giving her all the news, and she sends him in return all that is passing in Paris. Ilis admiration for the character of the Russian Empress is as strange as it is evidently genuine, and in one of his letters to Madame Necker he says : ''I am perhaps the only person in the world who knows distinctly the secret of her reign, employed entirely to undermine the founda- tions of despotism, and in time to give to her people the sentiment of liberty. I say in time, because it is no more possible to force this precious fruit than any other. Whether her project succeed or whether it be interrupted and annihilated after her, it will be none the less known when she shall be no more, and there will come a time when some sensible man will be not a little struck with the extreme resemblance of her system of government to tliat of M. Necker. The jjlan of dividing the empire into twenty-two governments, which she conceived twelve years ago, which she has systematically pursued, executed, and perfected, with a constancy and wisdom with no i^arallel, indepen- dently of the advantage of attaching men of all orders, by their functions, to public affairs, and making citizens out of subjects, has had no other aim than that , which M. Xecker fjroposed to himself to effect, by the establishment of provincial assemblies. Her project realized has made no noise, because it is carried out in the midst of a nation not yet practised in calculating the moral consequences of a political ojjeration ; but the time will come when this coincident action on the 32G THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAEL. part of two minds charged with governmentai admin- istration, at two snch distant points, will strike with astonishment." Diderot, another frequenter of Madame decker's salon, but a less faithful correspondent with her when absent than his friend Grimm, has himself narrated, in one of his letters to Mile. Yoland, the circumstances of their first acquaintance: "Do you know what good reason I have for being vain 'I There is a Madame Xecker here, a pretty woman and a wit, who dotes upon me. I am actually persecuted to go to her house. . . . She was a portionless young Genevan, to whom the banker Necker has recently given an enviable posi- tion. Somebody said, ' Do you believe that a woman who owes everything to her husband would dare to be untrue to him ? ' Somebody answered, ' jN'othing is more ungrateful in the world.' I was the rascal who made that answer. The question was about woman." Diderot had a coarse mind where women were con- cerned, but he lived to correct his misinterpretation of Madame Keeker's friendships with men, and called her " a woman who possesses all that the purity of an angelic soul adds to fineness of taste." At her salon he represented brilliantly the coterie of the Encyclo- paedists. Another of these infidel friends of hers was Voltaire, and another D'Alembert. It cannot be wondered at that her early friends, who had known her pious parentage and training, should feel alarm when her society became courted by the Encyclopaedists. Her great friend Moultou expressed great anxiety on her account but she hastened to reas- sure him in the following letter : HER LITERARY FRIENDS. 327 ''My dear Friend: Can you suspect me for an instant ? I received my sentiments with my ex- istence, and would you have me abandon them at the time when my happiness is the fruit of them ? You may charge me with enthusiasip, but is it you who are to comj)lain of my worshipjoing all that is good ? I see some literary men, but as I have made haste to show them what my princix^les are, they never touch upon that subject in my presence. At my age, with an agreeable home, nothing is so easy as to give tone. ... I live, it is true, in the midst of a great number of atheists, but their arguments have never touched my mind, and if they have at all come in contact with my heart, they have only caused it to shudder with horror.-' On another occasion she said, '' I have atheist friends, but why not ? They are so unhappy." Among other literary friends of Madame Necker, the names of Buff on and Thomas must not be omitted. The former was the well-known author of the " Natural History," and was thirty years the senior of Madame Necker. She was present at his death-bed, and it was a great consolation to her, in that age of in- fidelity, to hear from his lips a firm confession in Jesus Christ as the Divine Saviour of mankind. He be- queathed to her in his will the porcelain tea-service which had been presented to him by Prince Henry, and which had always had a great value in his eyes. In her journal, some months after his death, is an entry which says that the spectacle of his last suffer- ings will ever be present to her heart and mind, and that he had showed her the nothingness of great 328 THE MOTHER OF MADAME DE STAEL. talents ; that man is nothing, God all, and that it is in His bosom we must seek an asylum against our own thoughts. Her friendshii? with M. Thomas was not less honor- able to both. It was an interchange of high and sym- pathetic thoughts for a period of twenty years, and when he died, at the comparatively early age of fifty, Madame Necker felt the loss profoundly. Bat again she was consoled by the knowledge that he turned to religion to solve the mysteries of life, and that he died in the hope of a blessed immortality. It must not be supposed that because the position of her husband made her salon frequented chiefly by brill- iant men of letters and politics that Madame Necker neglected the friendship of her own sex. On the con- trary, she was on intimate terms with such women as Madame Geoflfrin, Madame du Deffand, Madame d'Houdetot, and others of the most famous women in the society of that time. In her public life we find the life of France and of Europe at the most critical period of the eighteenth century reflected. In her corresi^ondence, we find in- deed some contagion of the frivolity of that age, but none of its wickedness. She won the respect even of men who were not accustomed to respect women in that dissolute age. There is not a sign that she cherished animosities, or was other than a good woman and a good wife. If her conversation was less brilliant than that of her daughter, Madame De Stael, it has the greater charm of sincerity and perpetual hopefulness. THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF SHAKSPEARE. Yeky little is known either of Mary Arden. tlie mother, or of Anne Hathaway, the wife of Shakspeare. That the former must have exercised a powerful influ- ence upon the mind of the future poet, playwright, and actor is certain. In a small sequestered village like Stratford-on-Avon, the child would necessarily be under the constant supervision and influence of his j)arents. We know that they were persons of con- siderable local importance, for his father rose to the chief local magistracy. His mother is said to have been of gentle birth, and they were no doubt persons of information and reflection, for the times in which they lived were freighted with events that must have compelled every one to think, read, and form decided opinions. They were " times that tried men's souls." Shakspeare was born in the sixth year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was the eldest son, but the third child. His parents must have married not later than the year 1557, two years after Cranmer was burned at the stake. Two hundred martyrs had died for the Protestant religion in Mary's reign. The very atmosphere of England must have been impregnated ^^'ith theological controversy. There were many trans- lations of the Bible extant in England. They would have been hidden during the reign of Mary, but brought to light again in that of her Protestant sister. 330 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF SHAKSPEARE. As that reign advanced, Protestantism grew stronger, and became more firmly rooted all over the country. It was the religion of the Queen, who showed her skill and knowledge of the Scriptures when arguing with Bonner, Bishop) of London ; Gardiner, Bishop) of Win- chester ; Tonstall, Bishop of Durham, and other Poi)ish prelates even before her accession to the throne. Her Parliament was Protestant. The Queen and Parlia- ment together made the Reformed Church of England the state religion of the country, as it had been in the latter days of Henry the Eighth, and throughout the brief reign of Edward the Sixth. It is impossible that John and Mary Shakspeare should have been uninflu- enced by the English Reformation, even if they did not conform to the Protestant Church of England. But there is good evidence, although only of a nega- tive character, that they were both of them attached members of the Protestant established religion. If they had not been so, John Shakspeare would not have been elected or appointed to the mayoralty of Stratford-on-Avon. If they had not been so, they would not have been acquainted with the English Bible. But if they were not acquainted with that pearl of great price, as it was then accounted by the masses of the English people, how sliall we account for the remarkable knowledge of the Bible which their illustrous son shows in his writings ? If there was no " open vision" of the Bible in his father's house at Stratford-on-Avon, how, when, and where could he have acquired a familiarity, not only with its text but with its innermost thoughts, which has perplexed the commentators and put theologians to the blush ? He MARY ARDEN'S TEACHINGS. 331 certainly could not acquire it when playing at the theatres in Blackfriars. Such knowledge is part of the web and woof of Shakspeare's plays, and it could not have been acquired except in early years, when his mind first opened to the reception of the beautiful, the awful, and the sublime. We are therefore forced to the conclusion that the parents of Shakspeare were Protestant Church peo- ple, devout students of the Word of God, the entrance of whose truths into the human mind never fails to fill it \\ath light and understanding. And if this theory be correct — and there is nothing to contradict it, but everything in its favor — then we indulge no fancy, but a legitimate reason and imagination, when we picture Shakspeare as a child at his mother, Mary Arden's knee, learning from her gentle lips the noble precepts and the deep philosophy of the sacred Volume. George MacDonald, in his recent work, " The Imagina- tion and Other Essays," takes this view, though it is not original in his pages any more than in our own. In an admirable little essay on Shakspeare, he considers the chief events that occurred in England during his earlier life, the writers who flourished, the books to be met with, and the influence which these circumstances would have respectively exercised upon the poet's mind. " And here," he says, " an interesting question occurs : Was it in part to his mother that Shakspeare was indebted for that profound knowledge of the Bible which is so evident in his writings V A good many copies of the Scriptures must have been by this time, in one translation or another, scattered over the country. No doubt the Word was precious in those days and 332 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF SHAKSPEARE. hard to buy ; but there might have been a copy, not- ■udthstanding, in the house of John Shakspeare, and it is possible that it was from his mother" s lips that the boy first heard the Scripture tales. We have called his acquaintance with Scripture profound^ and one peculiar way in which it manifests itself will bear out the assertion, for frequently it is the very spirit and essential aroma of the passage that he reproduces, with- out making any use of the words themselves. There are passages in his writings which we could not have understood but for some acquaintance with the New Testament." And he goes on to produce specimens from the single play of Macbeth. The phrase " temple haunting martlet" (Act I., Scene 6) has reference, in George MacDonald's judgment and in ours, to the verse in the Psalms : " Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for her- self, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts." Macbeth, on his way to murder Duncan, says : " Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear iiot my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time Which now suits with it." '' What is meant," asks this divine and novelist, " by the last two lines \ It seems to us to be just another form of the words, ' For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed ; neither liid, that shall not be known. Therefore, whatsoever ye have sj)oken in darkness shall be heard in the light ; and that which ye BIBLE INFLUENCES. 333 have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.' Of course we do not mean that Macbeth is represented as having this passage in his mind, but that Shakspeare had the feeling of them when he wrote thus. What Macbeth means is, ' Earth, do not hear me in the dark, which is suitable to the present horror, lest the very stones prate about it in the daylight, which is not suitable to such things ; thus taking the present horror from the time which now suits with it. ' " Again, in the only piece of humor in the play — if that should be called humor which, taken in its rela- tion to the consciousness of the principal characters, is as terrible as anything in the j^iece — the porter ends off his fantastic soliloquy, in which he personates the porter of hell-gate, with the words, ' But this place is too cold for hell ; I'll devil-porter it no further. I had thought to Tiave let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.' Now what else had the writer in his mind but the verse from the Sermon on the Mount, ' For wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat ' ? " It may be objected that such passages as these, being of the most commonly quoted, imply no pro- found acquaintance with Scripture, such as we have said Shakspeare possessed. But no amount of knowl- edge of the words of the Bible would be sufficient to justify the use of the word profound. What is re- markable in the employment of these passages is not merely that they are so present to his mind that they come up for use in the most exciting moments of com- 334 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OP SHAKSPEARE. position, but that he embodies the spirit of them in such a new form as reveals to minds saturated and deadened with the sound of the words, the very visual image and spiritual meaning involved in them. ' The primrose way ! ' And to what ? " We will confine ourselves to one passage more : " 'Madteth. So ripe for shaking, and the powers above Put on their instruments.' " In the end of the fourteenth chapter of the Revela- tion we have the words, ' Thrust in thy sickle, and reap ; for the time is come for thee to reap ; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.' We suspect that Shak- speare wrote ' ripe to shaking.' ** But there is one singular correspondence in another almost literal quotation from the gosx)el, which is wonderfullv interesting. We are told that the words ' eye of a needle,"* in the passage about a rich man entering the kingdom of heaven, mean the small side-entrance in a city gate. Now, in Ricliard II., Act v., Scene 5, Richard quotes the passage thus : " 'It's hard to come as for a camel To thread the portion of a needle's eye ; ' showing that either the imagination of Shakspeare suggested the real explanation, or that he had taken pains to acquaint himself with the significance of the simile. We can hardly say that the correspondence might be merely fortuitous ; because, at the last. Shakspeare looked for and found a suitable figure to associate with the words eye of a needle^ and so fell upon the real exjilanation ; except, indeed, he had no SHAKSPEARE'S PLAYS. 335 particular significance in using the word that meant a I'tttle gate, instead of a word meaning any kind of entrance, which, with him, seems unlikely." That Shakspeare, beside being what his friend Ben Jonson called him, " indeed honest, and of an open and free nature," was a Christian in the gospel meaning of the word, there is every reason to believe. In his last will and testament he says, " I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator ; hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting." This is the language of a man who beneath all his jests and laughter had faith in God. While, however, it is certain that the mind of Shakspeare was imbued with the sublime truths of the Bible through one of the translations which X)receded the King James author- ized translations of 1611, it is probable that these last- named translators owed quite as much to Shakspeare, or rather far more, than he owed to them. According to the accepted chronological order of Shakspeare' s plays, only two of them were written after 1611 ; all the rest having been composed in the interval between that year and 1591. The Bibles most commonly used during that period were either Parker s, called also the Bishops' Bible, of 1568, required to be used in churches ; or various reprints of the Geneva Bible of 1560, with short marginal notes, and muc'i used in private families (a translation which was due in part to John Knox, while resident abroad); or the version by the Roman Catholics, of the New Testament, pub- lished at Rheims, in 1582, and of the whole Bible at Douay, in 1609. 336 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF SHAKSPEaRE. The whole subject of " Shakspeare and the Bible" has been exhaustively treated by the learned Bishop of St. Andrew's, Dr. Charles Wordsworth, who brings out all the allusions in Shakspeare to the historical facts and characters of the Bible, and wdio traces the religious sentiments and principles of the immortal jioet on all subjects connected with religion, from the Being and !N"ature of God to the intermediate state and the Day of Judgment, to the influence which the Bible had uj)on him. It has been well said that " Shakspeare's moral philosophy is Christianity -pn- rified from everything exaggerated or equivocal."' " We are apt," says Mrs. Montagu, in her celebrated essay, " to consider Shakspeare only as a poet, but he is certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived. Bishop Charles Wordsworth — for his brother, Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, is Lord Bishoj) of Lincoln, and both of them are nephews of the poet William Wordsworth, who acknowledged Shakspeare as the supreme master of English poetry — asks, ' Whence did he become such ? ' I answer without hesitation, because, while he possessed the keenest natural powers of observation, together with an unfail- ing spirit of gentleness and love and universal sym- })atliy, he drew his philosoiihy from the highest and purest source of moral truth." In like manner. Dr. Johnson has observed, that from the writings of Shakspeare, tcJio loolzed tliroiujli life in all its rela- tions, public and j^i'ivate, " a system of social duty may be selected." James Anthony Froude, the historian, in his book on John Bunyan, has said : " The Bible, thoroughly HIS MOTHERS TEACHINGS. 337 known, is a literature of itself — the rarest and ricliest in all departments of thought or imagination that ex- ists." Lord Macaulay speaks of " our noble transla- tion of the Bible" as " a book from the authority of which there is no appeal, where the question is about the force of an English word," In his youth Shak- speare was not acquainted with this translation, but he was with one or other of the versions that preceded it ; and as it is the profound thoughts rather than the pre- cise words of the Bible that are so unmistakably visible in his plays, we may well accept the belief that John Shaksx)eare his father, the well-to-do glover of Strat- ford, and Mary Arden his mother, taught him from a child those holy Scriptures which have done more to unfold the literary genius of the Anglo-Saxon than all other influences put together. Having examined the evidence for this theory, imagination must All in the picture. To our mind it is a most pleasing and beautiful picture, that of the greatest genius of England learn- ing in childhood from his mother that new and sacred wisdom which was then spreading over England and emancipating the minds of its people. How serene a light his mother's teaching from the book of books may have shed upon his future life we can but con- jecture. Of his personal history we know but little, and we are not sure even of the day of his birth. But we do know the day of his baptism and of his death. He was born in April, 1564, at Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshii^e, and he died at the same place on the 28th of April, 1616, when he was only in his fifty- third year. He married very youno;, before he was . nineteen, Anne Hathaway, a yeoman's daughter, eight 338 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF SHAKSPEARE. years older than himself, who survived him seven years, dj'ing in 1623, at the age of sixty-seven. In that same year appeared the tirst edition of his col- lected plays, thirty-five in number, which are generally allowed to be genuine ; though not more than fourteen (or sixteen, including Titus Andronicus and Pericles^ Prince of Tyre) had been published in his lifetime. There is good reason to believe that a great portion of what he wrote was composed, not perhaps under the actual pressure of want, but under unfavorable circum- stances. He left his family in Stratford when he went to London, but he visited them every year and spent his last year wholly in their company. His real personal existence can never, like that of Homer, be doubted or explained away. AVe know the names of his parents, his wife, and his children. We know that he lost his only son, when that son was only a boy in his twelfth year. As Shakspeare is proved by his annual visits and final retirement to Stratford to have been a man of strong local attachments, so there is every reason to believe that he was of strong domestic affections. How far Anne Hathaway, his senior in age, was a help- meet for him we cannot tell, for we know nothing of her except that her husband bequeathed to her in his will his second best bedstead. But we know that he provided both for her and for their children, that he lived to relieve his father, who at one time did not dare even to go to church for fear of arrest for debt, from financial distress in his old age. " As if unconscious of his superiority, he was as open and unassuming as a child."" Perhaps his mother's teachings out of the !New Testament, about becoming as little children and A CiODFATHER. 33& SO entering the kingdom of God, had something to do with this transparent candor of his soul. Twelve years, after the loss of his own son, Shakspeare stood beside the fount in Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon, as godfather to William Walker, infant son of a neighbor, baptized October 16th, 1608. Perhaps he was named William, after Shakspeare himself, for, as he writes in Love' s Lahor' s Lost (Act I., Scene 4), "Every godfather can give a name." He made provision for this godchild in his will, per- haps feeling for him somewhat of the affection he had felt for the only son whom he had lost. There are in- dications that he felt that son's death acutely, yet Ms character forbids us to think that he lost his habitual serenity of mind or sorrowed as one that had no hope of reunion. In King John, the play that he wrote in the same year, or, as others have supposed, two years after that bereavement, the Lady Constance is made ta utter that affecting speech : *' Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts." Who knows but that Shakspeare when he wTote these lines was musing tenderly upon the dear boy who had been taken from him in his twelfth year 'i And that there entered into these tender memories of the loving father the Christian's hope of seeing him again in the bright home where parting and sorrow are no more, we may judge from the words he puts into the mouth 340 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF SHAKSPEARE. of the same Lady Constance, then addressing the legate of the Pope : " Father Cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see and know our friends in heaven : If that be true, / shall nee my boy again. ' ' He who looked as deeply as Shakspeare did beneath the grave of things must have had this hope. He loved the quiet scenes of nature as few have loved them, and he looked through nature to nature's God. Mary Arden has no biography on earth, but in heaven she may have known that the glorious visions, the immortal hopes, the patient faith which she taught her son out of the English Bible made him what he was, the world's teacher of heavenly and eternal truths, THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN. It is a toucliing tribute to the goodness of a mother when her memory is preserved only in the life of her son. Such is the case with the mother of Ludwig von Beethoven, whose lot in this life was so sad and lonely and affords such a contrast to the joyous and luxurious career of Mendelssohn. Musical genius has too often been accompanied by severe physical affliction and vicissitudes of fortune. Handel, as we remember, was blind, and Mozart composed in sad experience his own requiem. Beethoven was born at Bonn in 1770. Morbid sensitiveness, helpless melancholy, and from the age of forty total deafness, were his lot in life. Deliilum and death carried him out of the miseries he endured, at the age of fifty-seven. Keenly susceptible to woman's sympathy, he never married, and perhaps this isolation and shyness made the memory of his mother dearer to him than it might otherwise have been. Of such a genius as Beethoven it may be said that his beloved science and art was a heavenly inspiration with him not less than an earthly accomplishment. A great modern theologian, himself a musical composer at an early age, has beautifully said of music : " It is an instance of an outward and earthly form, or econ- omy, under which great wonders unknown seem to be typified. I mean musical spunds, as they are exhib- 343 THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN. ited most perfectly in instrumental harmony. There are seven notes in the scale ; make them fourteen ; yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise ! What science brings so much out of so little ? Out of what poor elements does some great master in it create his new world ! Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere ingenuity or trick of art, like some passing fashion of the day, without reality, with- out meaning ? We may do so, . . . yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regu- lated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound which is gone and perishes ? Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself ? It is not so ; it cannot be. No ; they have escaped from some higher sphere ; they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound ; they are echoes from our home ; they are the voices of angels, or the Magnificat of saints, or the living laws of divine governance, or the divine attribiites ; something are they beside themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter, though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting them." Precocity in music differs from precocity in poetry and other arts and sciences in its earlier manifestation and more spontaneous utterance. It seems to burst even from the untaught soul without effort and almost MUSIC A MEDICINE. 343 unconsciously. It is partly imitation, but perliaps not more so tlian the singing of birds, and while culture does much for it, it does not originate in culture. This is a fact of which every one is conscious. Men attain eminence in music who have had very little training, and sometimes play the violin, the cornet, or the piano by a kind of instinct which is above all rules. Sensi tiveness of the ear is the first quality required, and without it there can be no musical precocity, yet when the art is perfected, even deafness, as in Beethoven's later years, cannot deprive the musician of the sense of harmony and the happiness which it inspires. The imagination is necessary both to original composition and the full enjoyment of music, for it is possible to be conscious of a false note, a harsh vibration, or an exquisite rhythm "without having any original ideas in music. In families we often find, through the stupid- ity of parents, that an immense amount of pains and money is expended in trying to make a brilliant musi- cian of one who has no taste for music, while another child who has it is neglected because it does not show off the latent gift. Thus many children of melody and song never get the op]3ortunity of cultivating their aspirations. Yet no talent is worthier of cultivation, for none has done so much to beautify and refine human existence. According to Plato, the human soul is itself a harmony. Music is not only a delight but a medicine. It drove away the melancholy of Saul, and it is still found potent to calm the excitement of insanity. Among the many wise and true sayings which we find in Martin Luther's " Table Talk," there is nothing we can recall 344 THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN, to mind finer than his simple x)raise of music. He calls it one of the fakest of God's gifts 'to man, and says that " Satan hates it because it drives away temptation and evil thoughts. The notes make the words alive. It is the best refreshment to a troubled soul ; the heart as you listen recovers its peace. It is a discipline too, for it softens us and makes us temperate and reason- able. I would allow no man to be a schoolmaster who cannot sing, nor would I let him preach either." On another occasion he said : " I have no pleasure in any man who, like the fanatics, despises music. It is no invention of ours. It is a gift of God to drive away the devil and make us forget our anger and impurity and pride and evil tempers. I place music next to theology. I can see whj- David and all the saints put their divinest thoughts into song." What a soothing refreshment is music in the domes- tic circle after a day of toil ! It is the greatest aid to reflection, and calms down the sudden and foolish hnpulses. It is the most tranquillizing of all sedatives ; the gentlest of all stimulants ; the most humanizing of all recreations. It is an accompaniment to wisdom and sheds light upon the darkness of the soul. It is a founder of peace on earth and good-will among men. For, though the martial strain leads men to battle, the psean of victory is a hymn of peace. Music is a help to memory, bringing the dead past back to life again, and recalling vividly the dear old scenes and old familiar faces. It is the language of man's highest thoughts and sublimest imaginations. It cannot be defined like other arts, because its conversation and origin are not of earth but heaven. The language of BEETHOVEN'S FATHER 345 music is more eloquent than words, althougli its mean- ing is not for all, but for those only who are responsive to its voice. This voice, like that internal monitor which Socrates said had conversed with him and guided him even from his earliest boyhood, was heard by Ludwig von Beet- hoven, before he knew the meaning of articulate words. It was an hereditary gift in the Beethoven family. That family is traceable to a village near Lowen in Belgium in the seventeenth century". In 1650 a mem- ber of this family, a lineal ancestor of the great com- poser who became to music what Shakspeare was to poetry, settled in Antwerp. Beethoven's grandfather, Louis, owing to a quarrel with his family, left Belgium for Germany, and came to Bonn in 1732, where his musical talents and rich basso voice did not long remain unnoticed. The Archbishop of Cologne appointed him one of the court musicians, and the same position was afterward held by his son, Johann, the great Beethoven's father. The latter married Maria Magdalena Keverich, daughter of a cook and widow of a valet de chambre of the Elector of Treves. The day of their son Ludwig s birth has been disputed, but it is certain that he was baptized on the 17th of December, 1770, and received the name of his paternal grandfather, Louis — in German, Ludwig. Beethoven himself seems to have considered the 16th day of December in the above year as his birthday, but docu- mentary evidence is wanting. At one period of his life he believed himself to have been born in 1772, being most likely deceived on this point by his father, who wished his neighbors to suppose that his son was 346 THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN. endowed with miraculous precocity. No less uncer- tain than the date is the exact place of Beethoven's birth. Two houses in Bonn claim the honor. It was most likely No. 386 in the Bonngasse, one of the less important streets of Bonn which runs from the lower end of the market-place toward the Rhine. We have given the name of Beethoven' s mother as we find it in most of the biographies, but it is proper to state that others give her Christian name as Helena instead of Maria Magdalena. Johann von Beethoven married her in 1767, when she was the widow of the Elector's valet, Nicholas Laym. It appears that her first child by Johann von Beethoven was born in Ai:»ril, 1769, and died within a week of his birth. He was christened Ludwig Maria, as the name still stands upon the baptismal register of the parish of St. Remi- gius, with the names of his grandfather, the Kapell- meister Beethoven, and the next-door neighbor, Frau Loher, as sponsors. The grandfather's name is found in the same register as godfather to the second cliild, also christened Ludwig, coupled with the name of Frau Gertrude Miiller, nee Baum, next-door neighbor on the other side, as godmother. The Beethovens had no kindred in Bonn : the families Ries and Salomon, their intimate friends, were Israelites ; hence the appearance of Frauen Loher and Miiller at the two baptismal ceremonies. The child of so much future fame had but just com- pleted his third year when his gi-andfather and god- father, the Kapellmeister, died. His most affectionate and grateful recollections in after life, next to his patient mother, who was always gentle to his faults, A DISSIPATED FATHER. 347 especial h' his obstinate will, were of the kind old grandfather who had loved and petted him. The KaiDellmeister was long remembered in Bonn as a short, stout-built man, with very lovely eyes, who used to walk vdth great dignity to and from his dwelling in the Bonngasse, clad in the fashionable red cloak of the time. Thus too he was depicted by the court painter, Radoux, wearing a tasselled cap and holding a roU of music in his hand. His wife, the Frau Kapellmeisterin, nee Josepha Poll, was addicted to intemperance, and in her last years was placed in a convent in Cologne. Beethoven's father, Johann, inherited his mother s propensity for strong drink, and its effect was soon visible in the poverty of his famil3\ He left the Bonngasse for quarters in that house in the Rhein- gasse which now erroneously bears the inscription, Liidwig von Beetlioven^ s GeburtsJiaus. Johann had a fine tenor voice and was an excellent musician, but his salary as a singer was small, and he soon squandered in drink the small inheritance left him by tlie old Kapellmeister. Even the portrait of his father went to the pawTibroker. In April, 1774, another child, Caspar Anton Carl, was born to the Beethovens, and their expenses were increased. To this event Dr. Wegeler attributes the unrelenting per- severance of the father in keeping little Ludwdg from this time to his daily lessons upon the piano-forte. Both "Wegeler and Burgomaster Windeck, of Bonn, sixty years afterward, remembered how as boys, visit- ing a playmate in another house across the small court, they often "saw little Louis, his labors and sorrows." Cecilia Fischer, too, a playmate of Beethoven in hi^ 348 THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN. early childhood, and living in the same house in her old age, ' ' still saw the little boy standing upon a low footstool and practising his fathers lessons, in tears." The father perhaps recognized the cliild's genius and hoped that at an early age he Avould retrieve the fort- unes of the family. The recent success of Leopold Mozart with the little Wolfgang was no doubt well known to him, and his neighbor Hies had made his bov Franz remunerative as a musician. At all events, we have Beethoven's word for it that " already in his fourth year music became his principal employment." A pathetic letter written by Ludwig on October 6th, 1802, when he was nearly thirty-two years old, and addressed to his brothers Carl and Johann Beethoven, gives us a touching insight into his sufiferings in child- hood and youth : " Oh, ye who think or declare me to be hostile, morose, and misanthroj^ical, how unjust you are, and how little you know the secret cause of what appears thus to you ! My heart and mind w^ere ever from childhood prone to the most tender feelings of affection, and I was always disposed to accomplish something great. But you must remember that six years ago I was attacked by an incurable malady, aggravated by unskilful physicians, deluded from year to year, too, by the hope of relief, and at length forced to the conviction of a lasting affliction, the cure of which may go on for years, and perhaps after all prove incurable. " Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, X was A SAD FATE. 349 yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh ! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing ! and yet I found it impossible to say to others, ' Speak louder ; shout ! for I am deaf ! ' Alas ! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men, a sense which I once i)ossessed in the high- est jjerfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed. Alas, I cannot do this ! Forgive me, therefore, when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from causing me to be mis- understood. No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpour- ings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like an exile. In company I am assailed by the most painful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed to the risk of my condition being observed. It was the same during the last six months I spent in the country. My intelligent j)hysician recommended me to spare my hearing as much as possible, which was quite in accord- ance with my present disposition, though sometimes, tempted by my natural inclinations for society, I allowed myself to be beguiled into it. But what humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard nothing, or when others heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing ! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and well-nigh caused me to put an end to my life. 350 THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN. Art, art alone, deterred me. Ah ! how could I possi- bly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce % And thus I spared this miserable life — so utterly miserable that any sud- den change may reduce me at any moment from my best condition into the worst. It is decreed that I must now choose patience for my guide ! This I have done. I hope the resolution will not fail me stead- fastly to persevere till it may please the miserable Fates to cut the thread of my life. Perhaps I may get better, perhaps not. I am prepared for either. Con- strained to become a philosopher in my twenty-eighth year ! [Beethoven, as has been previously stated, did not know his own age.] This is no slight trial, and more severe on an artist than on any one else. Grod looks into my heart, He searches it, and knows that love for man and feelings of benevolence have their abode there ! Oh, ye who may one day read this, think that you have done me injustice, and let any one similarly afflicted be consoled by finding one like himself, who, in defiance of all the obstacles of nature, lias done all in his power to be included in the ranks of estimable artists and men. My brothers Carl and Johann, as soon as I am no more, if Professor Schmidt be still alive, beg him in my name to describe my malad}', and to add these pages to the analysis of my disease, that at least, so far as possible, the world may be reconciled to me after my death. I also hereby declare you both heirs to my small fortune, if so it may be called. Share it fairly, agree together, and assist each other. You know that anything you did to give me pain has long been forgiven. I thank you. THOUGHTS OF DEATH. 351 my brother Carl in j)articiilar, for the attendance you have shown me of late. My wish is that you may enjoy a hai^pier life and one more free from care than mine has been. Recommend virtue to your children ; that alone, and not wealth, can insure happiness. I speak from experience. It was Virtue alone that sus- tained me in my misery ; I have to thank her and art for not having ended my life by suicide. Farewell I Love each other. I gratefully thank all my friends. . . . How much I shall rejoice if I can serve you even in the grave ! So be it then I I joyfully hasten to meet Death. If he comes before I have had the oppor- tunity of developing all my artistic powers, then, not- withstanding my cruel fate, he will come too early for me, and I should wish for him at a more distant period ; but even then I shall be content, for his advent will release me from a state of endless suffering. Come when he may, I shall meet him with courage. Fare- well I Do not quite forget me, even in death. I deserve this from you, because during my life I so often thought of you, and wished to make you happy. Amen. Ludwig vois^ Beethoven." This letter was addressed from Heiligenstadt, whither he had gone to receive new treatment for his deafness. On the outside of it he adds : '*' Thus, then, I take leave of you, and with sadness too. The fond hope I brought -wdth me here, of being to a certain degree cured, now utterly forsakes me. As autumn leaves fall and wither, so are my hopes blighted. Almost as I came, I dejiart. Even the lofty courage that so often animated me in the lovely days 352 THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN. of summer is gone forever. O Providence ! vouchsafe me one day of pure felicity ! How long have I been estranged from the glad echo of true Joy ! AVhen, O my Grod, when shall I again feel it in the temple of nature and of man ? — never ! Ah ! that would be too hard ! "To be read and fulfilled after my death by my brothers Carl and Johann." But his end was not to be by and by ; he had yet many years to live. He still wrote letters twenty-five years after this letter was penned, and when the brothers to whom it was addressed had preceded him to the tomb. His nephew Carl became his ward in 1815, on the death of his father, and he always addressed him as his son and styled himself his father. He tells him in one letter that he is a thriftless boy and spends too much money, whereas he had him- self rejoiced when young " to assist, when I could, my poor i^arents." " What a contrast," he adds good-hum oredly, "are you in your conduct toward me !" Beethoven's mother, whose name must certainly have been Maria Magdalena and not Helena, as given by some writers, died on the ITtli of July, 1787, when her son Ludwig was only sixteen and a half years old. This accounts for the fact that, although he spoke of her often in conversations with his friends about his childhood, he only alludes to her twice in all his cor- respondence. In one of his last letters addressed to his old friend Dr. Wegeler, and dated Vienna, October 7th, 1826, he says : " You write that in some book I am declared to be the natural son of the King of Prus- A MOTHER'S ADVOCATE. 353 sia. This was mentioned to me long ago ; but I have made it a rule never either to write anything about myself, or to answer anything written by others about me. I therefore gladly devolve on you the duty of making known to the world the respectability of my parents, and especially that of my motlierP But the most touching reference to her is in a letter which he wrote on the 15th of September, 1787, to a Dr. Schade, an advocate of Augsburg. Although not yet seventeen, he had already attained the position of Court Organist of Cologne, an office apparently of more dignity than remAineration. " My most esteemed Friend : I can easily imagine what you must think of me, and I cannot deny that you have too good grounds for an unfavorable opinion. I shall not, however, attempt to justify myself, until I have explained to you the reasons why my apologies should be accepted. I must tell you that from the time I left Augsburg my cheerfulness, as well as my health, began to decline ; the nearer I came to my native city, the more frequent were the letters from my father, urging me to travel with all possible speed, as my mother' s health was in a most precarious condition. I therefore hurried forward as fast as I could, although myself far from well. My longing once more to see my dying mother overcame every obstacle, and assisted me in surmounting the greatest difficulties. I found my mother indeed still alive, but in the most deplorable state ; her disease was consumption, and about seven weeks ago, after much pain and suffering, she died. She was indeed a kind, loving mother to me, and my 354 THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN. best friend. Ah I who was happier than I when 1 could still utter the name of mother, and it was heard ? But to whom can I now say it ? Only to the silent form resembling her, evoked by the power of imagina- tion. I have passed very few pleasant hours since my arrival here, having during the whole time been suffer- ing from asthma, which may, I fear, eventually turn to consumption ; to this is added melancholy, almost as great an evil as my malady itself. Imagine yourself in my place, and then I shall hope to receive your for- giveness for my long silence. You showed me extreme kindness and friendship) by lending me three carolins in Augsburg, but I must entreat your indulgence for a time. My journey cost me a great deal, and I have not the smallest hojDes of earning anything here. Fate is not propitious to me in Bonn. Pardon my intrud- ing on you so long with my affairs, but all that I have said was necessary for my own justification. I do entreat you not to deprive me of your valuable friend- ship ; nothing do I wish so much as in any degree to become worthy of your regard. "lam, with all esteem, your obedient servant and friend, L. v. Beethoven." We know from other sources the extreme poverty in which the Beethoven family was at this period sunk. In its extremitj^ at the time when the mother died, Franz Ries, the violinist, came to its assistance, and his kindness was never forgotten by Ludwig von Beet- hoven. When Ferdinand, the son of this Ries, reached Vienna in the autumn of ISOO, Beethoven said, " I can- not answer your father yet ; but write and tell him A GREAT MUSICIAN. 355 that I have not forgotten the death of my mother. That will fully satisfy him/' At the time of his good mothers death, young Beet- hoven had his hands full, and had little time to think about his own physical ailments and mental depres- sion. His father barely supported himself and spent in drink what might have helped his children. The sup- port of his two younger brothers, therefore, devolved upon Ludwig, and he proved equal to his untimely responsibilities. He played his organ — the instrument which was then above all others to his taste ; entered the Court Orchestra as player on the violin and cham- ber pianist as well as organist. Beside this he increased his scanty means by teaching, although it was an occupation which his nervous irritability ren- dered distasteful to him. It proves no small energy of character, that the motherless boy of seventeen, " afflicted with asthma," which he feared might " end in consumption," and struggling against a melancholy which was almost as great a misfortune as sickness itself, succeeded in overcoming all obstacles and earned a subsistence for his father and brothers as well as for himself. When he left Bonn, finally, five years later, Carl, then eighteen, could support himself by teaching music, and Johann, the youngest of the brothers, was apprenticed to the court apothecary ; while the father, although no longer an active member of the Electoral Chapel, appears to have had a small pension which sufficed for the few remaining weeks which his habit of drinldng allotted him of life. As we have said, Beethoven's musical education, which was begun by his father, was in progress when 35G THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN he was only a little child four years of age. At eleven he was a musical author, dedicating his sonatas to the Elector of Cologne. Between these years his other studies had not been neglected, and he was conversant with French — then a necessary accomplishment in all the Rhine provinces, as indeed it is to-day — and knew some Latin and mathematics, and possibly a little Eng- lish. But music was the vital element of all his train- ing, and in addition to his father's teaching he engaged the tuition of Pfeiffer, chorist or precentor in the Elec- toral Orchestra, Van der Eder, the court organist, and then of Christian Gottlieb Neefe. The appointment of that musician as organist to the Electoral Court bears the date of February 15th, 1781, when Ludwig had but just completed the tenth year of his age, and the sixth of his musical education. The first public notice of the wonderful boy musician was written in 1782, when he had been a pupil of Neefe for a little over a year, and occurs in an account of the virtuosos in the service of the Elector at Bonn. The writer, who may have been Neefe himself, closes his list of musicians and singers thus : " Louis von Beethoven, son of the above-named ten- orist, a boy of eleven years and of most promising talents. He plays the piano-forte with great skill and power, reads exceedingly well at sight, and to say all » in a word, plays nearly the whole of Sebastian Bach's ' Wohltemi:)erirtes Klavier,' placed in his hands by Herr Neefe. Whoever is acquainted with this collec- tion of preludes and fugues in every key (which one almost calls the ne plus ultra of music) knows well what this implies. Herr Neefe has also, so far as his MOZART AND BEETHOVEN. " 357 other duties allowed, given him some instruction in thorough-bass. At present he is exercising him in composition, and for his encouragement has caused nine variations composed by him for the piano-forte upon a march (by Dressier) to be engraved at Mannheim, This young genius certainly deserves such assistance as will enable him to travel. He will assuredly become a second AYolfgang Amadeus Mozart, should he continue as he has begun." In the autumn of 1786, Herr Neefe's wish that his pupil should travel was accomplished, and he obtained, through the Austrian Count Waldstein, the bosom friend of the new Elector Max Franz, the means of his studying at Vienna, then the musical capital of the world. There he was placed under the tuition of Mo- zart, then the master of all living masters. Leyfried and Holmes relate the surprise of Mozart at hearing the boy, now sixteen years of age, treat an intricate fugue theme which he gave him, and his prophecy that " that young man would some day make himself heard of in the world." It was during the sixteen years of boyhood that pre- ceded this first visit to Vienna that Beethoven was cherished by a mother's love. His father, in addition to his intemperance, was of a harsh, exacting temper, and was a hard taskmaster to his son. Every record we have of Ludwig von Beethoven shows not only his own affectionate and sincere disposition, but his extreme sensitiveness to the kindness or unkindness of others toward him. He must have suffered exquisite torture at beholding the brutal conduct of his father ; and his reminiscences of his mother, though summed 358 THE MOTHER OF BEETHOVEN. "up in a few brief sentences, prove beyond a doubt that it was to lier sympathetic ear that he confided his sor- row's and aspirations, and that it was nj)on her bosom that lie hid his tears. He could look to his father neither for counsel nor example, although it was from his father that he learned the rudiments of his divine art. It may be said that the peasant maiden of Co- blentz, a city which Beethoven afterward visited on a delightful journey along the windings of the Rhine and Main, who had married first a cook or valet of the Elector of Cologne and then a man of such habits as Beethoven's father, could scarcely have been refined enough in feeling to sympathize with so great a son. But a mother's instincts are not dependent on cult- ure and good society, although the Beethovens un- doubtedly mingled with the best citizens of Bonn. If she could not impart knowledge to him, she could encourage him to persevere in acquiring it. She could soothe and calm his grief under the severe treatment he received from his father. She could lull his over- wrought feelings into tranquillity and rest. No mother can need a higher tribute than that he ^^aid to her memory. " She was to me such a good and loving mother, the best of friends. Oh, who would be so happy as I, could I still sj^eak the sweet name ' mother,' and have her hear it T' Perhaps she did hear it as it came w^afted like a sweet incense of prayer and benediction to her heavenly home. Perhaps during the forty years that he out- lived her, her spiritual presence may have cheered his heart and helped him to suffer patiently his great affliction. Hers was the only woman's love and sym- HOLY MEMORIES. 359 pathy lie ever knew in liis fifty-six years of painful and distressing life. Who knows but that in those moments of deepest melancholy and heaviest gloom, Avhen, but for virtue and his much-loved art, as he tells us, he would have committed suicide, her spirit may have hovered near him as a guardian angel to sustain his courage and shed light and patience on his heart. The very virtue of which he speaks, the faith in God, the good-will to man, he must have learned of her. At her knee he had said his prayers in childhood, and wT^th her kiss and blessing had lain down to sleep I Such memories may have been sweeter than his own music to the lonely man. And when, after many hours of unconsciousness and a terrible death-struggle, the great maestro passed from a world of discord to one of everlasting harmony amid a violent spring storm of thunder and lightning, on the evening of March 26th, 1827, his mother's voice may have sounded to his now quickened hearing, bidding his suffering spirit welcome to " the choir invisible, " that sings praise for- ever in the presence of God. THE MOTHER OF SHERIDAN. Frances Sheridan, the mother of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was born in Ireland in 1724 and died at Blois in France, in 1766, before she had completed her forty- seventh year. She was the daughter of Dr. Philip Chamberlayne, and attracted the attention of her future husband, Thomas Sheridan, by a pamphlet which she wrote in his favor during a somewhat angry controversy which was then going on relative to the theatre in Dub- lin, in which he was largely interested. Previous to this, however, when she was only fifteen years of age, she composed a romance in two volumes, entitled " Eugenia and Adelaide." It was long afterward adapted for the stage, as a comic drama, by Mrs. Lefanu, Mrs. Sheridan's eldest daughter, and was subsequently produced with considerable success at the Dul)lin Theatre, Mrs. Sheridan also wrote a novel of a sentimental and pathetic kind, in the style of that " English novel" of which Richardson is reputed by most literary critics to have been the founder, entitled " Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph, extracted from her own Journals and now first published" (London, 17G1), which was translated into French as " Memoires d'une Jeune Dame," by the Abbe Prevost. This novel was very successful both in English and French, and part of it was dramatized. The London Monthhj A PHOLIFIC AUTHOR. 361 Jteview of Axnil, 1761, pronounced it " greatly superior to most of the productions of her brother novelists." In Crocker's Bos well's Johnson it is called " a novel of great merit," and we there read that Dr. Johnson paid her this high compliment upon it : "I know now, madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much." Lord North commended the work highlj^ and Charles James Fox •' thought Sidney Biddulph the best novel of our age." Her famous son, according to Samuel Rogers's " Recol- lections," "in the heat of argument denied having read it, though the plot of his School for Scandal was borrowed from it." Rogers, w^ho was an excellent judge of the literary performances of others, declared that " the second part is very excellent." Mrs. Sheridan was also the author of Tlie Dis- covery, a comedy, published in 1763, which was suc- cessful. Garrick not only played the j)rincipal part in it, but considered it one of the best plays he had ever read. TJie Dupe, a comedy i)ublished in the following year, was also by her. Then followed " The History of Nourjahad," which Mrs. Sheridan intended to be the jS.rst of a series of moral fictions. It is a romance, and was dramatized after her death, 'Dr. Johnson said of it, " Her last work is perhaps her best, ' Nourjahad,' an Eastern tale, in which a pure morality is inculcated with a great deal of fancy and considerable force." Mrs. Sheridan also wrote a play called TJie Trip to Bath. It was never acted nor published, but is said to have formed the basis of her son's comedy. The Rivals. Mrs. Frances Sheridan did not confine herself to novels and plays. She wrote some fugitive verses which 362 THE MOTHER OF SHERIDAN. are found in Dyce's " Specimens of British Poetesses."" Leigh Hunt, in his " Men, Women, and Books,'' says, ' ' The verses of Mrs. Sheridan, mother of the famous Sheridan and author of ' Sidney Biddulph," are not so good as her novels." ''I once,'' said Dr. Parr, "met his [R. B. Sheridan's] mother. She was quite celestial ! Both her virtues and her genius were highly esteemed." And Dr. Johnson once said, " I wish him [Thomas Sheridan ] well, and among other reasons, because I like his wife." He and Thomas Sheridan received a pension of two hundred pounds a year from the Crown nearly at the same time, and the ill-natured remark of Dr. Johnson was, on learning the fact, " What ! have they given him a pension ? Then it is time for me to give up mine." It was a mean speech, and Thomas Sheridan resented it and cut the lexicog- rapher's acquaintance in future, but no doubt it was said in one of those savage moods to which Dr. Johnson was so liable. It is to be regretted that Moore, in his " Life of Rich- ard Brinsley Sheridan," did not take the pains to give his readers some information concerning one of the most remarkable families as regards hereditary genius that ever existed. All we read in the preface is that " the details of Mr. Sheridan's early life were obligingly com- municated to me by his youngest sister, Mrs. Lefanu, to whom and to her highly gifted daughter I offer my best thanks for the assistance which they have afforded me." One would think that Moore would have deemed such ' ' highly gifted ' ' women worthy ot some notice in the body of the work, but the only notice we find even of Sheridan's mother is that " she THE FAMILY HISTORY. 363 was a woman of considerable talents, and affords one of the few instances that have occurred of a female indebted for a husband to her literature." Moore also « records the praise which Lord Xorth, Fox, and Garrick bestowed upon her works, which we have already quoted. But in point of fact the Sheridans have been as rare a family as can be found in the literary biography of any country. For thi^ee hundred years, and for eight generations in direct descent, they have been distin- guished in authorship. In the year 1600, Donald O' Sheridan was living in a castle in the small island of Loughoughter in the County of Cavan, where his ancestors had been connected with a school of learning. This Donald was married to a daughter of one of the northern O'Xeills, and their daughter Sarah Sheridan became grandmother of the celebrated " Brigade" Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan. Their two sons, Coconochet and Denis, both men of education, were converted to Protestantism by Bishop Bedell, and he and Denis Sheridan corresponded in Latin, and their letters may still be read in the British Museum. Denis was the first real author of the family. He translated the Bible into the Irish tongue, with the assistance of this famous bishop, who lived in his latter days and died at the Sheridan homestead of Quilca, near Loughoughter. Denis Sheridan's Irish Bible was subsequently i^rinted and published by the Honorable Eobert Boyle. The converted Sheridans received a good deal of patronage. Denis, the Biblical translator, married an Englishwoman, and their son AVilliam Sheridan be- came chaplain to the famous Viceroy Butler, Duke 3G4 THE MOTHER OF SHERIDAN. of Oraiond, and was made Lord Bishop of Kilmore. Bishop William Sheridan was strongly attached to the house of Stnart, and rather than take the oath of alle- giance to William of Orange, he was tnrned out of his see like the other No n- jurors. He was intimate ^vith Dean Swift, and died in 1715. Another son of Biblical Denis was Patrick, Lord Bishop of Dromore, who died in 1682. A third son of Denis was Thomas Sheridan, who was educated for the law at the Temple in London, and was afterward made collector of duties at the Cus- tom-House of Cork. James the Second made liim a Privy Councillor and knighted him in 1685. Bishop Burnet called him a very ' ' bold, forward Irishman. ' ' A son of this Sir Thomas Sheridan was the better known Sir Thomas Sheridan who became tutor to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, and accompanied his pupil in the rebellion in Scotland in 1745. The fourth son of Denis was James, who remained at home to inherit his father's property and the homestead of Quilca, and l)ecame in due time the father of Dr. Thomas Sheridan, the intimate friend and boon comi)anion of Dean Swift, who spent much of his time at Quilca and quizzed its owner for not keeping it in better order. In spite of the great satirist's epigrammatic attacks ui)on this farm- house, which had all its rambling rooms on the ground floor, and had no ceiling overhead but the rafters, Swift's happiest days were spent there. Dr. Thomas Sheridan died in 1738, seven years before Dean Swift, and left seven children, the youngest of whom, Hester, was subsequently the mother of James Sheridan Knowles, teacher, elocutionist, and in his last days preacher, who was therefore first cousin to R. B. Sheridan. MARRIAGE OF SHERIDAN. 365 Thomas Sheridan, son of the above Dr. Sheridan, Swift's friend, was born in 1719, and after graduating at Trinity College, Dublin, drifted to the drama and the stage. At the ag^ of twenty-four he ai)peared on the boards as Richard the Third, Hamlet, Othello, Brutus, and Cato.. In 1747 he married Miss Frances Chamberlavne, the mother of Richard Brinslev Sheri- dan, under the romantic circumstances we have described. He went to England wdth his wife and little son, and there lectured on elocution and dramatic art, adapted old plays for the stage, and brought out the life and works of Dr. Jonathan SAvift, in nineteen volumes. In 1775 he was lucky enough to get a pen- sion of two hundred j)ounds a year from the British Government, and in 1782 he saw his son Richard Brinsley Secretary of the Treasury, and his son Charles Francis Secretary of War in Ireland. Thomas Sheridan wrote also a Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language, which held its ground as an author- ity for half a century. His daughter, Mrs. Lefanu, of Dublin, possessed much of the family talent. She wrote fables and stories which were much admired at the time. Her daughter. Miss Alicia Lefanu, wTote a Memoir of her grandmother, Frances Sheridan, the subject of this sketch and " Sheridan's mother." Beside James Sheridan Knowles, his first cousin, who died in 1862, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, Richard Brinsley Sheridan had, as we see, a literary aunt and grandaunt, and indeed a list of literary rela- tives. His son Thomas wrote nothing, but had a share in Drury Lane Theatre, w^as a whig politician, and 3GG THE MOTHER OF SHERIDAN. married Catherine Henrietta, daughter of Colonel Collender, of Craig Hall in Scotland, and grand- daughter to the Earl of Antrim. He died in 1870, at the age of forty-three. Among his six children two were certainly conspicuous for the literary talents that belonged to the Sheridan family. We refer to Selina Sheridan, who married in 1825 the Hon. Captain Blackwood, son of Baron Dufferin, and to Caroline Elizabeth, better known as the Hon. Mrs. Norton, who in her old age was again married to her lifelong friend, the late Sk William Stirling Maxwell. The third daughter, Georgiana, was married to Lord Seymour. As Lady Seymour, she was Queen of Love and Beauty at the Eglintown Tournament in 1839, and subse- quently became Duchess of Somerset, wearing the j)roudest " Strawberry" coronet in England. The latest descendant of Donald and Denis (Bible) Sheridan of Quilca, who has shown literary talent in addition to the highest qualities of a statesman and diplomatist, is the son of the above-named Selina, Lady Dufferin, who in 182.5 married into the L'ish Black- Avood familv, which Avas ennobled in 1800 for services rendered to William Pitt's ministry in the formation of the Union.- This son is Earl of Dufferin and Vis- count Clandeboye, who VA^as born in 1826, and distin- guished himself so greatly in India, and as Governor- General of Canada, and afterAvard in Constantinople. His "Letters from High Latitudes,'' Avritten about thirty years ago, is still quite popular, and the preface to it shows that Lord Dufferin has some of the heredi- tary Axit of the Sheridans. It was republished in Mon- treal, in 1873, as " A Yacht Voyage to Iceland." " The ACCOUNT OF A LOVE MATCH. 367 reader," observes a critic, "in taldng up the book, may be amused to recognize in the preface something of the old histrionic turn of the Sheridan family, for it furnishes the list of the yacht' s crew under the heading of dramatis personal^ viz. , Wyse, a returned California digger ; another is a navigator, another cook and butcher. Along with mp^te, five seamen, and shipboy, we find ' Voice of a French Captain,' an ' Early Village Cock,' and a ' White Bear' — all. performers in that Arctic melodrama of a ship. It is a fancy very much like the manner of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, espe- cially the voice of the French captain, hailed no doubt in a thick fog, under the lea of an iceberg. The narra- tive of the voyage is of the same lively character, sprinkled all over with Sheridonian felicities of sjoeech.' ' Lord Duflerin, who is great-grandson to Sheridan, and therefore great-great-grandson to Sheridan's mother, has also wTitten upon Emigration, and the Land Tenure in Ireland. His wife, Lady Dufferin, is granddaughter of the celebrated Irish patriot, Archibald Hamilton Rowans. Her maiden name was Lady Harriet Sengine Hamilton, and she is the author of " Katy's Letter," a ballad, and " The Honorable Impulsia Gushington," a young lady who makes a sentimental journey up the Nile and among the ancient ruins of Egypt. The following is a more detailed account of the first acquaintanceship of Sheridan's mother with Thomas Sheridan his father, then manager of the Dublin Thea- tre. In January, 1746, Mr. Kelly, a gentleman from Galway, having insulted and considerably alarmed an actress named Bellamy in the theatre, Mr. Sheridan interposed in her behalf, v/hen Mr. Kelly became so 368 THE MOTHER OF SHERIDAN. coarse and violent that the manager x)ersonally chas- tised him. A combination of Galway men was formed to avenge Mr. Kelly. With that object they aiTanged to attack him in the theatre, but having been warned privately of his danger, he prudently abstained from appearing on the night in question. This only in- creased the fury of the Galway clique, who vented their rage at missing their prey by such serious out- rages that the outbreak was called " Kelly's riot." Trinity College, of which Mr. Sheridan had been a member, together with the better class of citizens, espoused Ms cause, and among the warmest of these defenders was Edmund Burke, at that time a student at the Dublin University. A paper war was then commenced, opened by a letter in favor of Mr. Sheridan, which appeared in the Dublin Journal, January 25th, 1746. This was fol- lowed by an anonymous copy of verses, from the pen of Miss Chamberlayne, which ultimately led to an introduction to Mr. Sheridan. But in vain did Miss Chamberlayne Avield her poeti- cal pen in behalf of her hero ; and a pamphlet that she wrote on the subject met with no better success. Party spirit still ran high, and Mr. Sheridan and his friend Dr. Lucas were marked for assassination, and a horse was kept in readiness to enable the murderer to make his escape. So violent a riot occurred at the theatre one night that Mr. Sheridan was acting that the Master of the "Revels, an officer like that of Lord Chamberlain in fingland, ordered the theatre to be closed, and both sides appealed to the law. MARRIED TO SHERIDAN. 369 Mr. Slieridan was first tried for assaulting Mr. Kelly, when the provocation he had received appeared to the jury such ample justification of his conduct that he was immediately acquitted. Mr. Kelly was then tried for the mischief done at the theatre, and was sentenced to a tine of five hundred pounds and three months' imprisonment. The fine was remitted at the generous request of Mr. Sheridan, and he himself became solici- tor and bail for the enlargement of the man who had sought his life and injured his property. When the trouble subsided Mr. Sheridan was intro- duced to his fair champion, at the house of his sister, Mrs. Sheen. Both parties were so well pleased with each other, at this first interview, that a lively attach- ment immediately took j)lace, and they were united in 1747, when the lady had just completed her twenty- second year. For some years after her marriage the life of Mrs. Sheridan was happy and prosperous in the extreme. Indeed the only drawback to her felicity was the loss of her oldest child, Thomas, who died when only three years old. She alternately resided at Dublin and at the farm at Quilca, County Cavan. The cares of a rising family fully occuj^ied the time of Mrs. Sheridan. Her second son, Charles Francis, was born in June, 1750, and her third, the celebrated Richard Brinsley, in September, 1751. Her fourth child was a daughter, Alicia, born January, 1753, who subsequently became Mrs. Lefanu. Her son, Lock- ville, died an infant, and her younger daughter, Anne Elizabeth, was born some years afterward in London. Reverses, however, came, and abandoning the stage 370 THE MOTHER OF SHERIDAN. in Dublin, Mr. Sheridan, in 1758, removed with his family to Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and in 1760 took art engagement at Drury Lane. The brilliant talents of Mrs. Sheridan soon caused her to be surrounded by some of the chief literary charac- ters of the time, among them Dr. Johnson, Dr. Young, and Samuel Richardson. Although in her " Sidney Biddulph" Mrs. Sheridan adopted the epistolary form of Richardson's novels, yet she avoided his jDrolixity, and used to say that in his novels the bookseller got the better of the author. " Sidney Biddulph," perhaps, i)resents a more faith- ful picture of the manners of middle life, in the early part of the eighteenth century, than the works of Richardson ; and this may be easily accounted for, as Mrs. Sheridan drew from her own actual observation of the circles in which she moved, while Richardson, in attempting to portray scenes in higher life than his own, could only write from imagination. In the composition of "Sidney Biddulph*' Mrs. Sheridan appears to have relied entirely upon her own abilities, for even her husband was not consulted, nor was any portion of the story communicated to him until the whole was completed. It is recorded of her, that it was her custom to write with a small box near her, in which she deposited her manuscript whenever Mr. Sheridan entered the room. It was in reference to the education of her daughter Alicia that Mrs. Slieridan received from Dr. Johnson one of his remarkable " snubbings." On his observing the little Alicia's love for literature, and lier attentivelv reading his "Rambler," Mrs. Sheridan assured him ^iiarcc anfoincttl DEATH OF MRS. SHERIDAN. 373 she only allowed her little girl to read works of such an exceptional nature. " Then you are a fool, mad- am I" vociferated the courtly j)hilosopher. "Turn your daughter loose into your library ; if she is well inclined, she will only choose nutritious food ; if otherwise, all your precaution will avail nothing to prevent her following the natural bent of her inclina- tions." Mrs. Sheridan accompanied her husband on Ms visits to Bath, Bristol, Edinburgh, and other places. At Bristol a singular incident occurred, in a copy of verses being addressed to her husband by a young lady of fifteen, the subsequently famous Mrs. Hannah More. In 1764, with a view to economy, Mr. and Mrs. Sheri- dan embarked for France, in order to ' ' make both ends meet" on the pension of two hundred pounds a year. They took all their children with them, except Richard Brinsley, who was left under the care of Dr. Robert Sumner, the headmaster, and Dr. Parr, the undermaster of Harrow. The Sheridans settled at Blois, and for some time the mild climate of France had a beneficial effect upon the health of Mrs. Sheridan. But consumjDtion had marked her for its victim, and Mr. Sheridan was just on the eve of a journey to Ireland when his wife became alarmingly ill. Fainting fits, followed by extreme debility, were the chief symptoms. Her mental powers remained unimpaired to the last. In a few nights she expired, to the great grief of her hus- band and children. As a Protestant she could not be buried in the Roman Catholic cemetery, but through the kindness of friends her remains were deposited in 374 THE MOTHER OF SHERIDAN. the private cemetery of a Protestant family, seven miles from Blois. Although not handsome, Mrs. Sheridan is described as having had an intelligent countenance, fine dark eyes and hair, with a particularly fair complexion. From an accident in her childhood she was slightly lame, and could not walk any distance without assist- ance ; latterly she used an ivory-headed cane. Her hand and arm were particularly admired for the beauty of their shape. She was not only a highly intellectual, but a most amiable woman, and seems to have endeared herself to all who knew her. FRANCES TROLLOPE, THE MOTHER OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE. It is bat a few months since Anthony TroUope died, in the meridian both of years and fame. Whether he was entitled to the appellation of a great man must depend altogether upon the meaning we assign to greatness. It is certain that after the death of Thack- eray and Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, together with " George Eliot" (Miss Mary Ann Evans, Mrs. George Henry Lewes, and then shortly before her death Mrs. Cross) and Charles Reade, were the three most popular writers of English fiction. His powers of continuous work were more remarkable than those of any other novelist since Sir Walter Scott. Although engaged in a government position at the London General Post-Office, Mr. Trollope found leisure not only to mix freely in society and observe keenly the social manners of his time, but to turn out two or three long novels in the course of a year. His elder brother, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, is also well known as an author, and having lived in Italy for many years he has written several romances of Italian life, such as "Marietta," '' Guilio Malatesta," "La Beata," etc. He is also the author of a " History of Florence," "The Girlhood of Catherine de Medici," and "A Decade of Italian Women. " Thomas Adolphus, however, is not nearly so well 376 THE MOTHER OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE. known by his writings as Anthony, and to the latter the title of being a great novelist and social writer is cer- tainly due. As both the brothers inherited tlieu' liter- ary abilities from their mother, Frances TroUope, who was born in 1780 and died at Florence in 1863, she is in our judgment entitled to a place among the mothers of great men. From her especially Anthony Trollope inherited his incessant activity and never-ilagging industry. The day has, we trust, passed away when Mrs. Trollope is to be judged by her first book written after her first visit to the United States in 1829, and published in England three years subsequently. It would be as unfair to sentence her to literary death because of her attacks upon our manners in her ' ' Domestic Life of the Americans," as it would have been to refuse to read Charles Dickens's later works because he had laughed at some phases of our political life in his " American Notes." In forming an estimate of Mrs. Trollope as an author, however, we shall find that quantity rather than quality predominates. Although she delighted in satires of clerical, political, and domestic life quite as much and with not so much good humor as her son Anthony, they have left no indelible mark upon the age in which he lived, and, unlike the satires of Thack- eray and the humorous and pathetic stories of Dickens, have produced no change in the feelings and manners of the people. It was not till she had passed the middle of life that Mrs. Trollope began to write at all. This would be no necessary disparagement of her as a novelist, since the HER TASTE FOR POLITICS. 377 same is true of ''.George EKot,'.' who only began to ■uTite her matchless fictions after her union in midlife with George Henry Lewes. But it may well be doubted if the genius of Mrs. Lewes, much less the mere talent of Mrs. Trollope, could produce as many novels as the latter did that would be worthy of sur- vival to another generation. It is easier perhaps now- adays to say what she did not write than what she did write, because the name of her literary progeny is legion. Satire, as we have said, is what she aimed at, and that, so far as her talent extended, she chiefly suc- ceeded in. Her satire on American social life is found in her " Domestic Manners of the Americans," which she supijlemented with the novel, " The Refugee in America." This was in 1832, and in the following year she turned her attention to Italy, and in addition to a descriptive work produced a novel, ' • The Abbess, the scenes of which are laid in an Italian convent and under the nose of the Inquisition. Politics were always a favorite study with Mrs. Trol- lope, and from first to last she was an uncompromising Tory. Her taste for polemical romance found vent in 1836 in the " Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jeffer- son Whitlaw," an apparent prototype of Legree in " Uncle Tom's Cabin," who maltreats those whom quaint old Fuller calls " God's images cut in ebony," on the banks of the Mississippi. In the following year "The Yicar of Wrenhill" made his appearance. Mrs. Trollope' s purpose in this novel was to show up a clerical hypocrisy and sham religion. But she overdid it, and even a favorable reviewer at the time spoke of the character of the 378 THE MOTHER OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE. vicar as ' ' not merely a libel on the. sect, but a libel on humanity." In '' Michael Armstrong," another of her stories, the character of Sir Matthew Dowling, whom she depicts as a coarse, brutal, and detestable scoundrel, and yet at the same time a man of culture and mental ambi- tioD, must also be pronounced untrue to the average possibilities of human nature, "• Such is Mrs. Trol- lope's Manchester model man — the representative in her Parliament of the cotton interest . . . the pattern of mill-owners and manufacturers. And this vulgar oppressor has a familiar worthy of him in the person of Mr. Joseph Parsons — a parasite who contracts to do his principal' s dirty work wholesale, and does it beauti- fully, breaking the hearts and the homes of the factory folks after a magnilicent system of his own." In this political novel Mrs. Trollope attempted to do in one social department what Charles Dickens so successfully did in another. But she had not the power which Dickens so marvellously possessed of maldng her char- acters both dramatic and real to us. She had no such dramatic corps as Bumble, and Claypole, and Fagin, and Bill Sykes, and the Artful Dodger, and poor Nancy. " The Widow Barnaby" is Mrs. Trollope' s best crea- tion. The widow has a definite X)ersonality and stands out among the positive quantities of the English novel. There is more humor in this story than in the rest of her novels. Miss Martha Compton's matrimonial tac- tics make up a rich piece of comedy, and the widowed career of this same adventuress maintains the fun. The Widow Barnaby has been well described as HER NOVELS. 379 '' showy, strong-willed, supple- tongued, audacious, garrulous, affected, tawdry, lynx-eyed, indomitable in her scheming, and colossal in her selfishness. " In the characters that support or show off the widow in stronger relief, Mrs. Trollope has also displayed consid- erable skill. Agnes Willoughby's artlessness con- trasts well with her guardians systematic art. Aunt Betsy is a good old soul, and Lord Mucklebury' s flirta- tion with the widow is amusing. Suj^plemental novels seldom improve upon the first, and " The Widow Mar- ried " did not enhance the literary reputation of the author of " The Widow Barnaby." Her novel, ' ' One Fault, ' ' is the story of a persecuted wife, whose trials are minutely analyzed, but it is deficient in probability, character, and artistic finish. Its moral appears to be to show the mischief of extreme sensitiveness. " Charles Chesterfield ; or. The Advent- ures of a Youth of Genius, " is descriptive of literary coteries, and this novel also has its counterpart in her " Blue Bells of England." The subject of literary disappointment has been worn threadbare both before and since they were written. " Hargrave ; or. The Adventures of a Man of Fashion," followed next, and was more successful. About the same time she wrote " Jessie Phillips," a pendant to her " Factory Boy." The latter attacked the Poor Laws, the former the factory system, as they then existed in England. In both these stories she attempted to grapple with problems, as she says, " of enormous difficulty and stupendous importance," but beyond her powers. " The Laurringtons ; or, Superior People," was more within her intellectual compass, 380 THE MOTHER OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE. and was accordingly more admired. Among lier later fictions are " The Robertses • on tlieir Travels," " Father Eustace/' " The Three Cousins," '' Town and Country ; or, The Days of the Regency, " " The Young Countess," ''The Lottery of Marriage," "Petticoat Government," "Second Love; or. Beauty and Intel- lect," and "Mrs. Withers ; or, Family Mysteries." Such a quantity of literary work as we have described, even if a good deal of it was not of a high order, entitled Mrs. TroUope to the character of one of the most active -minded and observant writers of her own or any other age. She is also entitled to the praise of writing with a moral purpose, that of reforming abuses and making vice and folly contemptible. Gfoethe complained that the modern poets put too much water in their ink. Mrs. TroUope may justly be found fault with not only for putting too much milk and water, but also too much gall into her descriptions and criti- cisms of society. Still she did good. It is always good for people to see themselves occasionally as others see them, and although her sharp and stinging satire made her un^Dopular with many circles, her books were read and her pitiless descrij)tions of characters and manners produced a salutary effect. If it be said that her analysis of character is not pro- found, it may be answered that she did not attempt to analyze profound characters. As a novelist she cannot compare, for the pleasurable and healthy feelings she excites in the reader, with Dickens or Thackeray, or even with her son Anthony TroUope. The last-named, however, is really a refined and modified edition of his mother. Both of them delighted in the observation of A SOCIAL SATIRIST. 381 commonplace rather than of exaggerated human cult- ure. Bishops, deans, parsons, politicians, village gos- sips, town beauties, dinner-parties, and fashionable table-talk were the stock in trade of both. But the son s stories leave a far pleasanter taste in the mouth than the mother' s. If she did not achieve much in the way of checking vice and immorality, yet dealing with superficial peojDle she created by contrast a desire for Teal persons and sincere actions and words. It is non- sense to call her unfeminine ; a social satirist has no sex, and if she criticised the life around her merely from a feminine standpoint, her observations would be far less trustworthy than when she does so as an intel- ligent human being, neither asking nor giving indul- gence or quarter. She shows no mercy ; but the set of people she took off deserved no mercy. Although she was a consistent Tory all her life, her political satires cannot be called untruthful or unjust. She is neither exclusive nor sectarian. She as readily finds the weak spots in one party as in another. She proclaims war to the knife with all forms and manifestations of hypocrisy and humbug, whether of high or low degree. The attributes of penetration and fearlessness, if not of perfect impartiality, must be allowed her. Moreover, such writers as Mrs. Trolloj^e, who make a clean sweep of the whole social house with their liter- ary broom, do an amount of good which society reluc- tantly acknowledges by abandoning the abuses com- plained of, although it will not acknowledge that it is all influenced by the merciless castigations given it. We will venture more than this, and say that if Mrs. Trollope had confined her satires to her own country 382 THE MOTHER OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE. she would have been one of the most popular of modern novelists in onrs. We all of us laugh when she takes off the narrowness, meanness, scheming, gin- drinking, grammar-slaughtering, and pompous pecul- iarities of certain types of English people. It is fifty- one years ago since Mrs. Trollope published her "Domestic Manners of the Americans.'" It is nev- er pleasant to endure the depreciatory criticism of strangers, and when the Quarterly liei'iew and other Tory journals of England hailed the work as a true, that is, a complete and impaitial, description of Ameri- can society both Xorth and South, it was no wonder if our national i^ride was offended, and if she was looked upon as a spy whose only object in coming here was to " see the nakedness of the land,"" and shut her eyes to its plenty. The manners of the English, however, have been criticised bv foreigners at various times quite as severely as Mrs. Trollope criticised ours. At any rate, we are not concerned to defend the idiosyncra- sies of American society half a century ago. ]\Irs. Trollope herself confessed that she met with relined and genuine people both Xorth and South, who formed an important and socially powerful exception to the vulgar coteries she described. Ameiicans of culture in our own day are scarcely more tolerant of the aggressive traits which offended Mrs. Trollope than she was. But the truth is that the social aspect of ordinary American life has undergone a vast and salutary reformation during the last fifty years. She judged of society by its excrescences, and her analysis of the countrj^ was only skin-deep. Moreover, there is a great deal of jus- tice in her criticisms of the offensive individualism she HER EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA. 383 came in contact with. If any of us to-day were to encounter the same persons and nuisances we should treat them with as little reverence as she did. Hap- pily, those x>ersons and nuisances are things of the past, as much as slavery, which does not seem to have shocked her as an institution, althougli she disliked the spirit manifested by some Southerners toward their slaves, as if they were mere chattels, and not human ]:)eings at all. Thackeray formed a very different esti- mate from Mrs. Trollox-»e of the symimthy generally existing between masters and slaves. As she judged of the Xorth by odd sjjecimens that attracted her attention, so she did of the Southern treatment of the colored race. The relations of the white servants in the North to their employers disgusted her even more, and as she stayed in various parts of the country for some months at a time, the"helir' question came home to her jjractically. She found that everj' girl she engaged, however illiterate, ijiided herself upon being " a lady,"" who condescended to stay with her for a few weeks or months until she had saved a few dollars or reyilenished her wardrobe. Of the English idea of domestic service as an honorable, respected, and useful calling, she found no trace in America. In this matter, domestic life in America is still a difRcidt prob- lem, and it is this that now as then induces so many families to live in hotels and boarding-houses rather than to " keep house." Yet there is nothing more menial or dejiendent in domestic service than in a girl's earning her daily bread with far more strain upon her health in a store or factory. It is a prejudice which has arisen from false notions of what dependence and 384 THE MOTHER OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE. independence really mean, and this prejudice has done great harm to the social and domestic life of America, and still continues to do so. A secretary or amanu- ensis, a coachman or a steward is as much a dependent upon his employer as a girl who attends to the house door and the nursery. Mrs. TroUope gave offence by writing to this effect, but it is true nevertheless. True socialism does not consist in having no masters and no servants, for that is impossible, but in preserving one's self-respect and the respect due to others in all the relations of life. Every man or woman who has to live by earning money in exchange for services is a servant. But employers are themselves dependent upon those whom they employ. Mrs. Trollope's account of her " helps'' was certainly of a discouraging kind, but it is still ridiculously common, and one only has to adver- tise for help to find it out. A showy, vulgar girl thought it her due to sit at meals with Mrs. Trollope and her daughters, and was amazed at being relegated to dinner in the kitchen. She expected also the same dresses and amusements as the young ladies she waited upon, and when the Misses Trolloi)e did not see it in that light they were accused of being purse-proud upstarts. Of course this was an extreme specimen of the " helj)," and Mrs. Trollope may have erred in sup- posing it a representative one. Still, there are girls as ignorant to-day, who despise useful handiwork and imagine that any lady must think she has found a treasure in engaging such a one as her " companion." "I do not care for children, and feel myself better fitted to be a companion to a lady," is even now a fre- quent intimation from girls seeking a living and having • HER LIFE-LIKE DESCRIPTIONS. 3S5 their daily bread to earn. Hence the majority of our "helps" think it beneath their dignity to learn any- thing useful. Whether one agrees with Mrs. TroUope's opinions or not, no one who will take the trouble of reading her now almost forgotten book can fail to find both instruc- tion and amusement from some of her realistic descrip- tions. Her pictures of the revival ancl the camp-meet- ing as it was fifty years ago are almost as fresh now as when they were written. One may take Mrs. Trollope as cicerone to Ocean Grove or Martha's Vineyard and find that the old lady had both eyes and ears, and knew how to use them. " Suddenly changing his tone," she says of a revival preacher, " which had been that of sober, accurate description, into the shrill voice of horror, he bent forward his head, as if to gaze on some object beneath the pulpit, and made known to us what he saw in the j)it which seemed to open before him. The device was certainly a happy one for giving effect to his description of hell. No image that fire, flame, brimstone, molten lead, or red-hot pincers could supply, with flesh, nerves, and sinews quivering under them, was omitted. . . . Would they avoid the hell he had made them see ? ' Come then ! ' he con- tinued, stretching out his arms toward them, ' come to us and tell us so, and we will make you see Jesus, the dear, gentle Jesus, who shall save you from it. But . you must come to Him! You must not be ashamed to come to Him. This night you shall teU Him that you were not ashamed of Him ; we wdll make way for you ; we will clear the bench for anxious sin- ners to sit uj)on. Come then, come to the anxious 3SG THE MOTHER OF ANTHONY TROLLOPE. benches, and we will show you Jesus ! Come ! Come ! Come.' " The revivalist characteristics are the same in Mr. Moody's day as they were in Mrs. Trollope's, but the style resembles as much that of Mr. Sj)urgeon, of Eng- land, as of any American pulpiteer. The appearance of a female lecturer, who discussed the Bible and marriage freely, created a sensation, Mrs. Trollope tells us, even among Americans. " It Avould have made some stir anywhere," she thinks, ' ' but in America, where women are guarded by a sevenfold shield of habitual insignificance, such a si^ectacle caused an effect that can hardly be described.' ' Had this keen observer lived half a century later she would scarcely have spoken of insignificance as the guardian of American women, and assuredly the fact of a lecturer being a woman no longer causes a sensa- tion. In short, Mrs. Trollope's two volumes on the " Do- mestic Manners of the Americans" are interesting as an exaggerated, but nevertheless partially true, account of some phases of social life in the early part of this century. Some of these eccentric manners have since then crossed the Atlantic and become naturalized in the mother country, especially revivalism, which in the imported Salvation Army from England is a domestic and social nuisance such as Americans could never have invented. Mrs. Trollope's looking-glass has two sides. THE WIFE OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI. The career of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beacons- field, was one of the most remarkable of modern times. He deserves to stand in the first rank of self- made men, yet, like other self-made men, he was indebted to circumstances for a large share of his suc- cess. The great thing with such brilliant makers of their own biography as well as of the history of the times in which they lived, is the gift of taking time by the forelock and turning their opjoortunities to the best possible account. Ability to do this is as essen- tial to success as any quality of genius or intellectual attainment. The late Earl of Beaconsfield owed much to his father in the way of literary example and encourage- ment. For the convenience of consulting books in the British Museum, Isaac Disraeli had a suite of apart- ments in the Adelphi, London, and here it was that his son Benjamin first saw the light on December 21st, 1805. " I was born in a library," he used to say, and in his last illness he told his friend Lord Barrington that the room he was born in "was covered with books." The literary tastes he acquired by these early associa- tions, as well as by the talents he inherited from his jjarents, formed in later years the happiness of his leisure, and no doubt enabled him to bear the storms of his political career with equanimity. Indeed we find 388 THE WIFE OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI. Mm turning from one of his earliest political disap- pointments, when he was unable to obtain a seat in Parliament, to the novel-writing which subsequently became his chief relaxation. On the 10th of February, 1802, the elder Disraeli married Maria, daughter of Mr. George Bassoi, a re- tired London merchant, who resided at Brighton. The family was of Venetian origin. Benjamin Disraeli's maternal uncle, like his father, was fond of literature, a taste which the fortune which he had acquired in busi- ness enabled him to gratify. Isaac Disraeli had in- herited from his father a considerable fortune, which enabled him to give his son a liberal education and the advantages of foreign travel. His mother lived until 1847. Very little is recorded of her, but she no doubt was worthy of the husband to whom she was a beloved companion for fifty- five years of wedded life. Of his grandfather, Benjamin Disraeli, after ^vhom he was named, the great statesman and author has left us some scattered reminiscences. In 1723 the Jews were permitted to acquire land in England, and in 1753 an Act of Parliament was passed to naturalize them, although the fanatical ox)positi()n it created led to its repeal in the following year. In 1743 Henry., Pelham became Prime Minister of England, who was known to be favorable to the Jews. Tliis led to manv foreign Hebrews settling in England, among whom was Benjamin D' Israeli, the grandfather of him who was to become twice Prime Minister and a peer of the realm. The latter describes him as " a man of ardent character, sanguine, courageous, speculative, and fort- unate, with a temper which no disapiwintment could A STERN JEWESS. 389 disturb, and a brain amid reverses full of resource." When thirty-five years old he married Sarah Yillareal de Seproot, a descendant of the Villareals of Portugal, a lady of the Jewish race, and possessing the remark- able personal attractions so often seen in the daughters of Judah. Her grandson writes somewhat severely of her disposition, perhaps forgetting the possibility of her having transmitted some of her stern qualities to himself. Although she never ox^enly renounced her religion, he represents her as having a contempt for her race, " a feeling which the vain are too apt to adopt when they find that they are born to x^ublic con- tempt." She lived to the age of eighty, he says, "without indulging in a tender expression.'" Her family had suffered much from persecution in Portugal, and perhajDS the sympathy and just resentment which he himself always showed for the sufferings of his race mav have been a more kindly distillation of the senti- ments of his indomitable grandmother. Her husband was as easy and good-tempered as she was severe, and their grandson says of them and of his father, who was their only cMld : "• Notwithstanding a wile who never pardoned him for his name, and a son who disappointed all his plans, and who to the last hour of his life was an enigma to him, he lived till he was nearly ninety, and then died in the full enjoy- ment of prolonged existence." The only son, Isaac, added to his father's easy disposition intellectual powers and aspirations to which he was a stranger. Hence he was a disappointment to both his parents. His famous son describes him as " a pale, pensive child, with large lustrous eyes, delicate features, and 300 THE WIFE OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI. hair falling in ringlets on his neck," and as inheriting his mother's beauty, but not her character. Indeed he describes his sensitive and imaginative nature as made unhappy by her want of sympathy. ' ' Having a strong, clear mind, without any imagination, she believed that she beheld an inevitable doom. The tart remark and the contemptuous comment on her part elicited on the other all the irritability of the jDoetic idiosyncrasy. After frantic ebullitions, for which, when the circum- stances were analyzed by an ordinary mind, there seemed no sufficient cause, my grandfather always interfered to soothe with good-tempered common - X^laces, and promote peace.'" On one occasion, the solitary boy ran away from home, but was brought back by his father. When he grew up he showed his carelessness of early training by changing his name from D' Israeli to Disraeli and quietly conforming to Christianity. His son. Lord Beaconsfield, was bap- tized at the age of twelve in the parish church of St. Andrew's, Holborn, the entry on the register being only discovered by accident in 1875. King William the Fou'tth died in June, 1837, and as is always the case on the accession of a new sovereign in Great Britain, there was a general election. This was the opportunity for which Benjamin Disraeli had so long waited. He contested the borough of Maid- stone and was successful in defeating the Radical candidate. The colleague of Mr. Disraeli was another Tory, Mr. Wyndham Lewis, of Hughenden Manor, Buckinghamshire. Both Mr, Lewis's wife and manor •were in due season destined to become the valuable possessions of Mr. Disraeli. It was the wife that BEFORE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 391 brought liim the manor and brought him not only a wealth of this world's goods, but of what was of far more value to him, domestic affection and unwaning sympathy and friendship. On the 20th of November in the same year, 1837, the young Queen Victoria delivered her first speech to the assembled Parliament ; and among the members of the House of Commons who listened at the bar was Benjamin Disraeli, now in the thirty-second year of his age, and who had waited fiv^e years for his seat in the House of Commons. On December 7th, two weeks and a half afterward, his own voice was first heard in the House. " A singular figure, looking pale as death, with eyes fixed on the ground, and ringlets clustering round his brow, asked the indulgence which was usually granted to those who spoke for the first time." He was already known as a clever romance -writer and a youth of exquisite but rather showy costume, and he had to stand a good deal of banter about the "Wondrous Tale of Alroy," and " Contarini Flem- ing." Laughter and cries of " Question" interrupted him continually. He was irritated and confused. "If," he exclaimed, " honorable gentlemen think this is fair, I will submit. I would not do it to others, that is all." He then attempted to deliver the peroration he had prepared, but shouts of ridicule drowned his sentences. He sat down, but not until he had spoken those memorable words : "I am not at all surprised at the reception which I have experienced. I have begun several things many times, and I have often succeeded at last. I will sit down now, hut the time will come when you will hear me." It was perhaps some conso- 392 THE WIFE OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI. lation to him that the London Times described this maiden effort as "an eloquent speech." A week after- ward he spoke brieliy again and received better treat- ment. In three months more he tried again, and when he had been a member only six months the House lis- tened to him with marked attention. The year 1839 was in one respect the most important of his life, for it was the year of his marriage. His colleague in the representation of Maidstone, Mr. Wyndham Lewis, had died, and his widow became the wife of Benjamin Disraeli. She was the only daughter of Captain John Viney Evans, R.N., of Bampford Speke, Devonshire, and niece and heiress of General Sir James Viney, K.C.H., of Taignton Manor, Glouces- tershire. By this marriage, as we have said, he be- came the owner of Hughenden Manor. This ancient manor is a handsome structure, built on an eminence in the midst of a well- wooded park of one hundred and forty acres, and commanding exten- sive and beautiful views. The village is about two miles to the north from High Wycombe,\in a pictu resque spot, surrounded by w^oodlands of great beaaty. The parish church of Hughenden, w^hich is dedicated to St. Michael and All Angels, includes portions of a structure dating from the N^orman times, but a com- plete restoration and considerable additions were made in 1875. The tower has a peal of six bells, two of which were hung in the reign of Edward the Third, and two in that of Charles the Second. In the interior of the church are interesting monuments of the De Montfort family. Lord Beaconsfield was a regular LADY BEACONSFIELD. 393 attendant at the parish church whenever he was resid- ing at Hughenden. On the brow of a hill, near Hughenden Manor, is a column to the memory of Isaac Disraeli, who died on the 19th of January, 1848, in his eighty -second year, having survived his wife. Lord Beaconsfield' s mother, only a few months. The monument was erected by Mrs, Benjamin Disraeli, his daughter-in-law, who subsequently became Countess of Beaconsfield, some years before her husband became an earl. The history of her elevation redounds to the credit of her husband as well as of herself. She had been a potent factor in the moulding of his i^olitical destiny, and to her he always attributed, gratefully and no doubt truly, a great portion of his success in states- manship. She was herself a woman of remarkable in- telligence, not only in literature, but in political situa- tions. Her advice was often sought by her husband, and always relied upon. So great was her devotion to him that one night, when they were being driven to the House of Commons where he was to make the leading speech from the opposition benches upon some mo- mentous question, she refrained from uttering a cry of pain when the footman closed the carriage door upon her finger. He dedicated his novel " Sibyl" to her in these words : " I would inscribe these volumes to one whose noble spirit and gentle nature ever prompt her to sympathize with suffering ; to one whose sweet voice has often encouraged, and whose taste and judgment have ever guided their pages ; the most severe of critics, but a perfect wife." 394 THE WIFE OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI. In a public speech at Edinburgh, in 1867, he spoke of his partner as " that gracious lady to whom he owed so much of the hapi^iness and success of his Ufe." Benjamin Disraeli never forgot insults and injuries , like those heaped upon him by O' Connell, but neither did he forget loving-kindnesses and affection such as he received from his wife. It was in February, 1868, when the failing health of the late Earl of Derby compelled him to resign the Premiership, that her Majesty Queen Victoria, by his advice, sent for Benjamin Disraeli, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and appointed him Prime Minister, or First Lord of the Treasury. In December of the same year he resigned office, Mr. Gladstone and the Liberals hav- ing defeated the Conservatives, on an appeal to the country. The Queen, with whom Disraeli in his earlier days had not been a favorite, but who appreciated his later efforts to save the fabrics of Church and State, at once offered him a coronet. With the dignity of a man who felt that his services to his country deserved recognition, and yet who had no desu'e for personal reward, he begged that the honor might be transferred to his wife. Mrs. Disraeli accordingly was created Viscountess Beaconsfield, while her husband remained the Right Hon. Benjamin Disraeli. Relieved from the c^res of office which he was after- ward to reassume, Mr. Disraeli found a resource in his old hobby of novel-writing, and " Lothair" was written in 1870. It was reported that when he published his first novel, liis father, Isaac Disraeli, had exclaimed, " Dukes ! what does my son know about dukes 'i He never saw one in his life I" His last novel showed that AT HUGHENDEN MANOR, 395 he had learned something about them in the interval. He was an earl, and if he had lived longer would have been made a duke himself. Lord Ronald Grower, in his " Reminiscences," gives an account of two visits he made to Hughenden Manor, one before and one after the death of Lady Beacons- field. He says : " On coming down to the library before dinner, I found Mr. Disraeli and Lady Beaconsfield, the poor old lady sadly altered in looks since London— death written on her face — but, as usual, gorgeously dressed. The only other guests in the house besides W. H. and myself were Lord and Lady John Manners. ... At dinner I sat next to Lady Beaconsfield. Mr, Disraeli was evidently very anxious about her, and although occasionally flashing out in conversation with all his curious play of arms and shrugging of the shoulders, he was evidently much depressed at her state. His attention to her was quite touching, and ' Mary Ann,' as he sometimes called her, was constantly appealed to. . , . The drawing-room is a terribly gaudy apartment, very lofty, and the walls all green paper, dotted with fleurs-de-lis and adorned with large panelled brown carved wood or composition frames, which are the only relief to this green wilderness of wall. On asking my host why he had not paintings within these frames, especially in the one above the fireplace, ' I had intended,' he answered, ' her picture (Lady Beaconsfield's) to be placed there ; but she has never sat for her portrait except to Ross for a miniature ; but some day I shall have that copied life size and placed in that frame.' 396 THE WIFE OF BENJAMIN DISRAELI. ******* "In tlie evening Mr. Disraeli spoke very despond- ingly about his wife's state of health. ' She suffers,' he groaned, ' so dreadfully at times. We have been married thirty-three years, and she has never given me a dull moment.' It was quite touching to see his dis- tress. His face, generally so emotionless, was filled with a look of suffering and woe that nothing but the sorrow of her he so truly loves could cause on that im- passive countenance We visitors all left soon after twelve. It was a miserably wet day, and this seemed to add to the melancholy feeling we had that we should iDrobably never again see poor old Lady Beaconsfield, who, with many oddities as to dress and manners, is certainly a most devoted wife and com- panion." Queen Victoria's regard for him in his later days is well known. She even paid a visit to Hughenden Manor and planted an oak there. But the companion and confidante of his life had passed away. Lady Beaconsfield died in December, 1872, at an advanced age, and left the bereaved statesman at " the darkest hour of his existence.'' The day of the funeral, which was conducted with as little ceremony as a humble village funeral, it rained hard and the wind blew in strong gusts, but nevertheless the grief-stricken hus- band walked bareheaded behind the coffin to the vault door. In her death he had lost the one person upon whom he had bestowed the strongest affections of his nature, and he never recovered from the blow. He con- stantly alluded to her as his " dear wife," and said she had been his "good angel." On the 11th of Augu.st, DEATH OF LORD BEACONSFIELD. 397 1876, Benjamin Disraeli made his last speech in the House of Commons, and accepted the earldom which had been offered him nearlj^ eight years before. Amid the tears of his servants and the sorrow of his friends Lord Beaconsfield passed away on the 19th of April, 1881, towaM the early hours of morning. A public funeral was offered by the Premier, Mr. Glad- stone, but declined by the executors, for the great statesman's will showed that he had never forgotten the faithful wife and friend who had preceded him to the grave nine years before. It read simply : "I desire and direct that I may be buried in the same vault in the churchyard of Hughenden in which the remains of my late dear wife, Mary Anne Disraeli, created in her own right Viscountess Beaconsfield, were placed, and that my funeral may be conducted with the same simplicity as hers was." THE MOTHEE OF GARFIELD. Is there any other country in the world where the worthy poor have such an opportunity as ours ; where the widowed mother may so surely count upon the ways and means to rear her children, and to see them educated ? Is there any factor so important to success for a man in any field of work as that he should have had a wise mother 'i Francis Galton, in his " Hereditary Genius," says on this latter point : " A child who has an ahle mother has the good fortune to be delivered from the ordinary narrowing, partisan influences of home education. Our race is essentially slavish ; it is the nature of all of us to believe blindly in what we love, rather than in that which we think most wise. We are inclined to look upon an honest, unshrinking pursuit of truth as some- thing irreverent. We are indignant when others pry into our idols and criticise them with impunity, just as a savage flies to arms when a missionary picks his fetish to pieces. Women are far more strongly in- fluenced by these feelings than men ; they are blinder partisans and more servile followers of custom. Happy are they whose mothers did not intensify their naturally slavish dispositions in childhood by the frequent use of phrases such as, ' Do not ask questions about this or AN OHIO WIDOW. 399 that, for it is wrong to doubt,' but who showed them by practice and teaching that inquiry may be ab- solutely free without being irreverent, that reverence for truth is the parent of free inquiry, and that in- difference or insincerity in the search after truth is one of the most degrading of sins." The mother of Garfield was such a woman as Galton describes a child happy in possessing as a mother. There was nothing narrowing or jiartisan in the home training she gave her offspring ; on the other hand they had a larger outlook, by reason of their hereditary inheritance, than thousands of children of their day had reared in homes of wealth. The dignity, firmness, and self-respecting independence with which life was met by this Ohio mother, took away the sting of pov- erty from her children, every one of whom grew up to usefulness and honor. Mrs. Eliza Garfield, alone with her children in her cabin in the wilderness fifty years ago, realized that life was a stern fact to her, and poverty its condition. A widow with four children on a farm encumbered by debt, and with no money to provide the barest necessi- ties of life, she must have possessed a brave heart to reject the advice given her by a neighbor to sell her home and go back to her friends in the East. The advice was like a stab, but it did her good. She was startled from her hopeless despondency by such words, and looking at her visitor said : " Go away and leave my husband in the wheat-field ? Never ! I can't do that !" There was a reaction in her feelings after that, and her resolution was formed from that hour. She would stay near the grave of her husband, whose 400 THE MOTHER OF GARFIELD. body she "had buried so recently, and lier children would grow up in sight of his graue. Her eldest child was a boy of eleven years, and with him she talked, having no one else to confer with, re garding her plans. .She told him of their situation and the advice given her, and the sturdy lad replied in tones of firmness and boyish ambition, " I can plough and plant, mother, I can cut wood and milk the cows. I want to live here, and I will work real hard." The mother felt reassured, and her boy-farmer kept his word. His was a life of toil, but love sweetened toil in the widow Garfield's home, and her example, coupled with her tender affection for her children, made them ambitious and industrious. She worked hard, and they worked with her. The wheat-field in which she had buried her husband's body was not fenced in, and with her own hands she split rails and built a fence around it. The resolution she exhibited in her efi;ort to keep her children together, the self-denial she practised, and the careful training she gave her sons and daughters, prove her to have been a brave and a strong-minded woman. Toil as she would, her scanty supply of food was fast becoming exhausted, and she had no money to buy more. Without letting her chil- dren know it, she put them upon a daily allowance, and when she found that the corn she had would not last until harvest-time for four, she denied herself a portion and lived upon two and then upon one meal a day. All the time she worked in the field and taxed lier strength to its utmost to save her children from want. They never felt it, but she did, and she never lost the deep lines of care that anxiety and hunger HER EXCELLENT ANCESTRY. 401 brought upon her face in those early days of widow - hood. They are the honorable scars she received in a fierce and noble warfare with want. "With the ripen- ing of the grain and the coming of fresh vegetables hunger and starvation stared them in the face no longer. They were abundantly supplied, and the grateful woman rejoiced that the danger was past and her household was saved. Her eldest son was now a boy of eleven years of age, and his sisters were next him in age. James, the youngest, was three years old, and was the idol of his brother and sisters. The char- acter of this eldest brother was noble and unselfish. As a child he took upon himself the cares of a man, and he never laid them down until his mother was above want. He hired himself out to do farm-work for a neighbor at twelve dollars a month, and with his first week's wages he bought his little brother the first pair of shoes which the child, then four years of age, ever had. He likewise paid a part of the cost of James's schooling. The eldest sister, to enable this pet brother to go so far to school, carried him on her back, and the wise mother worked for all and provided for them as comfortably as she could. Mrs. Garfield was a descendant of the Huguenots, and her ancestor, Maturin Ballon, settled in Cumber- land, Rhode Island, after the revocation of the Edict of Xantes. Maturin Ballou was a preacher, and he built a church, wliich still stands, and is known as " El. der Ballou' s Meeting- House. " The ten generations that succeeded him were preachers. Hosea Ballou, founder of Universalism in the United States, was one of his descendants, and Eliza Ballou was another. 402 THE MOTHER OF GARFIELD. She inherited from this long line of preachers the traits that characterized her — executive ability, perseverance, ambition, fortitude, and indomitable courage. It is then eaSy to understand how she was able to face such adversity as she knew, and hoAv she overcame it in the end. She belonged to a family whose record was one of the best in this country. Her husband and she had been i3laymates in childhood, and he followed her family from New York to Ohio some years after they had removed there, drawn thither by his unconquered love for her. When tliev were married his home was a log-cabin, eighteen by twenty feet, containing but one room. All the furniture in it he had manufactured, and the young wife was proud of it and of him, and he was too happy to think of aught else than his young wife who had come to cheer and keep his i:)ioneer home. Abram Garfield was a man who, under fairer circumstances, might have made a great career. He was a wise and noble man, and was jiossessed of great strength of character. The hardships of his life and care of his little family drove all thoughts of personal advancement from him, and he worked day by day to make them a home. He died when his fourth child was a little babe, and left a home which his faitlif ul wife, by herculean effort, was able to keep and finally to clear of debt. Had he lived, his children would have had a happier childhood perhaps, but they would not have been more wisely instructed than they were. The history of a domestic woman is written in the lives of her children, and nowhere else. Only incidentally are mothers referred to in the generality of biographies. They are honored only by men who are morally A PIONEER REFORMER. 403 as well as intellectually great. A well-kno\%Ti writer has said : " Great men have usually high moral natures, and are affectionate and reverential, inasmuch as mere brain without heart is insufficient to achieve eminence. Such men are naturally disposed to show extreme filial regard, and to publish the good qualities of their mothers with exaggerated praise." Fortunately for this mother her sons were mor- ally great, and he who of her children attained to great public popularity loved and revered his mother with such tenderness as to color all his life's actions and to unite their fames permanently. Mrs. Garfield was a devout member of the Society of Disciples, and she instructed her children systemati- cally in Bible study. The Sabbath day she kept holy, and she invariably read the Bible and explained to her youthful audience what was not apprehended by them. Her Bible teaching took the place of church service, for there was no church near enough for them to attend. On week-days she read four chapters regu- larly, and the family circle discussed the histories of Moses, Isaiah, and Paul as they sat at meals or gathered about the evening fire. She was a pioneer reformer, and her children were zealously taught temperance, love of liberty, and loyalty to their government. It was the widow Garfield who, from her scanty acres, gave the land to build a school-house, in order that her children and those of her neighbors might have the benefit of schooling all the year round. She it was who proposed the erection of the school-house, and who urged and encouraged the idea until it was 404 THE MOTHER OF GARFIELD. successfully carried out. Her brother-in-law was a member of the Church of the Disciples, and he organ- ized a congregation in the school-house, where the merits of the Disciples as a sect were discussed, and where the controverted religious questions of the day- were carefully considered. Her eldest son left her to accept work in the clear- ings of Michigan, and the younger brother took his place on the farm ; and in addition to his daily work he learned the carpenter's trade sufficiently to earn a dollar a day while yet a boy. The first day's pay he took home to his mother, and poured out the pennies into her lap. He was barefooted, and clad in jean trousers of her manufacture, but in his heart he was the happiest of boys, and his mother felt that she was the mother of a Great Heart. The eldest son had set this example to the younger brother, for his six months' earnings for cutting wood in the wilder- ness he took to his mother and gave her to build a house. Not a thought of themselves had these boys ; only for their mother they toiled, and the children were fathers to the men, for in all the years of their lives they considered her first, themselves last. They loved her because she was worthy of tlieii* love, and they made sacrifices for her sake because she had made them freely for their sakes. They worked away from home, and as the years passed on they both went from home to live, but " mother" was the loadstar in all times and places. She lived to see her two daughters settled in life, her eldest son a highly respected citizen, and her youngest son to pass from college to the church, to the halls of legislation, and to the army. ' ' Xa, THE MOTHER OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD. THE INAUGURATION CEREMONIES. 407 He was spared to return to her after the war, and was sent to Congress. When he was nominated for the Presidency in 1880, at the Chicago Republican conven- tion, Mrs. Garfield came into greater prominence, and her brave life was a familiar story in all parts of the country. At his inauguration in Washington, on the 4th of March, 1881, which attracted thousands of people to the capital, Mrs. Garfield was a participator. She rode with her daughter-in-law to the Capitol, and sat during the ceremonies of the inauguration beside Mrs. Garfield. When the oath of office had been administered, and President Garfield had reverently kissed the Bible and sealed his compact with the nation to rightly ad- minister its law for the term for which he was chosen, when thousands of eyes rested upon him to see the next act in the drama being enacted, in the presence of the foreign dignitaries and leading men of the country, he turned to his aged mother, who had been uncon- sciously weeping during the delivery of his address, and kissed her ; then he kissed his wife — the two persons of all the world most interested -with, him in the events they had witnessed. The act, the most un- expected at that moment, called forth cheers from the multitude who witnessed it, and the one incident of the Inauguration the most impressed upon all w^ho saw it was the tribute paid his mother and wife by the Presi- dent. Wherever the soldiers wandered in Washington during that day, wherever the news was flashed over the wires to the distant sections of our own country or to foreign lands, was heard this sentence : " The Presi- dent kissed his mother." 408 THE MOTHER OF GARFIELD. Widow Garfield was welcomed to the White House by the nation. The first mother of a President who had ever occupied the presidential mansion with her son, she was looked upon as the only guest of the kind the country had ever known, and she was the most popular woman in the land immediately. All the inci- dents of her widowed life in Ohio were told and retold in the newspapers, and ' ' Mother Garfield' ' was of more interest, if not more importance, than her son. The world knows true merit when it is before it, and it delights to recognize it. IN'ot a dissenting voice objected to the i)laudits uttered in j^raise of the noble woman who had come, a representative mother, to sit in the house of the Presidents and share the honors of high place with her children. The press of the country hardly had done with their reiterated praise of her, when one morning in July, as she sat at the house of her daughter in Ohio, whither she had gone to spend the summer, word was brought her that her son was shot. When she realized the import of what her daughter was trying to tell her, in the gentlest manner possible, she exclaimed suddenly, " The Lord help me.'' Then as the telegrams were read her, and she knew all, her only remark was, " How could anybody be so cold- hearted as to want to Idll my baby V The man at the head of the nation, but he was still her baby, the youngest of her children, and she was growing old. Witliout the slightest traces of excitement in her man- ner, she waited for the news that was sent to her con- stantly of the President's condition, and when there was no strength left to meet the news expected, she would retire to her own room and remain secluded DEATH OF HER SON. 409 until tlie control she required had been gained by quiet prayer. Wherever the people gathered to read the bulletins, or hear the purport of the Washington news, there we heard words of tender sympathy for the aged mother. The chivalric devotion her son had paid to her, and the anxious care he had manifested on her ac- count from the moment he was shot, endeared her to the people as it had himself. Wherever there were human beings to express sympathy there it was ex- pressed, and the sorrow of the people was as one per- son. It touched the heart of the aged woman, and helped her to wait through the weary weeks of illness for the end that was inevitable. And when the Presi- dent died she did not fail in courage or give up in despair. She went to Cleveland to meet the funeral cortege, and was there joined by her eldest son, who, as in the days of his youth, threw the loving arm of protection around her and tried to soothe her. It is remarkable that she did not sink under the strain put upon her. The death of her son under any circum- stances would have deeply affected her, and the added excitement and sorrow of the people were enough to prostrate her. There were in Cleveland, the day she reached there, thousands of people w^ho had gone from all parts of the country to attend the funeral. The sympathy of the public and the presence of so many mourners were enough to weaken her to prostration. But she quietly assured those about her of her inten- tion to follow her son' s remains to the grave, and as she walked beside the grief-stricken widow she seemed as firm as she. Tlie funeral ceremonies were the most imposing ever witnessed in this country, and the old 410 THE MOTHER OF GARFIELD. mother noted the mourning emblems everywhere present as she rode along the streets to the park where the obsequies were held. Mrs. Garfield had not seen the President since she left Washington, a few weeks after the inauguration, when she parted with him in the height of health and hap])iness. Now she was sitting beside the coffin which held all that remained of him. The thought was too much to bear com- j)osedly, and impelled by the irrepressible yearning of her mother's heart, she arose and walked to the head of the casket, where she covered her face in her hands and stood bowed in grief. The thousands who ob- served her wept from sympathy with her. The years are passing onward, and President Garfield's death is a thing of the past. The people forget him not, nor yet the aged mother who lives her last days bereft of her son, who, but for the assassin's shot, would in all probability have lived to comfort her last years and receive her dying blessing. She lives, but the joy of living has departed from her, for how- ever tender the living may be to her she cannot part with the memory of her son, and v/liile that memory remains existence to her cannot be brightened. She has lived a long life, and one so full of beauty that the word '' mother" has increased lustre added to it, and all women have additional honor in her fame. THE MOTHER OF ALEXANDER VON" HUMBOLDT. The fame of Alexander von Humboldt has cast into the shade that of his elder brother William, who was great as a statesman, a critic, and a linguist, and who was well able by himself to confer celebrity on his family had the vast scientific attainments of his brother Alexander not centred upon him the attention of the world. In describing the mother of Von Hum- boldt, however, we are describing the mother of William von Humboldt. It is not necessary to trace the Von Humboldt ances- try to remote generations. Alexander George, the son of Hans Paul von Humboldt, was born at Zamenz, in Pomerania, in 1720, and was the father of the brothers AYilliam and Alexander von Humboldt. He was edu- cated for the army, and entered the military service of Prussia in 1736, and served in a regiment of dragoons under Lieutenant- General von Platen. Although he distinguished himself in three campaigns, he did not receive any higher promotion than that of major, and therefore left the army in 1762. He was appointed by the King of Prussia to the office of chamberlain in 1764, and was attached to the household of the Crown Prince. Two years after he received this appointment he formed an attachment for Marie Elizabeth von Colomb, the widow of Baron von Hollwede, to whom he was united 412 THE MOTHER OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. in marriage in 1766. William and Alexander were the issue of this marriage. Shortly after his marriage he resigned his a^Dpoint- ment in the royal household and devoted himself to the improvement of his residence and to works of philan- thropy and literary taste. He died in 1779, at the comparatively early age of fifty-nine, and was mourned by his countrymen as a patriot and by his associates as a friend. To the fidelity and intelligence he disj)layed must be attributed the resi:)ect in which he was held by Fred- erick the Great, with whom, during the seven years' war, he was on terms of confidential communication. " I have told Humboldt everything," writes the great soldier-king on one occasion. A letter from the Eng- lish ambassador, in the year 1776, describes Major von Humboldt as " a man of good understanding and estimable character," and mentions him as one of the most likely of the capable men to occuj^y the office of minister to the future monarch, Frederick William the Second. It is, however, with the mother rather than the father of the two Humboldts that we are immediately concerned. He was forty-six when he married her, and her former husband was but recently deceased. Her father, as we have said, was Johann Heinrich von Colomb, Director of the East Friesland Chamber, and was cousin to the lady who subsequently became Princess of Blilcher. It was to her that the Humboldt family owed their considerable landed proi")erty. From her mother she inherited the house No. 22 Jagerstrasse, Bei'lin, where Alexander was born, on the ERA OF GREAT MEN. 413 14th of September, 1769. His full name was Frederick William Henry Alexander, and that of his brother William, who was born at Potsdam on June 22d, 1767, was Frederick William Christian Charles Ferdinand. It has been remarked that the year of Alexander von Humboldt's birth, 1769, was that of the birth of several other eminent men, as Napoleon the First ; his victor at Waterloo, Arthur, Duke of Wellington ; George Canning, the British statesman ; Cuvier, the naturalist ; and Chateaubriand, who has been men- tioned in these pages as largely indebted to his mother. At the time of Alexander von Humboldt's birth the military fame of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, was at its height. Kant, the Scotch-German meta- physician, was writing his " Critique of Pure Reason," Lessing was astonishing the intellect of Germany, and Goethe, although only twenty years of age, was already famous throughout his own country and Europe, In the baptismal register of the Cathedral of Berlin we find that his baptism, which took place on October 19th, 1769, was performed by the chaplain of the King, and that the Crown Prince, afterward King Frederick William the Second, Prince Henry of Prussia, the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, and Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, were his sponsors. The remarkable fact has already been noticed that his mother's name was the same as that of Christopher Columbus, Colon, or Colomb. Alexander von Humboldt has been justly called "the scientific discoverer of America" in the nineteenth century, as Columbus was its geograiDhical discoverer in the fifteenth. Marie Elizabeth von Colomb was descended from an 414 THE MOTHER OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. ancient noble family who liad fled from Burgundy on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. She was able to confer upon her sons a better heritage even than the world-famous name of her family. She was possessed of unusual administrative talent, and as a German his- torian says of her, ' ' she had received an education be- fitting women of her rank, and united to these advan tages an extensive knowledge of the world and the possession of a considera})le fortune. Her endeavors were latterly directed toward the reformation of her son by her first marriage, who had frequently caused her great anxiety, while her desire for her two younger sons was to see them distinguished by everything that was attainable in intellectual and moral culture." Owing to the premature death of her husband, the education of these two sons devolved upon their mother, and so generous was her desire that they should both be thoroughly equipped for distinction in life, that she even mortgaged a part of her property in order to meet the expenses of their education. It had been the intention of Madame von Humboldt origi- nally to send forth her sons at an early age into the world of politics and fashion, where their interest at the Prussian Court, owing to the confidence which had formerly been reposed by the King in their father, would have secured their promotion. She decided wisely, however, to secure the services of the ablest tutors, and to enable her sons to enjoy the society of ihe most intelligent men of the time. Accordingly she retired with thera to the country mansion at Tegel, which was the most considerable property left by Major von Humboldt. The house is only distant eight A WISE MOTHER. 415 miles from Berlin, from wliicli metropolis it is separated by extensive pine woods. It was at this beautiful country house, which looks upon the most picturesque part of the country and the river, that the family re- tired. It was here that, in 1778, before the death of Major von Humboldt, Goethe was a welcome guest, on the occasion of the only visit he ever paid to Berlin, and the influence which the Frau von Humboldt had upon the future lives of her sons can scarcely be overesti- mated, and yet it was indirect rather than personal. It was by the excellent tutors she provided for them, and by keeping their attention concentrated on their studies, that she laid the foundation of their future greatness. It does not appear that she was herself a woman of genius, or that she could boast of any qualifications than those of a refined, ai)preciative, and considerate mother. One of the tutors she engaged for them was Kunth, to whose able instruction in all the branches of a liberal education they were for ten years indebted. !N^either of the brothers was remarkable for quickness in learning, and of Alexander, who was far the less robust of the two, it has been recorded that he could only learn his daily lessons by dint of extraordinary effort. In this respect he has been compared to Albertus Magnus, the learned philosopher of the Mid- dle Ages, who was so dull as a boy that his teachers quite despaired of ever teaching him to read. And in this instance again we see exemplified the fact that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. The mother and the sons were not ungrateful to the 41G THE MOTHER OF ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. tutor for the pains lie took with them. Until they entered the University of Gottingen, they attended no school or a-vmnasium. William von Humboldt thus describes their years of pupilage, in a letter to a friend: "You ask where I Avas residing in 1796 and the following years. My mother only resided there during the winter, but my youngest brother and I con- tinued there through the summer with a tutor, riding 07er to Tegel usually of a Sunday. This was my mode of life till the autumn of 1788, when, accompanied by the same tutor, I entered with my brother upon college life at the university, then existing at Frank- fort on the Oder, where I remained till the Easter of 1789. I went soon after with my tutor to Grot- tingen, leaving my brother still at Frankfort. Once established at Gottingen, I bade farewell to my tutor, and from that moment, when twenty-two years of age, I was thrown upon my own responsibility. It was not till the Easter of 1790 that my brother joined me at Gottingen." The friendship of Kunth with both the brothers Von Humboldt remained unbroken daring the ensuing fifty years, until his death in 1829, and while their names were becoming famous in the world, the elder as a statesman, the younger as a man of science, the old tutor continued to watch their progress with the same interest and affection. Their mother showed her gratitude to him by settling upon him, as early as 1782, a yearly pension of four hundred gold florins a year, " for the faithful manner in which he had conducted the entire education of my two younger sons," and the gift was continued to him by a DEATH OF MRS. HUMBOLDT. 417 legacy in her will. Herr Kunth continued as long as he lived to act as administrator of Alexander von Humboldt's property. Even after he had resigned his tutorship and accepted employment from the Govern- ment, he remained a member of Frau von Humboldt' s household, until her death, which occurred in 1796. The intimate friendship felt for him by the family, and reciprocated by himself, w^as evinced by the fact that his remains were buried near the family vault of the A"on Humboldts at Tegel. It is mentioned as a noble trait in the character of Frau von Humboldt, that by her will she set apart five hundred thalers to be irre- deemably secured upon the estate of Falkenberg, the interest of which at four per cent was to be applied perpetually for the preservation of the church tower and family grave, with the provision that the excess of interest was to be applied to raise this capital to one thousand thalers ; the interest from which, after de- ducting the necessary amount for repairs, was again to accumulate for the formation of an additional capital of five hundred thalers. The interest of this third capital was to be applied to increasing the salary of the schoolmaster at Falkenberg, while the accumulated savings of the one thousand thalers above mentioned were to be expended on the improvement of the school, in suitable alterations in the buildings, and in the purchase of necessary books, for all of which an exact account was to be rendered. The administration of this endoAVTuent, which is still in existence, was vested in the consistory of the province. The death of his mother put Alexander von Hum- boldt in the possession of ample means to gratify his 418 THE MOTHER OF .ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. long-clierished purpose of visiting the tropics. He therefore resigned his place under the state that he might devote himself exclusively to science. Refer- ring to her death, he writes : "I had long been pre- pared for this event. It has not taken me by surprise ; rather have I felt comforted that at the last she suffered so little. She was only one day worse than usual, only for one day were her sufferings more than ordinarily severe. She expired without a struggle. You know, my dear friend, that this is not an event by which my heart will be very deeply wounded, for we have always been strangers, more or less, to one another ; but who could have remained unmoved at the sight of her unremitting sufferings f' To another friend he wrote : "A happy release has been granted to my poor mother. On the mere ground of humanity, her release was to be desu^ed." The nature of her malady is not mentioned, but her ill-health is referred to very early in the memoirs of her sons. In giving these sons a thorough education, Frau von Humboldt did for them what was of more value than silver and gold. But for this Alexander might never have been the benefactor he became to his age, for even if he had felt the same ambition for scientific discovery, he would have found it far more difficult to pursue it to such enduring results. At the same time, in educating her sons beyond her own a^ttainments, the mother continually increased the dis- tance between herself and them, so that it is not sur- prising to note that they failed to feel toward her the same affection that would have existed had she not put them from her by making them her superiors. A LIFE OF SACRIFICE. 419 Her almost continued separation from them also widened the gulf, so that she found her only recom- pense for her sacrifices in their behalf in the lives of usefulness and honor they led, and for which she had fitted them. THE WIFE OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL. Few characters in English history have a more I)athetic interest than that of Lord William, whose ex- ecution for alleged high treason in the reign of Charles the Second was declared to have been "murder" by a vote of the House of Commons in the very beginning of the reign of William and Mary. There is no crime out of the many which " the merry monarch" com- mitted which the apologists for the House of Stuart find it more difficult to jjalliate than the attainder, sham trial, and beheading of one of the noblest adhe- rents of constitutional government in England. When William the Third created his father, the venerable Earl of Bedford, a duke, among the reasons for confer- ring this highest rank of nobility upon him is alleged in the king's patent as " not the least that he was the father to Lord Russell, the ornamenc of his age, whose great merits it was not enough to transmit by history to posterity ; but they [the king and queen] were willing to record them in their royal patent, to remain in the family as a monument consecrated to his consummate virtue, whose name could never be forgot so long as men preserved any esteem for sanctity of manners, greatness of mind, and a love to their country constant even to death. Therefore, to solace his excellent father for so great a loss, to celebrate the memory of so noble a son, and to excite his worthy grandson,- the heir of LADY RACHEL'S FATHER. 421 suc]i miglity hopes, more cheerfully to emulate and follow the example of his illustrious father, they entailed this high dignity upon the earl and his pos- terity." • Lord William Russell, so unfortunate in a false accusation and unfair trial, and an unjust death, was fortunate indeed in the possession of a wife as noble, as faithful, and as high-minded as himself. Lady Russell did honor to an illustrious parentage. Her maiden name was Lady Rachel Woristhesley, the second daughter of Thomas Woristhesley, Earl of Southampton, and of his first wife, Rachel de Rou- vigny. When she was born, about the year 1636, Charles the First was king, and the troubles that resulted in civil war and the loss of his head were al- ready looming up, though as yet " no bigger than a man's hand." Lady Rachel's father, commemorated by Bishop Burnet years afterward as " the wise and virtuous Southampton, ' ' was of noble birth and great w^ealth, and had succeeded to his title when a mere boy. Like some other gallant noblemen of the time, he lamented and opposed the tyrannical innovations of the crown upon the rights of the people, but he stood by the King at Edgehill and at Oxford, earnestly striving for j)eace, for as Clarendon said of him, ''no man had more melancholy apprehensions of the issue of the war." Subsequently, when these apprehensions were real- ized and the king was imprisoned, Lord Southampton made the most strenuous efforts for his deliverance, and, finally, after Charles was beheaded, he was one of the four faithful servants who obtained permission to 432 THE WIFE OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL. pay the last duty to his remains, though without any regal ceremonial. Yet the two sons of the monarch he had served so faithfully, the dissolute and unprincipled Charles the Second and the malignant ahd bigoted James the Second, were to be the heartless instruments of robbing his daughter of her husband and her chil- dren of a father's care. Insincerity, inveracity, ingrat- itude were the triune characteristics of the Stuart kings, especially of the last two of them. Charles the Second and his brother, then Duke of York, had pre- arranged the death of Lord William Russell. Years afterward, when James, then king, was in desiderate straits, he met their victim's father, the Earl of Bedford, and cringingly begged his assistance. " My lord," he cried, " you are a good man ; you have much interest with the peers ; you can do me great service with them to-day." " I am old and feeble," replied the bereaved father, with dignity and significant emphasis, "but once I had a son who could have ser\7ed your majesty on this occasion." The son of the Earl of Bedford saw and loved the daughter of the Earl of Southampton. Her guihood was passed, she was thirty-three years of age, three years older than himself and a widow, though child- less, when he married her, after a long courtship, in 1669. For fourteen years they lived together in a love and harmony that was indeed sacramental in its vii'tue. Her only child by her first husband, Lord Vaughan, had died in infancy ; her father as well as her husband had also died, and she and her sister, Lady Noel, were coheiresses to the paternal estates, the latter, as the elder, taking the family seat at Lichfield, while Lady MADAME RUSSELL. HER SECOND MARRIAGE. 425 Yanglian became the mistress of Stratton, also ^"n Hampshire. There she lived in elegant retirement, for her pure and refined nature shrank from contact with the foreign and domestic profligacy of . the court of Charles the Second. After her second marriage, her home at Stratton was the favorite residence of Lord Riissell and herself, although during the sittings of Parliament she generally accompanied him to London. Sometimes he had occasion to visit his father, the old earl, at Woburn, still the seat of the Dukes of Bedford. But business never estranged his heart from her he loved, and many beautiful letters that passed between them during his temporary absence attest the strength of their attachment. His wife lived for him and for those children whom she bore him — two daughters and a son. Her letters constantly refer to them, their health, their mental i3rogress, and their innocent play. We find the first little girl adding postscripts to mamma's letters and sending messages to papa. Lord Russell was one of those who maintained the rights of the Commons against the encroachments of the crown — for Charles the Second, like his father, at once feared and hated the Parliament — and w^ho voted to exclude the Duke of York, as a Papist, from suc- ceeding to the throne. As the king had to take an oath to preserve the liberties and religion of the Church of England, which a Roman Catholic could not conscien- tiously do, this vote of exclusion was neither unjust nor unreasonable. By the laws of England to-day the sovereign must be a Protestant. But of course it evoked the fury of the Duke of York, who was com- pletely under Jesuit influence, and his brother, who iZQ THE WIFE OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL. oied a Roman Catholic, and while he lived was of that religion, so far as he believed in any. One of the charges brought against Lord Russell was that he had. engaged in a treasonable correspondence with France, certain interviews with M. de Rouvigny, son of the former French Ambassador to England, being so misrepresented. But M. de Rouvigny was Lady Russell's cousin, and as the two families had always been of one mind in the Protestant religion as well as in friendship, their frequent intercourse is easily accounted for. A conspiracy was entered into by the court and the Roman Catholic party to destroy Lord Russell. For this purpose witnesses were suborned, of one of whom, Lord Howard, Charles the Second himself remarked long afterward that he could not hang a dog upon his testimony. Early in the summer of 1683, Josiah Keel- ing, a vintner in poor circumstances, gave information of a plot that he said existed to raise an insurrection and to assassinate the king and the Duke of York, on their return from Newmarket, at a farmhouse called Rye, from which the conspu-acy, real or supj^osed, is known as the Rye House Plot. Several persons were apprehended ; among them two men named Pumsey and West, who, to save themselves, made a confession which, Burnet says, was merely a concerted story. Friends of Lord Russell apprised him of his danger, but though he might easily have fled, he refused to leave home or to do anything that would seem like an acknowledgment of guilt. On the 26th of June, a messenger was sent to take him before the Council, where he was examined in the presence of the king. LORD RUSSELL IN PRISON. 437 Charles preferred not to suspect him of designs against his person, but said that he believed him guilty of con- spiracy against the government. When the exami- nation was over, Lord Russell was committed a close prisoner to the Tower on an accusation of high treason, though his most vindictive enemies seemed to have acquitted him of plotting against the life of the king and the duke. From the hour of his arrest Lord Russell saw that he was prejudged and doomed. His wife, who shared his inmost thoughts, felt the same forebodings, and pre- pared to stand by him as only such a woman can. She nerved herself for the terrible ordeal she was to undergo, and wasted no time and strength in '' woman's tears." The interval between the arrest and the trial she spent in collecting evidence for his defence. She writes briefly to him, " I had, at coming home, an account that your trial, as to your appearing, is not till to- morrow. Others are tried this day, and your indict- ment presented, I suppose. I am going to your counsel, when you shall have a further account from .'' She omitted her name, for fear of interception of the letter. Another short note asks his leave to be at his trial and reads : " Your friends believing I can do you some service at your trial, I am extremely will- ing to try ; my resolution will hold out, pray let yours. But it may be the court will not let me ; however, do you let me try.*' On Friday, the thirteenth day of July, 1683, Lord William Russell was placed at the bar of the old Bailey on trial for high treason ; the substance of the indict- ment being for " conspiring the death of the king and 438 THE WIFE OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL. consulting and agreeing to stir up insurrection ; and to tliat end to seize the guards appointed for the pres- ervation of the king's person." Lord Russell pleaded "Not guilty," and demurred at the selection of the jury, beseeching that his trial might be delayed a few- hours, so that he might examine the list of their names. He was told that if he challenged any of the jurors, he must do so before they were sworn. All delay was refused him, and he had therefore no opportunity for inquiry about them. He subsequently asked if he might be allowed the use of pen, ink, and paper, and the use of papers that he had, which being granted, he asked further, "if he might have somebody to write, to help his memory." The Attorney-General consent- ing, the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Francis Pemberton, told him, " Yes, a servant, or any of your servants, shall assist you." " My wife," said the prisoner, " is here to do it. " Upon this it is recorded that Lady Russell arose in court, calm and dignified, to assist her husband, and that as she did so a thrill of sympathy swept through the assembly. Few could look upon the daughter of " the virtuous Southampton," who had been so faith- ful to the father of the king who now sought to shed the innocent blood of her husband, without a senti- ment of respect and pity. Even the Lord Chief Justice deprecated her giving herself the trouble. Her noble bearing, her fortitude, and her affection must have been the one drop of consolation in the bitter cup of her husband's affliction. The infamous Jeffreys, then sergeant-at-law, made one of his atrocious speeches against him. The foresworn witnesses testified, and CONDEMNATION OF RUSSELL. 439 the picked jury fennel a verdict of gnilty, and sentence of death was pronounced. From the moment of her husband's condemnation, Lady Russell was unremitting in her efforts to obtain a commutation of the sentence. She drew up a peti- tion, praying for six weeks' reprieve, that evidence of his innocence might be collected ; she even threw her- self at the feet of the king and craved his clemency. But mercy had no place in that insensate, though sen- sual nature. He could not have forgotten the tender ministry of her father to his father's body ; he could not have forgotten Lord Southampton's fealty to the House of Stuart, his preference of obscurity to Crom- well's overtures, and his deep services to himself in bygone days. He desired her husband's death, and showed himself an utter ingrate to her father. The trial had taken place on the 13th of July ; the execution was fixed for the 21st. No time was to be lost. The Earl of Bedford would have given all he had to save his much-loved son. He offered, it is said, one hundred thousand pounds to the Duchess of Portsmouth, Louise de Queroualles, the king's most powerful mistress, to obtain his pardon. The Rou- vignys bestirred themselves for their cousin Lady Rus- sell' s sake, as well as for his own. At their entreatv the French King Louis XIV. wrote a letter to Charles on his behalf which M. de Rouvigny was to carry to England. With cynical indifference Charles only said : " I do not wish to prevent M. de Rouvigny from com- ing here, but my Lord Russell's head will be off before he arrives." The condemned man wrote himself for mercy, but with dignity, denying his guilt, both to the 430 THE WIFE OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL. king and the Duke of York ; but in vain. Charles afterward said that he might have spared his life but for his brother. Lord Russell's execution produced quite a different effect upon the people of England to that which these royal murderers anticipated, and was one of the undying memories that brought the more cruel of them to his fall. Nations have memories as well as individuals, and the memory of the English people for their wrong is a long and patient one. Dr. Burnet, the historian of his own times, after- ward Bishop of Salisbury, and Dr. Tillotson, afterward Archbishop of Canterbury, in their eagerness to save their friend, begged him to make some confession as a last resource. He refused, nobly, to save his life by falsehood. He maintained that resistance to oppres- sion was sometimes a duty, and that if a nation waited till its liberties were gone, resistance would be too late. All was in vain. The day before his execution Lord Russell took leave of his children, but afterward his wife returned to him alone. When supper- time was near he said to her, " Stay and sup with me ; let us eat our last meal on earth together ;" and as they sat at table he talked cheerfully, especially of his daughters and of the state of his own mind at the close approach of death. Bishop Burnet, not yet a bishop, was with him constantly ; and the pathos of his narrative needs no extension : "At ten o'clock my lady left me. He Idssed her four or five times, and she kept her sorrow so within herself that she gave him no disturbance by their part- ing. After she was gone he said, ' Now the bitterness of death is past,' and ran out into a long discourse A HUSBAND'S TRIBUTE. 431 about her, how great a blessing she had been to him, and said what a misery it would have been to him if she had not had that magnanimity of spirit, joined to her tenderness, as never to have desired him to do a base thing for the saving of his life ; whereas, other- wise, what a week should I have passed if she had been crying on me to turn informer and be a Lord Howard. Though he then repeated what he had often before said, that he knew of nothing whereby the peace of the nation was in danger, and that all that ever was either loose discourse, or, at most, embryos that never come to anything, so that there was nothing on foot to his knowledge. But he left that discourse, and returned to speak of my lady. He said there was a signal prov- idence of God in giving him such a wife, where there was birth, fortune, great understanding, great religion, and great kindness to him ; but her carriage in her extremity was beyond all. He said he was glad that she and his children were to lose nothing by his death, and it was a great comfort to him that he left his chil- dren to such a mother's hands, and that she had prom- ised to take care of herself for their sakes, which I heard her do." Burnet attended him to the scaffold. Lord Rus- sell's fortitude and resignation did not desert him, for he had faith in God, and that death was the entrance to a better life. It had been usual, in cases of high treason, for the execution to take place on Tower Hill, but the government foolishly thinking that a long and dismal procession through the streets would intimidate the citizens of London, decided that Lord William Russell should be beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 432 THE WIFE OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL. Six years after the baneful rule of the Stuarts came to an end, and Dr. Gilbert Burnet, instead of standing on the scaffold beside a patriot and a martyr, was chaplain to King William the Third, and a Lord Bishox) of the Church of England. He relates that Lord Rus- sell, who rode in his own carriage with Burnet beside him to the place of execution, looked from the coach window as they passed his own house, and that a tear or two fell from his eyes. But he died, as he had lived, "without fear and without reproach." It is believed that the tears that escaped him were caused by the knowledge that his wife was passing her hours of agony between the parting and the execution in that very home — Southampton House. Detraction followed Lord William Russell even after his death. The king's friends spread a report that the paper he delivered to the sheriff on the scaffold, and which contained the calm expression of his political sentiments, was not his own. Upon hearing this. Lady Russell wrote a letter to the king, in which she said : " 'Tis a great- addition to my sorrows to hear your majesty is prevailed upon to believe that the paper he- delivered to the sheriff at his death was not his own. I can truly say, and am ready in the solemnest manner to attest, that I often heard him discourse the chiefest matters contained in that paper in the same expres- sions he therein uses, as some of those few relations that were admitted to him can likewise aver. ... I do, therefore, humbly beg your majesty would be so charitable to believe that he, who in all his life was observed to act with the greatest clearness and sin- cerity, would not at the point of death do so disingen- A PROFLIGATE MONARCH. 433 uous and false a thing as to deliver for his own what was not yjroperly and expressly so. And if, after the loss in such a manner of the best husband in the world, I were capable of any consolation, your majesty only could afford it by having better thoughts of him. . . . I hope I have writ nothing in this that will offend your majesty. If I have, I humbly beg of you to consider it as coming from a woman amazed with grief, and that you will pardon the daughter of a person who served your majesty's father in his greatest extremities, and one that is not conscious of having ever done anything to offend you before." The petty spite and malignity that sought to efface the impression which Lord Russell's noble presence had made at the trial and on the scaffold by inventing such a story, ill deserved to be treated with so much respect. But Lady Rtissell, however little she could respect the profligate monarch, had been taught from childhood " to honor the king." The English people of our own times, not less than Americans, may well be thankful that the state of tyranny, corruption, and cruelty which made the judicial murder of Lord William Russell possible has passed away. The hearts of wives and mothers are often overwhelmed with sor- rows and bereavements, but such trials as Lady Rus- sell went through are no longer possible. No such mockery of law, no such brutal pleader as Jeffreys, no such lying witnesses, packed juries, and unjust sen- tences can now lay axe to an innocent man's head or put the rope around his neck. The evening of Lady Russell's life was passed in tranquillity in the midst of the children who reminded 434 THE WIFE OF LORD WILLIAM RUSSELL. her of '' the dear companion and sharer of all her joys and sorrows." " When I see my children before me," she writes to a friend of her husband, " I remember the pleasure he took in them." Grief, however, borne in patience and in silence, had left its marks. The care of her family combined with the excitement of the times to sustain her. Within three months of her return to London Charles the Second died that memo- rable death so finely pictured by Macaulay, and her husband's bitterest enemy, James the Second, filled the throne. The blood of her husband still cried from the ground, and she must have watched with faith, though without vindictiveness, the divine vengeance that was soon to overtake the chief of his murderers. The clouds jDarted at length from the political hori- zon. The accession of William and Mary — his own daughters were the appointed instruments of retribu- tive justice to James the Second — reversed the attainder of her husband and made it a posthumous eulogy, and restored his children to more than their ancestral titles. Already the Prince and Princess of Orange had sent messages of condolence to Lady Russell, and the prin- cess had written to her in most affectionate terms. Before the princess reached London Lady Russell wrote to the ever-faithful Gilbert Burnet, who was in his train as chaplain, to express her joy at his coming to deliver England, and her eagerness to pay homage to the king and queen. The principle for which her husband died had placed the crown upon their heads, and she lived to see it grace also the brow of good Queen Anne, " at whose coronation her only son, who had succeeded to the title of Duke of Bedford and his AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY-FIVE. 435 paternal grandfather's vast estates, officiated as Lord High Constable of England and was made one of her majesty's Privy Council." Lady Russell had also the satisfaction of seeing both her daughters advantageously and happily married, one to the Duke of Rutland, the other to the Duke of D.evonshire. But in her seventy-fifth year the horizon of her happiness was again heavily clouded. Her son, the Duke of Bedford, Lord High Constable of England and Privy Counsellor, died of the small-pox in May, 1711. On the 31st of October in the same year her daughter, the Duchess of Rutland, died in giving birth to her ninth child, and her only remaining child, Catharine, Duchess of Devonshire, who had also recently become a mother, died also. The old noble- woman preserved her equanimity, and in answer to inquiry said she had that day seen her invalid daughter Catharine out of bed. She had indeed looked upon her in her coffin. For twelve years longer the tide of her own life did not ebb, and it was forty years after the execution of her husband that Lady Rachel Russell passed away at Southami^ton House, amid the memories and scenes of her childhood and of her married and widowed life, in 1723, on the 29th of September, the anniversary of her husband's birthday, a day often mentioned in her early letters as one of festivity and rejoicing. THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. Aix DES Roys, or Alice de Roy, as her name is also written, was the daughter of the intendant-general of the Duke of Orleans, and was brought up in the atmos- phere of a court. She married a royalist, and was con- sequently exposed to much suspicion and danger dur- ing the bitter days of the Revolution. It was her custom to record every evening the experiences of the day as well as her own reflections, and the diary thus completed made a number of small volumes which were preserved by her son and the main j^roofs of which were published by him after her death, under the title of " Le Manuscrit de ma Mere, avec Prologue, Com- mentaires, et Epilogue." This book, translated into English by Lady Herbert, of Lea, and independently about the same time by Maria Louisa Helper, of Ashe- ville, IN^orth Carolina, gives us a clear idea of a most excellent and amiable mother, who writes on June 11th, 1801 : " I have still five children after losing one ; four daughters and a boy named Alphonse. He is a good and dutiful child. May God make him pious, wise, Christian — this is what I most earnestly desire for him." " This habit of registering her soul," says Lamartine in his Confessions, " a habit which she observed to her dying day, produced from fifteen to twenty volumes of intimate communion between herself and God, which HER FAVORITE BOOKS. 437 I have been fortunate enough to keep, and in which I find her again, all alive and loving, when I feel the want of taking refuge once more in her bosom." The two books which Madame Lamartine studied unceasingly and in which she tried to interest her son were the " Confessions" of St, Augustine and the " Genius of Christianity" of Chauteaubriand, both of whom had been reclaimed from the errors of their ways by pious mothers. She writes : " October 2d, 1802. — I had brought with me the ' Con- fessions ' of St, Augustine, It is a book to which I take very much, and this morning I saw with pleasure that Alphonse had opened and was reading it with interest." " December 17th, 1802. — I am constantly reading the ' Confessions ' of St, Augustine. It is quite apropos. I wish to imitate St. Monica so far as in me lies, and by her example I pray, and pray unceasingly, for my children." In Lamartine' s " Memoirs of my Youth" he teUs us that his maternal grandmother occupied the position of under-governess to the children of the Duke of Orleans, to whom her husband was superintendent of finance, and that she was a great favorite with the lovely and virtuous Duchess of Orleans, whom the Revolution respected, even while driving her from her jjalace, banishing her sons into exile, and leading her husband to the scaffold. Monsieur and Madame des Roys had apartments in the Palais Royal in winter, and at St. Cloud in summer. His mother was born at St. Cloud, and was brought up there along with Louis Philippe, in that respectful familiarity which always 438 THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. springs up between children of the same age, sharing the same lessons and the same sports. Often did Madame Lamartine relate to her childi^en anecdotes connected with the education of this prince, whom one revolution drove from his native land while another raised him to the throne of France. " There is not a single fountain, alley, or velvet lawn of the gardens of St. Cloud,'' says Lamartine, "" which we did not know intimately from the recollections of her childhood, before we had ever seen them ourselves. St. Cloud was to her her Milly, her cradle, the spot where all her earliest thoughts had taken root, had blossomed, had grown and increased, along with the trees and plants of that lovely park. All the high- sounding names of the eighteenth century were the first that were engraven on her memory. At the age of seven or eight, she was present at a visit which Voltaire paid to her parents, and the society of her mother, Madame des Roys, was frequented by D'Alem- bert, Laclos, Madame de Genlis, Buffon the naturalist, Florian, Gibbon the historian, Grimm, Movellet, Mon- sieur Xecker, and other great men of the time. She was particularly intimate with Jean Jacques Rous- seau, although as a strict Roman Catholic she did not sympathize with his religious opinions." The marriage of Lamartine's mother had an element of romance in it which accorded well with her imagina- tive character. One of his father's sisters was canoness of one of the noble chapters which existed at that time in France, and which combined the best features of the religious and the worldly life. In a beautiful spot, not far from some large toAvn, whose neighborhood UNDER GENTLE SURVEILLANCE. 439 diffused life and information through these convents without walls, wealthy and noble families, after having made what was called their proofs, sent such of their daughters to reside as did not feel an inclination for the profession of cloistered nuns, but who had not dowry sufficient to make eligible marriages. Each one received a small portion. A handsome house was erected for them on a uniform plan, situated in a little garden, and forming one of a group clustered around the chapel of the chapter. The usual age for entering these chapters was from fourteen or fifteen. The novices began by being placed under the easy and gentle surveillance of the eldest of the canonesses, who had taken the vows and to whose care their families confided them ; subsequently, when they had attained the age of twenty, they assumed the direction of their household themselves ; they formed an association with one or two of their friends, and lived in common in groups of tw^o or three. It was only during the summer and autumn months that these noble novices resided in their free convents. In winter thev returned home to their relatives in the neighboring towns, to spend a pleasant holiday and shine as the ornaments of their mother's salons. While residing at the chapter they were subject to no re- straint, save that of repairing twice each day to the chapel to chant the service of the Church ; and even from that duty it was easy to get excused when they wished. In the evening, they met together, sometimes at the house of the abbess, sometimes at the residence of one of their own number, to play games, to chat, to read, without any other rule than their own tastes, and 440 THE MOTHER OF LAMARTIXE. without any surveillance except that of an aged canon- ess, the indulgent guardian of the charming flock. There were only two rules, that of returning home at a certain hour, and another which excluded the male sex from their reunions. Exceptions sometimes prove the rule, and such was the case as to the exclusion of gentlemen from the society of the chapter. The young canonesses might receive their brothers on a visit during a certain number of days, and might present them to theu' friends at the social meetings of this delightful sisterhood. The result need scarcely be told. Love affairs sprang up between the vivacious recluses and the young officers who came to spend a few days of furlough with their sisters. There were whisi^erings together, tender partings, prearranged cor- resjDondence, and sometimes an elopement. Many marriages of affection, at that period so rare in French society, resulted from these introductions, and the love-match on both sides of Lamartine's parents was one such instance. His aunt's chapter was situated on the banks of the Saone, between Lyons and Macon. At the age of six- teen a charming girl joined the chapter and resided in her house, which her father, a veteran of the reigns of Louis XIV. and XV., who had received the cross of St. Louis, then the great object of a provincial gentle- man's ambition, had built for his daughter, when she took the vows and became a canoness at the age of twenty-one. The old soldier's son, Lamartine's father, when paying a visit to Salles, as the village was called, was struck with the charms of mind, heart, and person of the young novice, Aix des Roys, who had been THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. THE FRENCH RESOLUTION. 443 appointed a canoness by the Duke of Orleans, There were many obstacles of family and fortune in the way of their marrying, but they overcame them all. They were united in wedlock at the very moment when the Revolution was beginning to threaten all social, polit- ical, and religious institutions, and was undermining all the privileges and prejudices of the ancient order of society in France. "My father," says Lamartine, " had not quitted the service on his marriage ; he saw in all this nothing but his colors to be follow^ed, the king to be defended, a few months' struggle against disorder, a few drops of his blood shed in the execu- tion of his duty. These first lightning Hashes of a tempest which was destined to overwhelm a throne, and shake all Europe for half a century at least, were lost upon my mother and himself in the first raptures of their love, and the first dawning perspective of their happiness. " It is a true remark of Lamartine' s that those are grossly mistaken as to the origin of the French Revo- lution who imagine that it was propagated from below and sprung from the common people. It was the noblesse, the clergy, the thinking part of the com- munity, people of ideas, who brought about the Revo- lution of '89, His grandfather, his father, and his uncles did not oppose the princij^les of that movement. It was only when it became demagogic instead of democratic, and was turned against those who origi- nated it, and became an orgy of blood, spoliation, and torture, that his father braved its fury and became its victim. Scarcely had he married his beautiful and spiritueUe young wife when the palace of the Tuileries 444 THE MOTHER OF LAMAllTIXE. and the life of tlie king were threatened, and the Constitution of '91, a temporary pact of conciliation be- tween re23resentative royalty and the sovereign people, was to be overturned amid seas of blood. The elder Lamartine was among the true men who rallied around Louis XYI. The hapjDy couple were forced to separate, and Madame de Lamartine, with the baby Alphonse at her bosom, bade farewell Mdthout a murmur to her husband. " She could not understand life without honor," says her son, "and never hesitated between suffering and duty.'.' A noble tribute surely to a mother from a son. It is far easier to imagine than to describe the life of constant uncertainty, anxiety, and foreboding which the wife of a suspect must have exj)erienced during " the Reign of Terror.'' One night the populace tore from their dwelling Lamartine's grandfather, who was eighty-four years of age, his grandmother, almost equally aged and infirm, his two uncles, and his three aunts, who were nuns, who had already been driven from theu' convents. The whole family Avere thrown pell-mell into a cart, escorted by gens d'armes, and conducted amid hootings and shoutings to prison at Autun. An exception for some unknown reason was made in the disposal of Lamartine's father, who was imprisoned at Macon. His prison contained about two hundred persons accused of no crime, but arrested on suspicion of loyalty to the crown. By a providential accident the prison chanced to be the convent of the Ursulines, familiar to him from a child, because one of his aunts had been its abbess. He had been accus- tomed to play there, and knew every nook and corner FROM PRISON TO HOME. 445 of the place. By another happy accident his jailer had been a cuirassier in his own company, and wept when he saw his old captain delivered to his charge. He readily granted the prisoner's request to be lodged in a corner of the garret, from which he could see his father's residence. His wife, then nursing the great author of the future, was left alone there, and a like motive prompted her to frequent those chambers, and especially the garret which looked upon the prison. They looked upon each other daily and were com- forted. The street which separated the two buildings was very narrow. Love and courage inspired the prisoner with the thought, not of escape, but of reach- ing her. His wife tremblingly consented, and by means of an arrow and some thread passed a file to her hus- band. One of the bars of his little window was soon filed through and restored to its place ; then, one even- ing, when there was no moonlight, a stout cord was passed to her husband's hand. Firmly fastened on one side to a beam in the garret of his father's house, he tied it on the opposite side to one of the bars of his grated window. Then, clinging to it by his hands and feet, and sliding himself along from knot to knot above the heads of the sentinels, he crossed the street, and found himself in the arms of his wife and beside the cradle of his child. He did not dare attempt more than a few hours' absence each night, but this consoled him during the eighteen months that elapsed before he was set free. Lamartine's father had retained from the family estate only the little country house of Milly. With three thousand livres of income and this bare, dilapi- 446 THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. dated house he tried to settle down in rustic peace and obscurity, with his devoted wife and increasing family. Though bred amid the splendors of a French court, the wife and mother cheerfully adapted herself to their changed circumstances, and resigned without a murmur the apartments and gardens of a princely mansion for the bare floors, desolate rooms, and mouldering walls of a country house not occupied for a century. "It is very small," she said to her son, "but it is large enough, if we learn to adapt our desires and habits accordingly. Happiness is in ourselves ; we shall not increase it by extending the boundaries of our meadows or our vineyards. Happiness is not measured by acres as land is ; it is measured by resignation of heart ; for God has willed that the poor should have an equal share with the rich, in order that neither should think of asking it from any but Himself." Lamartine in his ' ' Memoirs' ' has given a vivid picture of this humble home at Milly. Our space forbids our reproducing it in full, but we venture to quote portions of it which give an idea of the whole : " It is night. The doors of the little house of Milly are closed. A friendly dog utters, from time to time, a bark in the courtyard. The rain of autumn dashes against the panes of the windows. The apartment which I see in memory is large but almost naked. At the farther extremity is a deep recess containing a bed. It is my mother's bed. There are two cradles on wooden chairs. . . . They are the cradles of my youngest sisters, who have long been sound asleep. . . . In a corner of the room is a little harpsichord, with some sheets of the music of ' The Village Divine, ' by THE HOME OF LAMARTINE. 44? J. J. Rousseau, scattered over the instrument ; nearer the fire in the centre of the apartment there is a little card-table, with a green cloth all spotted with ink- stains ; on the table two candles diffuse a feeble light and cast huge shadows on the whitewashed walls. " Opposite the fireplace, his elbow resting on the table, a man is seated holding a book in his hand. His figure is tall, his limbs robust. He still retains all the vigor of youth. His forehead is open, his eye blue, and his smile, at once firm and graceful, displays to view a row of teeth like pearl. Some remains of his original costume, his hair especially, and a certain military stiffness of attitude, proclaim the retired officer. If any doubts are entertained on this head, they are speedily dissipated by the appearance of his sabre, his regulation pistols, his helmet, and the gilt plates of his horse's bridle, which shine suspended by a nail from the wall at the extremity of a little cabinet which opens off the apartment. This man is our father. " On a couch of plaited straw, occupying an angle formed by the fireplace and the wall of the recess, is seated a woman who appears still young, although she is already bordering on her thirty-fifth year. Her figure, tall also, has all the suppleness and all the elegance of that of a young girl. Her features are so delicately formed, her black eyes have a look so open and penetrating, her transparent skin permits the blue veins and the ever- changing color, called up by the slightest emotion, to be so clearly visible beneath its snowy surface ; her jet-black but fine and glossy tresses fall in such waVy folds and graceful ringlets around her cheeks, and rest upon her shoulders, that 448 THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. it is impossible to say whether she is eighteen or thirty years of age. No one could wish to strike off from her age one of those years which have only served to perfect her physiognomy and ripen her beauty. " This beauty, although pure in every feature if they are examined in detail, is peculiarly apparent in the ensemble by its harmony, its grace, and above all by that radiance of inward tenderness, that true beauty of the soul, which lights up the body from within — a radiance of which the loveliest face is but the outward reflection. This young woman, half reclining on the cushions, holds a little girl asleep in her arms, her head resting on her shoulder. The child still rolls between its fingers one of the long black ringlets of its mother's tresses, with which it had just been playing before it fell asleep. Another little girl, rather older, is seated on a stool at the foot of the sofa ; she is leaning her fair head on her mother's knees. This young woman is my mother ; these two children are my two eldest sisters. The two others are in their respective cradles." His mother, he says elsewhere, displayed little anxiety about what is generally called instruction. " She did not aspire to make me a child far advanced for my age. She did not arouse within me that emula- tion which is only the jealousy or the pride of children. She did not compare me to any pereon. She neither exalted nor humiliated me by any dangerous com- l^arisons. She thought, and justly, that once my in- tellectual strength was developed by age, and by health of body and of mind, I should learn as easily as others the little Greek and Latin, and figures, of which is A JUDICIOUS PARENT. 449 composed that empty modicum of letters which is called an education. What she wished was to make me a happy child, with a healthy mind and a loving soul ; a creature of God and not a puppet of man." Although an earnest Catholic in her belief, the religious training which Madame de Lamartine gave her children was based on natural piety and benevolence. " The only lessons of religion given us by my mother were limited to her being herself religious before us and along with us. The unceasing stream of love, of adoration, of gratitude, and prayer which gushed from her heart was her sole and natural preaching. Prayer — but rapid, lyric, winged prayer — was associated in our minds vdth the slightest actions of the day. This invocation was so naturally associated with them, that it was always a pleasure and a recreation for us, in- stead of being a wearisome obligation. Our life was in the hands of this Idnd parent a perpetual sursum cor da. She elevated her thoughts to God as naturally as the iDlant stretches upward to the air and the light. Our mother, to accomplish this, took a contrary course from that generally adopted. Instead of enjoining on us an annoying devotion, which would take children from their sports or their sleep, to force them to pray to God, frequently amid their repugnance and tears, she made these short invocations a sort of feast of the soul, to which she invited us with smiles. She did not mingle prayer \Nith our tears, but with all the little hapj)y events which occurred to us during the day. Thus, when we awakened in the morning in our little beds, when the cheerful morning sun shone through our windows, when \\\<^ birds carolled their songs, 450 THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. perched in the rose-bushes or in their cages, when the footsteps of the servants had long echoed through the house, and when we impatiently awaited her coming to rise, she mounted the stairs, she entered, her features radiant with kindness, with tenderness, with joy ; she embraced us in our beds ; she assisted us to dress ; she listened to the joyous little chirping which children, whose imagination is refreshed by the night's repose, carol on awakening, like a nest of swallows beneath the eaves at the ax)proach of their mother. Then she said to us : ' To whom do we owe this happi- ness which we are about to enjoy together ? It is to God ; it is to our heavenly Father ; without Him this lovely sun would not perhaps have risen ; these trees would have lost their leaves ; these gay and happy birds would have died of hunger and cold on the bare ground ; and you, my poor children, would have had neither bed, nor house, nor garden, nor mother to shelter and nourish you, or to gladden your hearts during the season of life. It is most just, therefore, to thank Him for all that He gives us on this day, and to pray to Him that He will give us many other such days.' Then she kneeled down beside our bed, she joined our little hands together, frequently covering them with kisses as she did so, and repeated slowly and in an under-voice, the short morning prayer, which we re- peated with her accent and in her words." Thus wrote the son of the mother. Let us see how wrote the mother of the son. In September, 1806, she goes to Macon, which was his birthplace, to meet him on his return from college, and finds him taller and stronger than she expected. '' He is, moreover," says MOTHER AND SON. 451 her diary, '' an excellent child. The Jesuits, his mas- ters, speak highly of his faculties ; he returns loaded with prizes and crowns, and he is, despite of this, very modest. What pleases me still more is that he appears now inclined to piety ! May God bless him and pre- serve for him these precious gifts, which are alone capable of making him happy." Lamartine, as a man, was not remarkable for the quality of modesty, and perhaps his mother's first im- pressions deceived her on this point. Indeed, she has occasion to modify her praise of him, as appears by the following entry : " I have presented Alphonse to all the family with some little pride. I do not find his tone as gentle as I should wish. I am afraid of estranging him from me, Avhoni he loves so much, by scolding him for it ; and, on the other hand, I am afraid of s]3oiling him by too much deference. Mon Dieu ! how diflacult it is to form a man I" The mother also describes as well as the son the quiet routine of the country house at Milly. " September, 1807. — I enjoy my solitude. I am alone at Milly, with my children and my books. My society is Madame de Sevigne. I have taken a long walk this evening on the mountain of Craz. I was quite alone ; it is my delight to wander thus alone in the evening at this season of the year. I like the autumn, and the walks without any converse except with my own im- pressions ; they are grand as the horizon and full of God. Nature inspires a thousand reflections and a kind of pleasing melancholy. I know not what it is, if it be not a secret sympathy of our infinite soul with 453 THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. the infinitude of the works of God. When I turn back and see from the mountain height the little light that shines in the chamber of my children, I bless Provi- dence for having given me this secluded and quiet rest to brood over them." The sympathetic tenderness and sensibility of this true womanly and motherly soul may be well illus- trated by an incident which she records in the summer of 1801. In passing through a cemetery she witnesses by accident the burial of a poor man, unknown to her by name. A young gui, the daughter of the man who was dead, on hearing the first shovelful of earth fall upon her father's coffin, fainted and fell helplessly to the ground. Madame de Lamartine put lier bottle of smelling-salts to her nostrils, and when she revived sufficiently, assisted her to her own house, and gave her wine and a biscuit, which soon restored her. " But what really comforted her most was that I myself wept with her, and that all my little ones, seeing me weep, wept also. Thus this poor dead man was, for his daughter's sake, sincerely mourned by hearts that did not then even know his name. The accounts which the girl gave us of her father's j)overty and sickness and suifering were absolutely sorrowful and heart- rending. Her mother w^as also dead, having died less than one year previously ; and thus, under the in- scrutable ways of Providence, this family of poor little children was comx)letely orphaned. In this last terri- ble affliction may Heaven help them ! "Nothing affects the poor classes of the people s(> much as to see their great griefs understood and shared by symx)athizing jiersons whom they regard as A LOVING AND HAPPY FAMILY. 453 tlie inheritors of a different nature from their own. At nightfall we took the poor girl back to her hut, at the edge of the grove, where her little brothers were wait- ing for her at the door, and j)iteously asked her if their father was not coming home. The circumstances of this solemn episode afforded to my own little guis the opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of some of the dreadful realities which follow the inevitable separa- tions caused by death, and which they themselves, not to speak of others, must some day endure. We should not disguise to our children the contingencies of life. On the contrary, we must let them see it just such as God has been pleased to make it for us, with all its sweet- ness and with all its bitterness. To learn to suffer is to learn to live." Lamartine's mother was a devoted wife, and loved her husband, who was well worthy of her love. One entry says : " To-day I am in such a strange state of sadness and despondency that I can only attribute it to the absence of my husband." Ten days afterward she writes : ' ' My husband has arrived, and I am happy !" Her affection for him was returned in equal measure. Amid privations and perils he tells her : " So that neither you nor our children are taken from me, I accept all else ; my greatest blessings are in your hearts." A terrible anecdote is narrated by Madame Lamartine of Rousseau. She gives it as told her by her mother, the grandmother of Lamartine. The wife of the Field- Marshal of Luxembourg, with whom this grandmother was intimately acquainted, and who was also a friend of Rousseau, perceived that the unmarried woman he was living with was about to become a mother. She 454 THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. was afraid tliat Rousseau miglit intend to throw this coming child into the foundlings" hospital, where, as was well known, he had already thrown three of his other iEegitimate children. So she went to see Monsieur Tronchin, of Geneva, a particular friend of Rousseau, and begged him earnestly to have this child when born brought to her, as she wished to adopt and rear it. Monsieur Tronchin spoke of it to Rousseau, who apparently gave his consent without hesitation. He also had an interview with the mother of the child about it, and she was filled with joy at the idea. As soon as she was confined, the i)oor woman sent infor- mation of the fact to M. Tronchin. He came ; he saw a beautiful child, a boy full of life and promise. He made arrangements with the mother as to the hour at which he was to come and take the child the next morn- ing ; but at midnight Rousseau, wrapped in a sombre- colored cloak, approached the bed of the prostrate and helpless mother, and, in spite of her cries, carried away his own child to the foundlings' asylum, and there left it forever, without any mark of recognition or distinc- tion. The Psalmist of Israel tells us that man was made only " a little lower than the angels," but a man who could so act against all the instincts of the parental nature must have been made a good deal lower than the brutes. On March 6th, 1804, Madame de Lamartine ^vrites in her diary : " To-day is the anniversary of my mar- riage. It is now fourteen years since I had the happi- ness to marry a man who seemed to be endowed with the favor of Heaven. I knew liim to be very amiable DEATH OF MADAME LAMARTINE. 455 and good, but I was not aware that lie was so nearly perfect. Almost his only faults are his scruples of honor and an uprightness of soul that takes umbrage at the least indelicacy ; but these, even at the worst, are the least serious of defects. He lives only for me and for his children ; and often he has many cares for such a numerous family with so small a fortune." Madame de Lamartine sees Pope Pius the Seventli at Lyons when he comes to France to crown Xapoleon. ' ' I came here with my sister only to see the iDojDe ; and I have already seen him pass from the palace of the archbishop, where he is staying. Yesterday I attended the high mass celebrated by the pope in the Church of St. John. I saw the entire ceremonies very well, but had great difficulty in getting near enough to the altar to obtain a good view of the chief celebrant. The pious old man has, indeed, a saint-like physiog- nomy, and many of the Roman prelates who are with him are also men whose purity of personal appearance answers well to their holy calling."' The " Manuscrit de ma Mere" is naturally filled with Napoleonic incidents and battles during the years that followed until his final overthrow and exile to St. Helena. The last words in her manuscript are words of benediction for all who were dear to her, even for her enemies. She died on the 28th of November, 1829, when her son was thirty -nine years of age, and had just fulfilled her brightest hopes for him by being elected a member of the French Academy. He was not with her when she died. Another brought him the sad news, " You have no longer a mother." Her death was caused by the accidental escape of boiling water 456 THE MOTHER OF LAMARTINE. upon lier while slie was in lier bath. In the evening, fever and delirium set in. Then came a great calm, a long silence, and a sweet sleep, from which she awoke only to expire. In her last moments she murmured in broken accents, " My husband. . . . my children. . . . Alphonse, Marianne, Cecilia, Eugenie", Sophia ; God bless them all ! Oh, that they were all here now so that He might bless them by my hand ! My Alphonse ! How grieved he will be not to have been with me in this supreme hour ! Tell him, oh, tell him that I suffer no more ! . . . . that I feel already as if I were in a place of safety, peace, and delight, where I behold heaven for myself and manifold blessings in store for all my dear children who are yet on the earth." Then tow^ard daybreak, with a smile upon her lips, she murmured feebly, " Oh, how happy I am ! My God, Thou hast not deceived me ! Blessed be Thy name ! I am happy ! I am so happy !" and died. MILTON'S WIVES. John Milton' s domestic vicissitudes were in strange contrast -vvath the brightness of his genius, the vast range of his learning, and the sublimity of his works. He was three times married. His first wife was Mary- Powell, for whom an ingenious writer has concocted an imaginary diary written and spelled in the old style, in which " Journall," under date of " Forest Hill, Oxon., May 1st, 1643," we read the supposed entry : " Seventeenth Birthdaye. A Gypsie Woman at the Gate woulde faine have tolde my Fortune ; but Mother chased her away, saying she had doubtless harboured in some of the low Houses in Oxford, and might bring us the Plague. Coulde have cried for Vexation ; she had promised to tell me the colour of my Husband's Eyes ; but Mother says she believes I shall never have one, I am soe sillie." Mary Powell was, however, destined to have a married as well as a maiden life, and to become Mistress Milton. Although no gypsy may have foretold to her the personal appearance of her future husband, we have him "in his habit as he lived," not only from authentic portraits, but from the accounts of his contemporaries. " He was middle- sized," says Toland, his friend and literary defender, ''and well-proportioned, his deportment erect and manly, his hair of a light brown, his features exactly regular, his complexion wonderfully fair when a 458 MILTON'S WIVES. youth, and ruddy to the last. ' ' As the temper, mind, and habits of a man have sometimes much more to do with his happiness in the married state than even his complexion and good looks, we may quote the same authority for John Milton's having been " affable in conversation, of an equal and cheerful temper, and highly delighted with all sorts of music, in which he was himself not meanly skilled." He was, we learn further, " extraordinarily temperate in his diet, which was anything most in season, or the easiest procured, and was no friend to sharj) or strong liquors." Such a man ought surely to have made an agreeable husband. He would not be likely to complain of his dinner or tax her culinary and artistic powers too severely. But his eulogist Toland says further : " The love of books exceeded all his other passions. In summer he would be stirring at four in the morning, and in winter at five ; but at night he used to go to bed by nine." These hours and his absorbing literary occupations would not suit the aspirations of every woman. Literary men, poets, and philosophers are oftener unfortunate in their conjugal relations than the ordi- nary run of men, and " George Eliot" has depicted in ^' Middlemarch" the isolation and disappointment which a young girl feels when tied to a man old enough to be her father, who loves her rather less than he does his books. IMilton and his first wife may have been somewhat like Mr. Casaubon and Gwendoline in their mutual relations. This is merely conjecture, however, and the story of Milton's first marriage must be left to speak for itself. In the early part of the summer of 1643, Milton, who MARRIAGE TO MISS POWELL. 459 was then in his thirty -fifth year, took a sudden journey into the country, " nobody about him certainly know^ ing the reason, or that it was any more than a journey of recreation. He was absent about a month, and when he returned he brought back a wife with him. Nor was the bride alone. She was attended by some few of her nearest relations," and there was feasting and nuptial celebration in Milton's house in Aldergate Street, London. The name of the bride has been already mentioned. She was the eldest daughter of Richard Powell, Esquire, of Forest Hill, a village about five miles from Oxford, where her father had a house and estate of some 300 pounds a year, equal to about 1200 pounds at the present day. Forest Hill was situated within the ancient royal forest of Shotover, of which Mr. Powell was the lessee. Milton's father had been born at Stan- ton St. John, the adjoining parish to Forest Hill, and Richard Milton, the poet's grandfather, had been the under-ranger of the royal forest. There had been transactions between the Miltons and the Powells as far back as 1627. In paying a visit to the neighbor- hood, John Milton was treading on ancestral ground and renewing an old acquaintance with the Powell family. Powell had a large family, lived far beyond his means, as did many other royalist gentlemen, and had been borrowing money for the past twenty years, among others of Milton' s father, a prosperous scrivener, who lived over his shop in Breed Street, Cheapside, which bore the sign of the Spread Eagle, and where John Milton, his eldest son, was born, on December 9th, 1608. Squire Powell was already deeply mortgaged to 460 MILTON'S WIVES. the Miltons, but found no difficulty in promising a portion of 1000 pounds with his daughter, which, of course, he never paid. Milton wooed and won Mary Powell, and with his marriage his miseries began. '' From this day forward," says Mark Patteson, rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, his latest biographer, "misery, the importunities of business, the clamor of controversy, crowned by the crushing calamity of blindness, were to be his portion for more than thirty years. Singular among poets in the serene fortune of the first half of his life, in the second half his piteous fate was to rank in wretchedness with that of his mas- ters, Dante and Tasso." Milton " hasted too eagerly to light the nuptial torch," but, as Mr. Patteson remarks, it is very easy to say, after the event, that a man of his puritanical con- victions and habits should have known better than to marry a girl in her teens, of a Cavalier family, and transplant her from " a roystering home, frequented by the dissolute officers of the Oxford garrison, to the spare diet and philosophical retirement of a recluse student, and to have looked for sympathy and response for his speculations from an uneducated and frivolous girl." But Milton, who held the Puritan notions, bor- rowed from the Jews, of the inferiority and subjection of women, may have deemed it an easy task to mould and fashion his handmaid-wife to his own will. His fancy, moreover, had got the better of his judgment. His poems prove that he was very susceptible to female charms, and though Mary Powell was not beautiful, she had youth and country freshness, and her " unliveli- ness and natural sloth, unfit for conversation," j^assed ABANDOXS HER HUSBAND. 461 as "the bashful muteness of a vu-gin" of seventeen. "Whether it was,"" says Toland, "that this young woman, accustomed to a large, jovial family, could not live in a philosophical retirement ; or that she was not perfectly satisfied with the person of her husband ; or, lastly, that because all her relations were devoted to the royal interest, his democratical principles were disagreeable to their humor (nor is it improbable the father repented of his match, upon the prospect of some success on the king's side, who then had his headquarters at Oxford), or whatever was the reason, 'tis certain, that after he had enjoyed her company at London for about a month, she was invited by her friends to spend the rest of the summer in the country ; to which he consented, on condition that she returned at Michaelmas. Yet he saw her not at the time appointed, and after receiving several of his letters without sending him any answer, she did at length positively refuse to come, dismissing his messenger with contempt." It was clear that, as Mary Powell had married John Milton to please her parents, she had now abandoned him for the same reason. Whatever may have been the " true inwardness" of the separa- tion — and many theories have been invented — the Powells explained the matter politically, and regretted having matched the eldest daughter of their house with a violent Republican and Presbyterian. Milton, after the fashion of the times, vented his wrongs by a consideration of the whole subject under which they might be classified. He published a pam- phlet on " The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," at first anonymously, but put his name to the second and 462 MILTON'S WIVES. much enlarged edition. No allusion is made, however, to his own case, and if there were no other sources of information the author might be supposed to be arguing the question of marriage merely from an abstract point of view. The pamphlet was published in February, 1644, and dedicated to Parliament and to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. The design of it was to show that there are other sufficient reasons for divorce besides those mentioned by Moses and by Christ. The main position is, " that indisposition, unfitness, and contrary humors, proceeding from any unchangeable cause in nature, hindering and always likely to hinder the main ends and benefits of conjugal society — that is to say, peace and delight — are gTeater reasons of divorce than adultery or natural frigidity, provided there be a mutual consent for separation." Professor David Masson, whose life of Milton in six octavo volumes, with a total of some five thousand pages, has been pronounced " the m.ost exhaustive bi- ography that was ever compiled of any Englishman," discovered a copy of the first edition of this pamphlet with the printed date of August 1st. If this date be the true one, then Milton was writing it during the honeymoon, and while his wife was living with him. Such behavior on Milton's part, "he being in his thirty-fifth year and his wife but seventeen, seems in- credible, unless we accept an hypothesis started by a writer in the Athenceum that she not only treated him with contumely, but refused his embraces. "If," says the Rev. Rector Patteson, of Oxford, " Milton was brooding over this seething agony of passion all through July, with the young bride, to whom he had EXHIBITS A NOBLE NATURE. 463 been barely wedded a montli, in the house where he was writing, then the only apology for this outrage upon the charities, not to say decencies of home, is that which is suggested by the passage referred to" — a pas- sage, namely, in the pamphlet itself from which the \\Titer in the AthencBUTn drew the inference we have alluded to. "Then the pamphlet," he continues, " however imprudent, becomes pardonable. It is a passionate cry from the depths of a great despair ; another evidence of the noble purity of a nature which refused to console itself as other men would have con- soled themselves ; a nature which, instead of an ego- tistical whine for its own deliverance, sets itself to plead the common cause of man and of society. He gives no intimation of any indi\ddual interest, but his argument throughout glows with a white heat of con- cealed emotion, such as could only be stirred by the sting of some personal and present misery. ' ' Milton, when his wife deserted him, might have said, as John Wesley subsequently said, Won illam dimisi, non revocaho. " I did not send her away, and I will not take her back. " If he did not form this determina- tion, it was because there seemed no probability of the lady ever asking him to take her back. Meanwhile he consoled himself, in a virtuous way, by Platonic friend- ships with other women, especially with two who were far superior in beauty of person and vivacity of intel- lect to the runaway Mary Powell. One of these was the Lady Margaret Ley, a lady " of great wit and in- genuity," attached to the Parliamentary cause, and mentioned as the "honored Margaret" of his Tenth Sonnet. She was the A^fe of a Captain Hobson, a 404 MILTON'S WIVES. " very accomplished gentleman" residing at the Isle of Wight. For the other he seems to have cherished the design of a more intimate relationship. She was a Miss Davis, daughter of a Dr. Davis, of whom nothing else is known except that he was her father. She is sux)posed to be " the virtuous young lady" of his Mnth Sonnet, and he described her as "in the prime of earliest youth. ' ' She is spoken of in Phillips' s brief narrative as a very handsome and witty gentlewoman. Milton, in the dedication of the last of his divorce X)am- phlets, which he entitled " Tetrachordon," to Parlia- ment, had concluded with the threat, " If the law make not a timely provision, let the law, as reason is, bear the censure of the consequences." There is no doubt that he did not intend to remain single, even if the law forbade him to marry again while his wife lived. Phillips says that he proposed such a union with Miss Davis, but that she was not prepared, as he was, to brave the world's opinion. The suit was ended by a remarkable episode. Mary Milton's departure was singular enough, but her return was even more so. The friends of both parties formed a conspiracy to bring them together again. Since October, 1643, when Milton's messenger had been dis- missed with opprobrium from the house of the Powells at Forest Hill, great changes had happened. The as- pect of the civil war was not the same. The Presby- terian army had been replaced by the Independent army, and as an immediate result the royal cause had declined, and its total ruin was effected at the battle of iS^aseby, in June, 1645. Oxford was closely invested by the Parliamentary army. Forest Hill was occujpied RETURNS TO HER HUSBAND. 465 by the besiegers, and the proud Cavalier family that had treated Milton, their creditor as well as son-in-law, so scurvily, was compelled to take refuge within the lines of the university city. Financial bankruptcy had come upon the Powells, and no doubt these considera- tions, added to the fact that Milton was now a rising man with a manifest career before him, had far more weight with them than any rumors they may have heard of the devotion he was paying to Miss Davis. The victorious Independents were Milton' s party, and such a son-in-law might prove a potent protector to his wife' s family in the days of darkness that were falling upon them. Mrs. Mary Milton always threw the blame of her conduct to her husband upon her mother. A world- ly mother would be sure to look to the main chance. While Milton was a nobody, except a bookworm, she had counselled her daughter's disobedience and deser- tion ; now that Milton was somebody, and his star was clearly in the ascendant, she urged her to seek a recon- ciliation with him. None but a magnanimous-natured husband would have taken her back ; but Milton, though stern at times, as all the Puritans were, had a magnanimous nature. A '^surprise party" of a most unexpected kind was arranged for him. There was a house in St. Martin's le Grand, London, where Milton was a frequent visitor. On an occasion when he was known to be coming, his young wife, who had been fetched from Oxford on purpose, was secreted in an ad- joining room, and when he had come she was suddenly brought into his presence, and throwing herself at his feet she burst into tears and begged his forgiveness. The foolish girl was now only nineteen, and two years 466 MILTON'S WIVES. of reflection and rougli experience had taught her the error of her way. Her mother, she declared to him, " had been all along the chief j)romoter of her froward- ness." Milton, with a generosity that did him credit, " a noble, leonine clemency," as Phillii)s calls it, beg- ged her to let bygones be bygones, and, as she profess- ed her willingness to live with him as a good wife, he received her to his house in Barbican, to which he had recently removed from Aldersgate Street. Nor did his benevolence end here. Ill as the Powells had deserved of him and of his father, to whom they were heavily in debt, he received them all into his home, when their estate at Forest Hill was sequestrated, not excepting even the shrewd mother-in-law who had separated his wife from him, and might again disturb his domestic peace. This was after the surrender of Oxford, in June, 1646. Squire Powell died in Milton's house at the end of that year. When his father-in-law's affairs were wound up, Milton, in satisfaction of his claim of £1500 (£1000 of which was for his wife's dower, and £500 for a loan made in 1627), came into possession of some property at Wheatley, Oxon,, consisting of the tithes, certain cottages, and three and a half yards (!) of land. This property had produced in all only £40 a year during the recent civil war, but as property had increased in value after the war closed, Milton found that he could let the whole for double that amount. Out of this he had to pay Mr. Powell's composition, reduced to £130 in Milton's petition, and the widow's jointure, computed at £26 13,9. 4d. per annum. What of income remained after these disbursements he might apply toward re- MILTON'S PARENTS. 467 paying himself tlie old loan of 1627. This was all Mil- ton ever saw of the £1000, which Squire Powell, with the munificence of a bankrupt Cavalier, had promised to pay Milton as his daughter s portion. The death of Milton's father-in-law was followed in three months by that of his father. He died in the house in Barbican, and the entry, " John Milton, gen- tleman, loth (March)," among the burials in March, 1646, is still to be seen in the register of the parish of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. The younger John Milton was deeply indebted to the elder, and never lost an opportu- nity of acknowledging the obligation. In the present volume we have traced the genius and character of many eminent men to the influence of their mothers. Milton was an exception. It was chiefly to his father's excellent taste, sound judgment, and constant care that he owed his love of learning and his opportunities of acquiring it. He has left among his poems some Latin hexameters, ^' Ad patrem,''' to his father, full of more than filial gratitude and feeling. And in his pamphlet of the " Reason of Church Government," he speaks of " the ceaseless diligence and care of my father, whom God recompenses." His mother's name before her marriage was Sarah Caston. She is described as a " woman of incompara- ble virtue and goodness." They had two other chil- dren, besides the poet — Anna, who married Edward Phillips, the father of the author of the narrative already quoted, and Christopher, who was bred to the law. After his father's and father-in-law's death, his wife's relations seem to have scattered, and Milton, now in easier circumstances, gave up taking pupils, and 468 MILTON'S WIVES. quitted the large house in Barbican for a smaller one in High Holborn, opening backward upon Lincoln's Inn Fields. This must have been about Michaelmas, in 1647. Four years after the death of his first wife, with whom he seems to have lived happily from the date of her return to him until her death, which occurred in 1653, at another of his residences, so often changed. Petty France, since called York Street, Westminster, close to St. James's Park, Milton married again. His first wife had borne him three daughters, of whom we shall speak presently. His second wife was Catherine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock, of Hackney, '^ a zealous sectarist, ' ' but of her we know nothing except what can be gathered from the affecting poetical trib- ute (Sonnet XIX.) which he paid to her. "ON HIS DECEASED WIFE. " Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint ; Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed taint, Purification in the old law did save, And such, as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind ! Her face was veiled ; yet to my fancied sight, Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear, as in no face with more delight. But oh ! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked ; she fled ; and day brought back my night." GROWING BLIND. 469 The concluding words bear evident allusion to his own blindness. The exact nature of the disease which l^roduced it has in his case never been determined. His pathetic account, written to his friend Leonard Philarus, of Athens, dated Westminster, September 28th, 1654, contains all that we can know about it : " It is now about ten years, I think, since I first per- ceived my sight beginning to grow weak and dim. . . . When I sate down to read as usiial in the morning, my eyes gave me considerable pain, and refused their office till fortified by moderate exercise of body. If I looked at a candle, it appeared surrounded by an iris. In a little time, a darkness covering the left side of the left eye, which was partially clouded some years before the other, interrupted the view of all things in that du^ec- tion. Objects also in front seemed to dwindle in size whenever I closed my right eye. This eye, too, for three years gradually failing, a few months previous, while I was perfectly stationary, everything seemed to swim backward and forward ; and now thick vai^ors appear to settle upon my forehead and temples, which weigh down nay eyes with an oppressive sense of drow- siness, especially in the interval between the dinner and evening. . . I ought not to omit mentioning that, before 1 wholly lost my sight, as soon as I lay down in bed, and turned upon either side, brilliant flashes of light used to issue from my closed eyes ; and after- ward, upon the gradual failure of any power of vision, colors proportionately dim and faint seemed to rush out with a degree of vehemence and a kind of inward noise. These have now faded into uniform blackness. 470 MILTON'S WIVES. such as ensues on the extinction of a candle ; or blaciv- ness, varied only and intermingled with a dunnisli gray. The constant darkness, however, in which I live day and night, inclines more to a whitish than a blackish tinge ; and the eye in turning itself round admits, as through a narrow chink, a very small por- tion of light. But this, though it may offer a glance of hope to the physician, does not prevent me from making up my mind to my case, as evidently beyond the reach of cure ; and I often reflect, that as many days of darkness, according to the wise man (Eccles. 11 : 8), are allotted to us all, mine, which by the singular favor of the Deity, are divided between leisure and study, and are recreated by the conversation and inter- course of my friends, are more agreeable than those deadly shades of which Solomon is speaking. But if, as it is written, ' Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God ' (Matt. 4 : 4), why should not each of us like- wise acquiesce in the reflection that he derives not the benefit of his sight from his eyes alone, but from the guidance and Providence of the same Supreme Being 'I ^Yhile He looks out and provides for me as He does, and leads me about as it were with His hand through the paths of life, I willingly surrender my own faculty of vision in conformity to His good pleasure ; and with a heart as strong and as steadfast as if I were a Lynceus, I bid you, my Philarus, fare- well r' In two of his sonnets Milton expressed the same resignation under his affliction. SONNETS. 471 " ON HIS BLINDNESS. ** When I consider how my life is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He, returning, chide, ' Doth God exact day labor, light denied ? ' I fondly ask ; but patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, ' God doth not need Either man's works, or His own gift ; who best Bears His mild yoke they serve Him best : His state Is kingly ; thousands at His bidding speed, And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; They also serve who only stand and wait." The other of the two sonnets on this subject is ad- dressed "TO CYRIAC SKINNER. " Cyriac, this three years' day these eyes, though clear, To outward view, of blemish or of spot. Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot ; Nor to their idle orbs doth siglit appear, Of sun or moon, or star, thi-oughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand, or will, nor bate a jot Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied In liberty's defence, my noble task, Of which all Europe rings from side to side. This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask Content, though blind, had I no better guide." 472 MILTON'S WIVES. Milton s second wife, Catherine Woodcock, whom, as we have seen, he wrote of as his ' ' late espoused saint,'" in whom " love, sweetness, goodness sinned," died in 1658, after only fifteen months' union with him, and after having given birth to a daughter, who lived only a few months. The blind bard, probably for the sake of having a protector for his daughters, the youngest of whom was only eight at the Restoration, as well as a companion for himself, consulted his friend and medical adviser. Dr. Paget, as to the selection of a third wife, and by his advice he married Elizabeth Minshull, of a very respectable family near Nautwich, in Cheshire. She was a distant relative of Dr. Paget, and he, as a sincere friend to Milton, no doubt knew her well, and was satis- fied that she had the requisite qualifications for the delicate and arduous work of tending the blind bard and philosopher in the evening of his life. She fully justified the good physician's selection. The marriage took place in February, 1663, about ten years after the death of Milton's first wife, and five years after the death of his second. During the remaining eleven years of the poet's life his wants were ministered to by a prudent, thoughtful, and capable gentlewoman. There is little evidence as to what she was like, either mentally or physically. Aubrey, who knew her per- sonally, says she was " a genteel person of a peaceful and agreeable humor. " And there is every reason to believe that this account of her was true. Bishop Xewton, of Bristol, who lived nearly a century after- ward, wrote, in 1749, that he had heard she was ' ' a woman of a most violent spirit, and a hard mother in- MILTON'S THIRD WIFE. 473 law to Ms children." It is certain that she revered her husband and studied his comfort. Marv Fisher, a maid-servant in the house, deposed that at the end of his life, when he was sick and infirm, his wife having provided something for dinner which she thought he would fancy, he " spake to his said wife these or like words, as near as this deponent can remember : ' God have mercy, Betty, I see thou wilt perform according to thy promise, in providing me such dishes as I think fit while I live, and when I die, thou knowest I have left thee all. ' " Another anecdote of his third wife is less authentic, though it has been accepted by Alexan- der Pope and others of some weight — namely, that Charles the Second, having offered Milton the post of Latin secretary to the Government, the same office which he had held under Cromwell, and his wife urg- ing him to accept it, he said to her : " Thou are in the right ; you, as other women, would ride in your coach ; for me, my aim is to live and die an honest man." But it seems wholly improbable, after Milton's politi- cal disaffection, and all he had written against mon- archy, especially against the Stuarts, that the restored king would have made him such an offer. The Restoration, which took place in 1660, found Milton stone blind, and with all his hopes blasted and all his political efforts nullified, at the age of fifty-two. He had drank too deeply of the living waters of faith, resignation, and manly courage, to give way to useless, repinings, and despair. He returned to the muse fi'om which politics had for twenty years estranged him, but which still had kept '' a bower quiet for him and a sleep full of soft dreams." The grand loneliness of 474 MILTON'S WIVES. Milton, it has been well observed, " is reflected in his three great poems by a sublime independence of human sympathy like that with which mountains fascinate and rebuff us." The house in Breed Street, Cheapside, in which Milton was born, was burned in the great fire of Lon- don, and this was typical of the destruction which the Revolution had made of his political and principal for- tunes. He died without much pain, on the 8th of No- vember, 1674, and Hay ley says of the place and mode of his departure : " Soon after his marriage, in 1661, he had removed from his house in Jewin Street to a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields, a spot that, to his enthusiastic admirers, may appear consecrated to his genius. Here he resided at that period of his days when he was peculiarly entitled to veneration ; here he probably finished no less than three of his most admirable works ; and here, with a dissolution so easy that it was unperceived by the I)ersons in his bedchamber, he closed a life, clouded indeed by uncommon and various calamities, yet en- nobled by the constant exercise of such rare endow- ments as render his name, perhaps, the very first in that radiant and comprehensive list of which England, the most fertile of countries in the produce of mental power, has reason to be proud." He was buried in St. Giles's Church, Cripplegate. After the loss of his sight Milton was dependent upon others for reading and writing. His last wife does not appear to have assisted him in this literary way, but he had taught his daughters to read, though not to understand, several languages, and they rendered A LOW ESTIMATE OF WOMAN. 475 him some service wlien no poor scholar was at hand. This they did, however, with so ill a grace that " the old man eloquent' ' thus refers to them in his last will and testament, or rather in the directions he gave his brother Christopher concerning it a few months before he died : " Brother, the portion due to me from Mr. Powell, my first wife's father, I leave to the unkind children I had by her ; but I have received no part of it ; and my will and meaning is they have no other benefit from my estate than the said portion, and what I have besides done for them, they having been very undutiful to me ; and all the residue of my estate I leave to the disposal of Elizabeth, my loving wife." Their conduct may perhaps be explained, if not pal- liated, by the way in which their father had trained them. Although he wrote of woman in the loftiest strain, in practice he regarded her merely as the " help" and servant of man. He would not allow his daughters to learn any language, saying that one tongue was enough for a woman. They were never sent to school, but had received some sort of teaching at home from a governess. To make them useful to himself he taught them to read aloud in five or six languages, ancient and modern, but did not allow them to understand a word of any of them. A little more labor would have made their task intelligible and themselves intelligent. As an inevitable result of this unreasonable treatment, his daughters behaved badly to him, and his condition resembled somewhat that of King Lear. One daughter alone spoke kindly of him after his death, Deborah, to whom, says Aubrey, he 476 MILTON'S WIVES. had really taught some Latin and who acted as his amanuensis. "Milton's youngest daughter,'' says Richardson, " sj)oke of her father with great tender- ness. She said he was delightful company, the life of the conversation, and that on account of a flow of sub- ject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and civility." This was said when she was an old woman. The second daughter, Mary, w^ho was like her mother, Mary Powell, in person and in her headstrong dis^DOsi- tion, resisted and disobeyed, and at last hated her father. When some one spoke in her presence of her father's ai)proaching marriage (to his third wife) she said, " that was no news to hear of his wedding ; but if she could hear of his death, that was som.ething." She combined with Anna, the eldest daughter, who had a handsome face, but was deformed and had an im- pediment in her speech, " to counsel his maid-ser- vant to cheat him in his marketings. They sold his books without his knowledge ; and he was often heard to complain that they thought nothing of desert- ing him." They lived with him for five or six years after his last marriage, but at last their presence became intolerable, and they were sent out to earn their own living at the trade of embroidery in gold and silver. When Deborah, the youngest, was shown in 1725 Faithorne's crayon drawing of the jDoet, without being told for whom it was intended, she immediately exclaimed, " Lord ! that is the picture of my fa- ther !" and stroking down the hair of her forehead, added, " Just so my father wore his hair." Milton's will was contested by his daughters, and being found irregular in form it was set aside and let- LOVE OF MUSIC AND FLOWERS. 477 ters of administ ration were granted to his widow, who is said to have allotted £100 to each of them. Milton's only recreation except conversation was music. He played the organ and the bass-viol — the organ most. Sometimes he would sing himself, or get his wife to sing for him, though she had, he said, no ear, yet a good voice. That one whose ear was so attuned to " the music of the spheres," whose harmony within was so celestial, and whose imagery was the sublimest of this or the angelic world, should be a lover of music is only what one should expect. What a contrast did the music in his own soul present to the discord of his domestic life, until the last few years of it. Next to his delight in music was his fondness for gardens. He took care to have one attached to every house he lived in, and would pass four hours at a time among the flowers and fruits which he loved long after he had lost the power of seeing them. The direct line of Milton, like that of Shakspeare, whom he comes next to among the chief of English poets, is extinct. Anne, his eldest daughter, married an architect, and died when her first infant was born. Mary, the second, died unmarried, Deborah married Mr, Clark, a weaver in Spitalsfields ; she died in 1727, aged seventy-six. As her family was numerous, and also poor, Joseph Addison, Secretary of State to Queen Anne, made her a present, and Queen Caroline pre- sented her with fifty guineas. In 1750, Milton's Comus was played at one of the London theatres, for the benefit of one of Mrs. Clark's daughters, Mrs. Elizabeth Forster, who was found by Dr. Birch and Dr. Newton, two of her grandfather's biographers, 478 MILTON'S WIVES. keeping a little chandler-shop, in the city, poor, aged, and infirm. One hundred and thirty pounds were thus gained for her and her family, a husband and seven children. These all died before their mother, and her own death closed John Milton's line. His brother Christopher, who had always been a royalist and whom his influence had sheltered during the Commonwealth, was knighted and made a judge by King James the Second, but ill health compelled him to retire into ob- scurity. Elizabeth Milton, the poet's widow, sold the copy- right of " Paradise Lost," for which the poet himself had received in all £10. His contract with Samuel Simmons, or Symons, for it is spelled both ways, the printer, is in the British Museum, and is dated April 27th, 1667. The author received £5 down ; another £5 when the first edition was sold ; a third £5 was to be received for the second edition, and a fourth £5 for the third edition. He died before the second edition was published ; and his widow sold her remaining claims for £8. At the end of two years, thirteen hun- dred copies had been circulated. In five years after this the second edition came out, and in four years more the third. Before the end of twenty years this immortal poem had passed through twenty editions. THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. Caelyle, in ^\T^'iting of his parents in his " Remi- niscences," in 1832, gives the year of their marriage as 1795, and describes his mother, Margaret Aitken, to have been the best of all mothers, "to whom," he says, " I owe endless gratitude. By God's great mercy, she is still left as a head and centre to us all, and may yet cheer us with her pious heroism through many toils, if God so please." " I am," he adds, " the eldest child, born in 1795, December 4th, and trace deeply in myself the character of both parents, also the upbringing and example of both ; the inheritance of their natural health, had not I and Time beat on it too hard." All the world knows Carlyle's history, for he has A\Titten it in the hundreds of letters left behind him, and in his "Reminiscences." His literary executor, James Anthony Froude, has given it in picturesque lan- guage in his " Life of Carlyle," and lastly, it is written in Mrs. Carlyle's letters. No literary man of any age was ever better knoAvn to the reading world. It would be a work of supererogation to attempt to write any- thing that would present Carlyle in a different light from what has already been given. But it is a pleasant task to write of his mother, for he has made it possible for much to be said of her. His father was a mason, and with his brother, who 480 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. was his partner, was established at Ecclefechan. His son makes him out a great man, but admits that in his finer nature he was but " half developed."" Mrs. Carlyle/)wned to her son " that she could never under- stand him ; that her affection and (with all their little strifes) her admiration of him were obstructed." He was an outwardly cold and silent man, and was re- served even with his wife and children. The son relates an instance when he saw him unbend from his austere manner and shed tears. He says : " It was when the remains of my mother's fever hung upon her, in 1817, and seemed to threaten the extinction of her reason. We were all of us nigh desperate, and our- selves nigh mad. He burst out at last into quite a tor- rent of grief, cried piteously, and threw himself on the floor and lay moaning, I wondered, and had no words, no tears. It was as if a rock of granite had melted, and was thawing into water." The wife and mother was for a time out of her head, but she ultimately re- covered. The family was intensely clannish, and the father, if but " half developed," was a shrewd observer, and was not slow to note the promise of his son. He counselled with the mother, and then decided to send their boy to college. The wise men of Ecclefechan shook their heads and said it was a risk ; it was a waste of money ; it was wrong to educate a boy, because he grows up to despise his ignorant par- ents. He was sent to college nevertheless, his parents walking a part of the way with him as he with another lad of the place started on theu- j^edestrian trip to Edinburgh. The two walked twenty miles a day until THE FAMILY HOME. 481 their journey's end was reached, and for the four years that Carlyle remained at college he annually walked the distance. Mr. Carlyle bought a farm during the last year of his son's stay in Edinburgh, not far from Annan, where Carlyle taught school after leaving college. To be near his mother was the solace of his life. He hated teaching, and nothing reconciled him to his task but the weekly visit to his family and the thought that he was helping them. His mother and sisters, as his father and brothers, worked very hard on the farm, and at this time his mother could not write him, so that to hear from her personally he had to go to Mainhill. Mr. Froude thus describes this home, which was so dear to all the family : " The house itself is, or was when the Carlyles occupied it, of one story, and consisted of three rooms — a kitchen, a small bedroom, and a large one connected by a passage. The door opens into a square farm-yard, on one side of which are stables, on the other side oppo- site the door the cow byres, on the third a wash-house and dairy. The situation is high, utterly bleak, and swept by all the winds. Not a tree shelters the premises ; the fences are low, the wind per- mitting nothing to grow but stunted thorn. The view alone redeems the dreariness of the situation. On the left is the great hill of Burnswark. Broad Annandale stretches in front down to the Solway, which shines like a long silver riband ; on the right is Hoddam Hill, with the Tower of Repentance on its crest, and the wooded slopes which mark the line of the river. Beyond towers up Criffel, and in the far distance Skiddaw, and Saddleback, and Helvellyn, and the high Cumberland ridges on the track of the Roman wall. Here lived Carlyle's father and mother with their eight children, Carlyle himself spending his holidays with them ; the old man and his younger sons cultivating the sour soil and winning a hard-earned living out of their toil, the mother and daughters ■i82 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. doing the household work and minding cows and poultry, and taking their turn in the field with the rest in harvest time." Carlyle went to teach at Kirkcaldy, and was now permanently separated from the home circle. Father, mother, brothers, and sisters all wrote him constantly, and all received replies. In one of his father's letters occurs this reference to his mother : " Your mother thought to have wi'itten to you ; but the carrier stopped only two days at home, and she being a slow writer could not get it done, but she will write next opportunity. I add no more but your mother's com- pliments, and she sends you half the cheese that she was telling you about. " He was a good father, this stern Scotch yeoman, and his interest in his absent son was as intense as a father's could be. Had the mother been less devoted to him Carlyle would have seen, perhaps, some exhibi- tions of affection which were left unexpressed because he was sadsfied with the love of his mother, and asked no more. Once, when he had an attack of dyspepsia while in Edinburgh with his pupils, he wrote a letter home that frightened all the family. His brother John, who had succeeded him as a teacher in Annan school, was sent for by the anxious parents, and the result was a touching letter, which is quoted entire, to show the affection which bound this excellent house- liold together : " Mainhill, February, 1820. "I have just arrived from Annan, and we are all so uneasy on your account that at the request of my father in particular, and of all the rest, I am determined to write to call on you for a speedy answer. Your father and mother, and all of us, are extremely anxious that INTEREST IN THEIR SON. 488 you should come home directly, if possible, if you think you can come without danger. And we trust that, notwithstanding the bitterness of last summer, you will still find it emphatically a home. My mother bids me call upon you to do so by every tie of affection, and by all that is sacred. She esteems seeing you again and admin- istering comfort to you as her highest felicity. Your father, also, is extremely anxious to see you again at home. The room is much more comfortable than it was last season. The roads are repaired, and all things more convenient ; and we all trust that you will yet recover, after you shall have inhaled your native breezes and escaped once more from the unwholesome city of Edinburgh, and its selfish and unfeeling inhabitants. In the name of all, then, I call upon you not to neglect or refuse our earnest wishes ; to come home and experience the comforts of parental and brotherly affection, which, though rude and without polish, is yet sincere and honest." The father adds a postscript : " My dbak Tom : I have been very uneasy about you ever since we received your moving letter, and I thought to have written to you myself this day, and told you all my thoughts about your health, which is the foundation and copestone of all our earthly comfort. But, being particularly engaged this day, I caused John to write. Come home as soon as possible, and forever oblige, " Dear son, your loving father, " James Carltle." The mother was written to immediately, and quieted with assurance that the attack was not dangerous, and that the patient would soon be well. Carlyle was not a submissive sufferer, and he made an outcry over phys- ical pains which were not serious beyond causing him annoyance. Mrs. Carlyle was an earnest Calvinist, and in season and out, she, after she had learned penmanship, wrote to her son regarding his si)iritual welfare. She urged 484 THE MOTHER OF CARLTLE. liim to mind the golden season of youth, and seek his Creator while He might yet be found. Along with much pious instruction she frequently added practical information regarding butter and ham sent him. The thoughtful mother provided him with the siibstantials of his modest table and knit his socks for him. Eveii. after he went to Edinburgh to try his fortunes she sent him eatables, and urged him to send home his clothing that she might renew his wardrobe again. If she detected the slightest despondency in his letters she at once wrote him, asking to be allowed to do all that she could for him, and then offering such admonition as this : ' ' Oh, my dear, dear son, I would pray for a blessing on your learn- ing. I beg you, with all the feeling of an affectionate mother, that you would study the Word of Crod, which He has graciously put in our hands, that it may powerfully reach our hearts, that we may discern it in its true light. God made man after His own image, therefore he behoved to be without any imperfect faculties. Beware, my dear son, of such thoughts ; let them not dwell on your mind. God forbid ! But I dare say you will not care to read this scrawl. Do make religion your great study, Tom ; if you repent it, I will bear the blame forever." There existed between Carlyle and his mother a peculiar and passionate attachment. All his letters show his deep love for her. He tells her that " he can never be sufficiently grateful, not only for the common Idndness of a mother, but for the unceasing watchful- ness with which she strove to instil virtuous principles into his young mind." In another letter he says : " I know well and feel deeply that you entertain the most solici- tous anxiety about my temporal, and still more about my eternal HIS MOTHER'S ANXIETY. 485 welfare ; as to the former of which, I have still hopes that all your tenderness will yet be repaid ; and as to the latter, though it becomes not the human worm to boast, I would fain persuade you not to entertain so many doubts. Your character and mine are far more similar than you imagine ; and our opinions too, though clothed in different garbs, are, I well know, still analogous at bottom. I respect your religious sentiments, and honor you for feeling them more than if you were the highest woman in the world without them. Be easy, I entreat you, on my account ; the world will use me better than before ; and if it should not, let us hope to meet in that upper country, when the vain fever of life is gone by, in the country where all darkness shall be light, and where the exercise of om- affections will not be thwarted by the infirmities of human nature any more. ' ' This was a gloomy period of Carlyle's life, but to Ms family he made the best of his situation. He had no friends in Edinburgh, and his employment as a tutor was not regular. He was unhappy and unsettled, and the future was not bright before him. His mother's love and kindness touched him deeply, and he care- fully treasured every letter that she wrote to him. The following letter, like many more sent him at that time, is full of anxiety for his physical welfare arid religious state : " Son Tom : I received your kind and pleasant letter. Nothing is more satisfying to me than to hear of your welfare. Keep up your heart, my brave boy. You ask kindly after my health. I complain as little as possible. When the day is cheerier, it has a great effect on me. But upon the whole I am as well as I can expect, thank God. I have sent a little butter and a few cakes with a box to bring home your clothes. Send them all home, that I may wash and sort them once more. Oh, man, could I but write ! I'll tell ye a' when we meet, but I must in the mean time content myself. Do send me a long letter ; it revives me greatly ; and tell me honestly if you read your chapter e'en and morn, lad. You mind I hod if not your hand, 486 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. I hod your foot of it. Tell me if there is anything you want in par- ticular. I must run to pack the box, so I am " Your affectionate mother, " Margaret Carlyle." Carlyle' s name stands forever linked with the domes- tic circle to which he belonged. No other famous man of letters is so closely and permanently associated with home and family. He was a noble son and faithful brother, and whatever his faults as a man, he was a hero to his own kindred. None of his family were so gifted as he, but all were thoughtful and earnest, and he never had cause to be troubled on account of their want of cultivation. There was no false pride, no attempts to be what they were not, in any of the name. They had solid worth, and were aspiring and ambitious people, though silent and undemonstrative even with each other. There is a letter of Carlyle' s to his mother, written when he was a tutor at Kinnaird House, which is full of protestations of affection. With it he sent her a check for a small sum of money. It is as follows : *' This letter may operate as a spur on the diligence of my beloved and valuable correspondents at Mainhill. There is a small blank made in the sheet for a purpose which you will notice. I beg you to accept the little picture which fills it without any murmuring. It is a poor testimonial of the grateful love I should ever bear you. If I hope to get a moderate command of money in the course of my life's operations, I long for it chiefly that I may testify to those dear to me what affection I entertain for them. In the mean time we ought to be thankful that we have never known what it was to be in fear of want, but have always had wherewith to gratify one another by these little acts of kindness, which are worth more than millions unblest by a true feeling between the giver and receiver. You must AX ADMIRER OF "MEISTER." 487 buy yourself any little odd things you want, and think I enjoy it along with you, if it add to your comfort. I do indeed enjoy it with you. I should be a dog if I did not. I am grateful to you for kind- ness and true affection such as no other heart will ever feel for me. I am proud of my mother, though she is neither rich nor learned. If I ever forget to love and reverence her, I must cease to be a creature myself worth remembering. Often, my dear mother, in solitary, pensive moments does it come across me like the cold shadow of death, that we two must part in the course of time. I shudder at the thought, and find no refuge except in humbly trusting that the great God will surely appoint us a meeting in that far country to which we are tending. May He bless you forever, my good mother, and keep up in your heart those sublime hopes which at present serve as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide your footsteps through the wilderness of life. We are in His hands. He will not utterly forsake us. Let us trust in Him." Carlyle sent his family " Meister," which he had translated, to read, and Goethe' s novel found an appre- ciative admirer in Mrs. Carlyle. His brother John, in writing to him, says of his mother : " She is sitting here as if under some charm, reading ' Meister,' and has nearly got through the second volume. Though we are often repeating honest Hall Foster's denounce- ment against readers of ' novels, ' she still continues to persevere. She does not relish the character of the women, especially of Philina : they are so wanton. She cannot well tell what it is that interests her. I defer till the next time I write to give a full account of the impression it has made upon us all, for we have not got it fairly started yet." Mr. Froude characterizes Carlyle' s affection for his mother as the strongest personal passion which he experienced through all his life. She was proud and 488 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. wilful as he. He was continually sending her money or presents, and for some rebuke of hers on this score he wrote her this letter, dated " Birmingham, August 29, 1824. " I must suggest some improvements in your diet and mode of life which might be of service to you^ who I know too well have much to suffer on your own part, though your affection renders you so exclu- sively anxious about me. You will say you cannot he fashed. Oh, my dear mother, if you did but think of what value your health and comfort are to us all, you would never talk so. Are we not all bound to you by sacred and indissoluble ties ? Am I not so bound more than any other ? Who was it that nursed me and watched me in fro- wardness and sickness from the earliest dawn of my existence to this hour ? My mother. Who is it that has struggled for me in pain and sorrow with undespairing diligence, that has for me been up early and down late, caring for me, laboring for me, imweariedly assisting me ? My mother. Who is the one that never shrunk from me in my desolation, that never tired of my despondencies, or shut up by a look or tone of impatience the expression of my real or imaginary griefs ? Who is it that loves me and will love me forever with an affection which no chance, no misery, no crime of mine can do away ? It is you, my mother. As the greatest favor that I can beg of you, let me, now that I have in some degree the power, be of some assist- ance in promoting your comfort. It were one of the achievements which I could look back upon with most satisfaction from all the stages of my earthly pilgrimage, if I could make you happier. Are we not all of us animated by a similar love to you ? Why then will you spare any trouble, any cost, in what is valuable beyond aught earthly to every one of us?" Carlyle was living in London during the time he was completing his "Life of Schiller," and after it was finished he went to Mainhill. His brother had mean- while taken a farm for him, which this brother (Aleck) was to manage, and his family had been busy fixing AT HODDAM HILL. 489 it for him. It was but two miles from his father' s farm, and was called Hoddam Hill. There were but a few acres of land attached to it. His parents wanted him to make his home among them, but he was engaged to be married, and had plans for a separate home. He did not expect his fiancee, Miss Welsh, to live at Hoddam Hill, but he hoped to restore his health and then go elsewhere. He could not live at home and do his work with so many about him, and his ways of living w^ere not suited to the exactions of a farmer's home. His mother and two little sisters went with him and his brother, and there Miss Welsh visited them. She had promised him that when he was settled she would pay a visit to him and see with her own eyes her future relatives, and the kind of a home he was inviting her to share. Their engagement at this time promised to be a protracted one, but a circumstance occurred which hastened it, unexpectedly to both. It is not necessary in this sketch of the mother of Carlyle to enter into the particulars of this engagement between Carlyle and Miss Welsh, because the facts are familiar to all English-speaking readers through the recent biographies of these two now most thoroughly known characters. Miss Welsh had suddenly made up her mind that as the marriage was to be, it should be over with as soon as she should make his family a visit, and plan with him for their immediate future. Carlyle says of this visit : " She stayed with us above a week [Carlyle writes], happy, as was very evident, and making happy. Her demeanor among us I could define as unsurpassable, spontaneously perfect. From the first 490 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. moment all embarrassment, even my mother's, as tremulous and anxious as she naturally was, fled away without return. Everybody felt the all-pervading simple grace, the perfect truth and perfect trustfulness of that beautiful, cheerful, intelligent, and sprightly creature, and everybody was put at his ease. The questionable visit was a clear success. She and I went riding about, the weather dry and gray, nothing ever going wrong with us ; my guidance taken as beyond criticism ; she ready for any pace, rapid or slow, melodious talk never wanting. Of course she went to Mainhill, and made com- plete acquaintance with my father (whom she much esteemed and even admired, now and henceforth — a reciprocal feeling, strange enough), and with my two elder sisters, Margaret and Mary, who now officially kept house with my father there. On the whole, she came to know us all, saw face to face us and the rugged peasant element and way of life we had ; and was not afraid of it, but recog- nized, like her noble self, what of intrinsic worth it might have, what of real human dignity. She charmed all hearts, and was her- self visibly glad and happy, right loath to end these halcyon days, eight or perhaps nine the utmost appointed sum of them. ' ' And Froude adds of this visit : " Two little anecdotes she used to tell of this visit, showing that under peasant's dresses there was in the Carlyles the essential sense of delicate high breeding. She was to use the girls' room at Main- hill while there ; and it was rude enough in its equipments as they lived in it. Margaret Carlyle, doing her little best, had spread on the deal table for a cover a precious new shawl which some friend had given her. More remarkable was her reception by the father. "When she appeared he was in his rough dress, called in from his farm work on the occasion. The rest of the family kissed her. The old man, to her surprise, drew back, and soon left the room. In a few minutes he came back again, fresh shaved and washed, and in his Sunday clothes. ' Now, ' he said, ' if Miss "Welsh allows it, I am in a condition to kiss her too.' "When she left Hoddam, Carlyle attended her back to Dumfries." A PITIFUL TRAGEDY. 491 The visit was over, and Miss Welsh returned to her home, pleased with her lover's family, and more than ready to become one of them. Her presence was a bright interlude in their lives, and between Mrs. Carlyle and Miss Welsh there was formed an attachment that remained strong through life. Carlyle, happier now that the result of the visit was so satisfactory, worked with more courage, and his mother remained with him. Their evenings were spent together, with his brother Aleck and the two younger sisters, and Carlyle and his mother smoked their pipes as the others sat about them chatting. The pleasant home at Hoddam Hill was not long kept ; differences occurred between the landlord and Carlyle, and the place was given up. The Mainhill home was owned by the same landlord, and old Mr. Carlyle decided to move from it. The family w^ent to Scotsbrig, in the neighborhood of Ecclefechan, where they rented a fine farm, upon which the elder Carlyles remained until the end of their lives, and their youngest son lived after their death. On this farm Carlyle spent the summer of 1826, with his loved kindred about him, for the last time. There never was a more pitiful tragedy than this mar- riage. Repeatedly Carlyle offered to give Miss Welsh up, and as often she declined to break the engagement, though her lover' s poverty, his infirmity of temper and ill-health were causes enough. Miss Welsh was the only child of a widowed mother, and had been accus- tomed to luxury and the best society where she lived. She admitted, years after, that she married her husband for ambition, and that her life had been made miser- able. Many i)lans were made before a final one was 492 • THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. reached. Mrs. Welsh wished the married couiDle to live with her, and the iDroposition which greatly pleased her daughter was received with harshness by Carlyle, who announced that he would live in no house that he was not the head of. His objections to the plan he summed up in a word, ' ' The man should bear rule in the house, and not the woman." He would not consent to live with her mother, who had a comfortable home, but he asked Miss Welsh to marry him and live on his father's farm with him, where he certainly was not the head of the house. Miss Welsh acted through this difficult emergency with great self-control and dignity. She withheld from her mother the evidences of extreme selfishness which her future husband manifested, and j)ersuaded her to consent to give uj) housekeeping and go to live with her father, whose home was about fifteen miles from Scotsbrig— the Carlyle farm. Miss W^elsh fondly hoped that her mother could visit her, and she so suggested to Carlyle. He replied in these words : " You have misconceived the condition of Scotsbrig and our only possible means of existence there. You talk of your mother visiting us. By day aad night it would astonish her to see this household. Oh, no. Your mother must not visit mine. What good were it ? By an utmost exertion on the part of both they might learn, perhaps, to tolerate each other, more probably to pity and partially dislike each other. Better than mutual tolerance I could anticipate nothing from them. The mere idea of such a visit argued too plaiinly that you hneio nothing of the family circle in which, for my sake, you were ready to take a place." But the torture of being so near and yet wholly separated from her mother was sjjared her. Carlyle' s CARLYLE'S OBTUSENESS. 493 parents both objected to the ijlan, and insisted that a farm-house was no place for a lady brought up as she had been. Their sensible conclusion settled the matter, and it was given up. Carlyle was as much mistaken m Mrs. Welsh as sons-in-law very often are. He did not know her, and his remarks were cruelly unkind. As a matter of fact, the two mothers when they did meet became good friends, and thoroughly respected each other. Wise as he was, he did not know and could not understand the natural feelings of a mother. His perception of woman nature was defective, then as always. He did not at all comprehend the woman he was making unhappy by his want of tact and his ignorance of common things. He proposed one plan after another, and got angry with her because she flatly refused to have her mother leave her house and let him come into it as master. The mother and daughter, more practical and self-denying than he, broke up theii' home at Haddington, where they had lived for twenty years, and moved to Edinburgh, where they rented a cottage in the suburbs of the city. Mrs. Welsh fur- nished it handsomely, and paid the rent and remained there with her daughter until the marriage took place, when she left it. Carlyle had said, in one of his letters to Miss Welsh, that "it is not nature that made men unhappy, but their own despicable perversities." It was his '' des- picable perversity," in this as in many another matter, which made Mrs. Carlyle, after forty years of life with him, say to her young friends, as the sad lesson of her own experience, " My dear, whatever you do, never maiTy a man of genius." 494 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. He assured her at the time that " it was not himself, but the devil speaking out of him, which could utter one harsh word to a heart that so little deserves it." Carlyle's last letter to her before their marriage con- tained this allusion to his mother : " My mother's prayers (to speak with all seriousness) are, I do believe, not wanting either to you or to me, and if the sincere wishes of a true soul can have any virtue, we shall not want a blessing. She bids me send you the kindest message I can contrive, which I send by itself without contrivance. She says she will have one good greet when we set off, and then be at peace." Soon after he was settled at Comely Bank he wrote his mother that the house was a perfect model, fur- nished with every accommodation that heart could de- sire, and that his wife was far better than any wife, and loved him with a devotedness which it was a mys- tery to him how he ever deserved. She, always kind and thoughtful, sent the young housekeepers table sujDplies, and Mrs. Welsh sent them a present of sixty pounds, which Carlyle refused to accept. The wife, in a letter to her mother-in-law, says : " And now let me thank you for the nice eggs and butter, which arrived in best preservation and so opportunely, just as I was lamenting over the emptied cans as one who had no hope. Really, it is most kind in you to be so mindful and helpful of our town wants, and most gratifying to us to see ourselves so cared for." Mrs, Carlyle's insight, as Froude has said, " was like witchcraft ;" she knew intuitively what was wanting to be done, and how to do it. She kept Carlyle in good humor, a task of itself, entertained their many friends, AT CRAIGENPUTTOCK. 495 and managed witli one servant to have one of the tidiest and most comfortable of homes, on the small amount of money Carlyle gave her to spend. The two years spent at Comely Bank were the happiest of Mrs. Carlyle's life. She was troubled about Carlyle' s future, for they were spending their small fortune, and he was unoccupied, or rather was unprofitably occu^ pied. He wrote a novel, which no publisher would accept, and was well-nigh discouraged over his failure to find an avenue to the j)ublic through which he might sustain himself creditably. Always fond of a country life, because of its freedom and its solitude, he began to look about him for a home less expensive than the little cottage they occupied. Naturally he thought of Annandale, and as naturally associated his brother with his future. This brother, Aleck, and his sister Mary took charge "of Craigenputtock when he had made up his mind to take it, and thither he proposed to re- move at once. Craigenputtock, now associated with Carlyle's name forever, belonged to Mrs. Welsh, and so pleased was she with the proposed plan that would bring her daughter to within fifteen miles of her, that she wrote at once offering to put the place in order at her own expense. She was glad to have the Carlyles as tenants, and gratified to have it in her power to make the family happy. The farm itself was sixteen miles from the nearest town and nearest doctor, and cut off from the outer world in winter months by snow and flood.* Carlyle expected to go there shortly after his * Mrs. Carlyle, thirty years after this time, wrote to a friend regard- ing her life at Craigenputtock, and spoke of it as an uncongenial ex- 496 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. brother and sister did, but unexpectedly he was called upon to write an article, and then several for the maga- zines, and he was detained for some months. Mean- while the long-talked- of visit of Mrs. Carlyle to Edin- burgh was made. She had never been beyond Annan- dale, and in all her life had not been inside of any dwelling other than a farmhouse. Her visit extended over a month, and was in some respects the event of her life. Carlyle\s father never went to Edinburgh, al- though he had been urged to do so. Mrs. Carlyle was accompanied by her daughter Jean. Carlyle was to have met them at the station, but was sick in bed, and the trusted friend who was sent as a substitute waited at the wrong place. He tells his father, in a letter announcing their arrival : " Our beloved pilgrims were left to their own resources, and had to pilot their way hither under the guidance of the porter who carried their box. This, however, they accomplished without difficulty or accident, and rejoiced us all by their safe aad, in part at k-ast, unex- pected arrival. " Since then all things have gone on prosperously. Jane has been busy, and still is so, getting ready suitable apparel of bonnets and frocks. My mother has heard Andrew Thomson in his ' braw kirk,' not much to her satisfaction, since ' he had to light four candles before even he could strike.' She has also seen old Mrs. Hope, the Castle of Edinburgh, the Martyrs' Graves, John Knox's house, and who knows how many other wonders, of which I doubt not she will give you a true and full description when she returns. As yet, how- ever, the half has not been seen. The weather has been so stormy that travelling out was difficult, and I have been in no high condition for officiating as guide. In stormy days she smohes along with me, istence at that " savage place, where my two immediate predecessors had gone mad, and the third had taken to drink." MRS. CARLYLE AT EDINBURGH. 497 or sews wearing raiment, or reads the wonderful articles of my writ- ing in the Edinburgh Review. She has also had a glimpse of Francis Jeffrey, the great critic and advocate, and a shake of the hand from a true German doctor. " Nevertheless she is extremely anxious about getting home, and indeed fails no day to tell us several times that she ought to be off. ' She is doing nothing,' she says ; ' and they'll a' be in a bubble o' work ' at home. I tell her she was never idle for two weeks in her life before, and ought therefore to give it a fair trial ; that ' the bubble at home ' will all go on rightly enough in her absence ; that, in short, she should not go this year, but the next. So I am in hopes we shall get her persuaded to stay where she is till after New Year's day, which is now only nine or ten days distant, and then we will let her go in peace. The two Janes and she are all out in the town at present buying muslin for sundry necessary articles of dress which we have persuaded the mother to undertake the wearing of. These may keep her, I hope, in some sort of occupation ; for idle, I see, she cannot and will not be. "We will warn you duly when to expect her. " I trust you will soon be well enough for a journey hither ; for you too, my dear father, must see Edinburgh before we leave it. I have thought of compelling you to come back with me when I come down. I am ever, your affectionate son, " T. Carltle." Describing her visit to his brother John, he says : " I had her at the pier of Leith, and showed her where your ship vanished, and she looked over the blue waters eastward with wettish eyes, and asked the dumb waters 'when he would be back again.' Good mother ! but the time of her departure came on, and she left us stupefied by the magnitude of such an enterprise as riding over eighty miles in the Sir Walter Scott without jumping out of the window, which I told her was the problem. Dear mother ! let us thank God that she is still here in the earth spared for us, and I hope, to see good. I would not exchange her for any ten mothers I have ever seen. Jane (Jean) the less she left behind her, ' to improve her mind.' The creature seems to be doing very fairly, and is well and 498 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. contented. My Jane, T grieve to say, is yet far enough from well, l)ut I hope much from summer weather and a smart pony in the south. She is not by any means an established valetudinarian, yet she seldom has a day of true health, and has not gained strength entirely since you left her." The statement made at tlie close of this letter regard- ing Mrs. Carlyle's health was often reiterated during the Craigenputtock time. The mother of Carlyle watched her from Scotsbrig with anxious fear. She had said that her son was " gQj ill to liv^e with," and she feared for the hapjDiness of his wife. Mrs. Welsh, nearer to her daughter than Mrs. Carlyle, knew of her lonely and hard condition, and yet could not alleviate it. When she was ill she would go to her, but rarely otherwise. Carlyle wished to be alone, and his wife lived in isolation that he might work. The eldest daughter of Mrs. Carlyle, Margaret, died during this time, and her husband's health shortly afterward failed. She never went away from Scotsbrig after the death of her husband except to visit Craigen- 23uttock. Carlyle was not happy away from her a great while at a time ; he visited her frequently, and showed her on all occasions his real heart. She insisted upon being kept informed of the smallest incidents connected with his life. He wrote her from Edinburgh, where he was the winter after his father died, in this strain : " Meanwhile, my dear mother, I beg you again and again to take care of yourself ; especially in this wild, gusty February weather. Consider your welfare not as your own, but as that of others, to whom it is pre- cious beyond price. I hope they are all kind, submis- sive, and helpful to you ; it well beseems them and LETTER FROM CARLYLE, 499 me." Carlyle told lier of his articles that he was writ- ing, of the people he met, -and the i)laces he had been to, and closed his letters with urgent appeals to her to be comforted and contented and to care for her health. One of the last letters written his mother by Carlyle from Craigenputtock is this one, quoted in part, invit- ing her to visit them, and making reference to his bu'thday : " But there is another expedition, my dear mother, to which you are bound, which I hope you are getting ready for. Come up with Austin and Mary to Jean ; stay with her till you rest, sending me up word when ; on Wednesday or any other day I will come driving down and fetch you. In about a week hence, as I calculate, I shall be done with this scribblement, and then we can read together and talk together and walk together. Besides, this, in the horrid winter weather, is a better lodging for you than any other, and we will take better care of you — we promise. The blue room shall be dry as fire can make it ; no such drying, except those you make at Scotsbrig, where on one occasion, as I remember, you spent the whole time of my visit in drying my clothes. Lastly, that when ' you come you may come. ' Jane bids me communicate to Jamie that she wants three stone of meal, but will not take it unless he take pay for it. ' ' And so, dear mother, this scribble must end, as others have done. To-morrow, I believe, is my eight and thirtieth birthday ! You were then young in life : I had not yet entered it. Since then — how much ! how much ! They are in the land of silence (but, while we live, not of forgetfulness !) whom we once knew, and, often with thoughts too deep for words, wistfully ask of their and our Father above that we may again know. God is great ; God is good ! It is written, ' He will wipe away all tears from every eye.' Be it as He wills, not as we wish. These things continually almost dwell with me, loved figures hovering in the background or foreground of my mind. A few years more and we too shall be with them in eter- nity. Meanwhile it is this Time that is ours : let us be busy with it and work, work, for the night cometli. 500 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE " I send you all, young and old, my heart's blessing, and remain as ever, my dear mother, Your affectionate " T. Carltle.'^ Finally, when it was decided to leave the lonely country place on the Dumfriesshire moors and go to London, " burning their ships behind them," as Mrs. Carlyle said, Carlyle wrote his brother that the news of their determination would be a heavy stroke for his mother, and added : " My brother and she are the only ties I have to Scotland. I will tell her that, though at a greater distance, we are not to be dis- united. Regular letters — frequent visits. I will say, who knows but wiiat you and I may yet bring her up to London to pass her old days, waited on by both of us ? Go whither she may, she will have her Bible with her and her faith in God. She is the truest Christian believer I have ever met with ; nay, I might almost say the only true one." While he thought constantly of his mother, who was near him though not with him, he failed to realize that his wife was failing steadily in health. Truly had she said in a letter to her brother-in-law : "I almost wish that T felt more anxiety about our future ; for this composure is not courage^ but diseased indifference. ... It seems as if the problem of living would be immensely simplified to me if I had health. It does require such an effort to keep one' s self from growing quite wicked, while that weary weaver's shuttle is ply- ing between my temples." The six years' imprison- ment for her was at an end, but hers was a shattered constitution, and strange it was that her husband was so utterly blind to her condition when he was so care- ful of his mother's health. He wrote incessantly to the PARTING WITH HIS MOTHER. 501 latter and of her to liis brothers, and was a son whose devotion has never been excelled. When he bade her good-by, in leaving Scotland for London, it was with more grief than he had ever felt in jDarting with her before, because of the distance that would be between them. He wrote his brother John : " With regard to our dear mother, I bid you comfort yourself with the assurance that she is moderately well. She adjusts herself with the old heroism to the new circumstances ; agrees that I must come hither ; parts from me with the stillest face, more touching than if it had been all beteared. I said to Alick, as we drove up the Pur- damstdwn brae that morning, that I thought, if I had all the mothers I ever saw to choose from, I would have chosen my own. She is to have Harry,* and can ride very well on him, will go down a while to sea-bathing at Mary's, and will spend the summer tolerably enough. For winter I left her the task of spinning me a plaid dress- ing-gown, with which, if she get too soon done, she may spin another for you. She has books, above all her Booh. She trusts in God, and shall not be put to shame. While she was at Craigenputtock I made her train me to two song-tunes ; and we often sang them together, and tried them often again in coming down into Annandale. One of them I actually found myself humming with a strange cheerfully pathetic feeling when I first came in sight of huge smoky Babylon — ' For there's seven foresters in yon forest, And them I want to see, see, And them I want to see.' I wrote her a little note yesterday, and told her this." The wife followed her husband shortly afterward, and the old mother, brave to the last, accompanied her to Annan, and stood on the pier waving her handkerchief so long as the vessel was in sight. So soon as the pair were settled in their now historic home in Cheyne * Mrs. Carlyle's pony. 503 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. Row, Carlyle wrote the minutest description of it to his mother, who was curious about the details. The mother was most kind to Mrs. Carlyle in those last days at Craigenputtock. The latter tells a part of her goodness in a letter she sent her from London. She says : " My dear Mother : Could I have supposed it possible that any mortal was so stupid as not to feel disappointed in receiving a letter from me instead of my husband, I should have written to you very long ago. But while this humility becomes me, it is also my duty (too long neglected) to send a little adjunct to my husband's letters, just to assure you ' with my own hand ' that I continue to love you amid the hubbub of this ' noble city ' just the same as in the quiet of Craigenputtock, and to cherish a grateful recollection of your many kindnesses to me ; especially of that magnanimous purpose to ' sit at my bedside ' through the night preceding my departure, ' that I might be sure to sleep.' I certainly shall never forget that night, and the several preceding and following : but for the kindness and helpfulness shown me on all hands I must have traiked (perished), one would suppose. I had every reason to be thankful then to Prov- idence and my friends, and I have had the same reason since." Life in London was begun, and Carlyle' s fierce apprenticeship was nearly over. He found his place and filled it, and long before his mother died she knew that her eldest born had become a great man. She had followed him from his first effort at writing, studying what he wrote, and learning what she could of the subjects that interested him. President McCosh, of Princeton, in wTiting of Carlyle, says that his mother caused him to write his Life of Cromwell. He says Carlyle gave this account of it : " My mither ay argued that one who prayed as Cromwell did must have been a gude man. But whan I began to inquire what ithers DEATH OF MRS. CARLYLE. 503 thocht of him, I fand everybody against him. The Tories, of coorse, hated him, as he had upturned settled government. Even the Whigs were against him, as he carried things too far. We could not expect churchmen to like a leader of the sectaries. Even dissenters were afraid to stand by him. They have heaped filth on him, heap upon heap, thirty feet high. But I determined to go through it a", and as I dug I came upon him and found there the face of a man. I have shown that my mither was richt and the haill warld wrang." Mrs. Carlyle was a religious woman of honest and unchanging faith, but she lacked the softening grace that belonged to her daughter-in-law, and to Mrs. Welsh, the latter 's mother. Carlyle, in speaking of his wife' s refinement, after her death remarks upon the dif- ference between his mother and her, and says : " Did I elsewhere meet in the world a soul so direct from the Empyrean ? My dear old mother was perhaps equally pious, in the Roman sense ; in the British she was much more so ; but starry flashes of this kind she had not — from her education she could not." The good old mother who had been so much to her son died in 1853, and the event is thus i)ictured by that son : " Never was a more perfect politeness of heart, beautifully shining through its naive bits of embarrassments and simple peasant forms. A pious mother, if there ever was one : pious to God the Maker and to all He had made. Intellect, humor, softest pity, love, and, before all, perfect veracity in thought, in word, mind, and action ; these were her characteristics, and had been now for above eighty-three years, in a humbly diligent, beneficent, and often toilsome and suffer- ing life, which right surely had not been in vain for herself or others. The end was now evidently nigh, nor could we even wish, on those terms, much longer. Her state of utter feebleness and totally ruined health last year (1852) had been tragically plain to me on leav- ing for Germany. For the first time even my presence could give no pleasure, her head now so heavy. 504 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. " Friday morning, December 23d, 1853, got to the Kirtlebridge Station ; a gray dreary element, cold, dim, and sorrowful to eye and to soul. Earth spotted with frozen snow on the thaw as I walked solitary tlie two miles to Scotsbrig ; my own thought and question, will the departing still be there ? Vivid are my recollections there ; painful still and mournful exceedingly ; but I need not record them. 3Iy poor old mother still knew me (or at times only half knew me) ; had no disease, but much misery; was sunk in weakness, weariness, and pain. She resembled her old self, thought I, as the last depart- ing moon-sickle does the moon itself, about to vanish in the dark waters. Sad, infinitely sad, if also sublime. ... At midnight were her last words to me, tone almost kinder than usual, and as if to make amends, ' Good-night, and thank ye ! ' John had given her some drops of laudanum. In about an hour after she fell asleep, and spoke or awoke no more. All Sunday she laj'^ sleeping, strongly breathing, face grand and statue-like ; about 4 p.m. the breath, with- out a struggle, scarcely with abatement for some seconds, fled away whence it had come. Sunday, Christmas Day, 1853. My age fifty- eight ; hers eighty-three. " Afterward, in writing on the subject of her going from him. he used these words : " A mother dead ; it is an epoch for us all ; and to each one of us it comes with a pungency as if peculiar, a look as of originality and singularity." After the mother was gone, Carlyle's visits to Scot- land became rarer. His brothers and sisters were married, and they did not need him as in the old days. His fame too had grown, and he was living a busy life in London, where he continued to reside. His wife's healtli failed rapidly the last years of her life, and in 1868 she died. Carlyle realized that she w^as ill, but her death was to him ''like a thunder- bolt from skies all blue." She died suddenly while CARLYLE'S REMORSE. 505 riding alone in Hyde Park. The coachman noticed that the occupant of the carriage was strangely silent, and after looking through the glass and seeing her sit- ting in the same position he accosted a passer-by, who confirmed his fears. She was leaning back in. one cor- ner of the carriage, dead. After her death Carlyle suffered acute remorse, and presented a most pathetic picture, sitting alone in his darkened house, recalling her sacrifices and sufferings, and trying by acknowledgments and rejientance to make atonement to her. He as freely condemned him- self as a wholly honest and now wholly undeceived man could. All her letters he obtained, and carefully went over them, annotating them, omitting nothing, however severely it might reflect upon himself. He had greatly sinned against her in his blindness, but when the bitter truth became clear, he braved the cen- sure of the world, which had crowned him the Sage of Chelsea, and humbled himself in the dust. Mrs. Carlyle was a radiant, gracious woman, born to love and be loved, and her life as Carlyle' s wife was a mistake, since it resulted in heart-break for her. She made the sad acknowledgment that she was " sad at times, at all times sad as death, but that I am used to, and don't mind ;" and again these pathetic words to her husband were wrung from her, " To see you con- stantly discontented, and as much so with me, appar- ently, as with all other things, when I have neither the strength nor sjjirit to bear up against your discon- tent, nor the obtuseness to be indifferent to it — that has done me more harm than you have the least notion of. You have not the least notion what a killing 506 THE MOTHER OF CARLYLE. thought it is to have put into one's heart, gnawing there day and night, that one ought to be deacJ, since one can no longer make the same exertions aw formerly ; that one was taken ' for better,' not by any means ' for worse ;' and in fact, that the only feasible and dignified thing that remains for one to do is to just die, and be done with it." Poor Jeanie Carlyle ! who had been the idol of her father and her mother, the beloved of Edward Irving, the admired friend of Darwin, Lord Jeffrey, and Mill, the prized acquaintance of Tennyson, De Quincey, Mazzini, Lady Russell, Brewster, Sir William Hamil- ton, and a host of other brilliant men and women, was an unappreciated wife, and a miserable one for many years. Of her Leigh Hunt wrote that charming little poem entitled " Jenny Kissed Me." " Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in ; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in. " Say I'm weary, say I'm sad. Say that health and wealth have missed me ; Say I'm lonely, dull, but add, Jenny kissed me." An affectionate heart and brilliant intellect, a grace- ful and pleasing person and genial manners had this woman, whose fame is inalienably linked with the best minds of the England of her day, and whose personal- ity is in beautiful contrast to that of her husband. THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. The mother of Samuel Johnson " the G-reat," as he deserves to be called in distinction from all others of his name, we can know but incidentally through her son. He was born in Lichfield, on the 18th of Sep- tember, 1709. His father, Michael Johnson, w^as a bookseller, highly respected by the clergy of the cathedral and his fellow-townsmen. For a time he was one of the magistrates of Lichfield, and in the year of his son's birth he was sheriff of the county of Stafford. He was a High Churchman and a Tory, and reconciled himself with difficulty to taking the oaths to the reigning dynasty. He was a man of consider- able mental and physical power, but tormented by hypochondriacal tendencies, which were afterward more painfully developed in his son. Johnson left school at sixteen, and spent two years at home, probably assisting his father in the book- store, or shop, as it would be called in England. He now began to feel the pressure of poverty. His father's affairs were getting into disorder. He opened book-stalls at Birmingham and Uttoxeter, in addition to his central store in Lichfield. One day the elder Johnson, who was confined to his bed by illness, begged his son to take his place and sell books at the stall in Uttoxeter. Pride, which was always strong in 508 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. the son's character, made him refuse. Fifty years afterward Dr. Johnson was staying at Lichfield, in which a few of the contemj)oraries of his youth still lived. He was missing one morning from the break- fast-table, and did not return until supper-time. When asked where he had been, he told the story that fiity years before, that very day, he had been guilty of his only act of disobedience to his father. "To do away with the sin of this disobedience, I this day went in a post-chaise to Uttoxeter, and going into the market at the time of high business, uncovered my head and stood with it bare an hour before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by and the inclemency of the weather, a penance by which I trust I have propitiated Heaven for this only instance, I believe, of contumacy to my father." A romantic story which is well authenticated is told of Michael Johnson's early life, before he married. While he was serving his apprenticeship at Leek, in Staffordshke, a young woman fell passionately in love with him. Although he did not return her affection, she followed him to Lichfield, where he had settled as a bookseller and stationer, and took lodgings opposite to the house in which he stayed. AVlien told that the young woman's mind was beginning to give way under the weight of this unrequited affection, Michael Johnson generously went to her and made her an offer of his hand. But it was too late. She actually died of love. She was buried in the cathedral of Lichfield ; and he, with tender regard, placed a stone over her grave with this inscription : REMEMBRANCE OF HIS MOTHER. 509 here lies the body op Mrs. Elizabeth Blaney, a Stranger : She departed this life 20th of September, 1694. In the days of Ms jprosperity, the chaplain of Lord Gower wrote to Michael Johnson, in a letter dated ''Trentham, St. Peter's Day, 1716" : " Johnson, the Lichfield librarian, is now here ; he propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth knowledge to its just height ; all the clergy here are his pupils, and suck all they have from him." To his father the literary proclivities of Samuel John- son are clearly traceable. His mother, although not bookish, was sensible and pious, and of excellent judg- ment. One of Samuel Johnson's Lichfield school- fellows being asked if Mrs. Johnson was not proud of her son, replied that " she had too much good sense to be vain, but she knew her son's value." Johnson himself once mentioned that he remembered distinctly his mother telling him, when he was a little child in bed with her, that ' ' heaven was a place to which good people went, and hell a place to which bad people went." This was the first time, he says, that he had ever heard of either j)lace, and to imj)ress the informa- tion on his memory his mother sent him to repeat it to Thomas Jackson, their man-servant. Much of the strong religious faith which characterized Dr. Johnson in after-life may have originated in similar teachings imparted to him by his mother as he nestled in her bosom when a child. Although both his father and his mother possessed sterling qualities, they do not seem to have lived in 510 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. mucli sympathy with each other's thoughts. "My father and mother," he says himself, " had not much happiness from each other. They seldom conversed, for mv father could not bear to talk of his affairs ; and my mother being unacquainted with books, cared not to talk of anything else. Had my mother been more literate, they had been better companions. She might have sometimes introduced her unwelcome topic with more success, if she could have diversified her conver- sation. Of business she had no distinct conception ; and therefore her discourse was composed only of com- plaint, fear, and suspicion. Neither of them ever tried to calculate the i^rofits of trade or the expenses of liv- ing. My mother concluded that we were poor, because we lost by some of our trades ; but the truth was that my father, having in the early part of his life con- tracted debts, never had trade sufficient to enable him. to pay them and to maintain his family ; he got some- thing, but not enough. It was not till about 1768 that I thought to calculate the returns of my father's trade, and, by that estimate, his probable profits. This I be- lieve my parents never did." The testimony of his schoolfellow that his mother " knew her son's value," added to his own testimony as to her early religious teachings, is sufficient proof that the mother, not less than the father, watched her boy's progress at the different schools he attended, with parental and anxious interest. His progress more than Justified their highest anticipations. The first school he was sent to was what was called in England a Dame School, because its teacher was a woman. A widow named Oliver kept this particular school. A JOHNSON'S TEACHERS. 511 servant used to take the little boy to Dame Oliver s and carry Mm home again. One afternoon the servant did not reach the school at the proper time, and little Sam set out on his homeward 'journey alone. It was no easy road for him, as his short-sightedness com- pelled him often to stoop down and examine any obstacle before he stepped over it. But on he strode manfully until, happening to look behind him, he saw his schoolmistress following him at a respectful dis- tance. This seemed to him so derogatory to his powers of self-government that he ran back and beat her with his little fists. One can well believe it, as this independent spirit and self-reliance was his char- acteristic through life. His next teacher was a master whom he used familiarly to speak of as Tom Brown, adding, "He published a spelling-book, and dedicated it to the Uni- verse ; but I fear no copy of it can now be had." He began the study of Latin with Mr. Hawkins, the usher of Lichfield Grammar School, a man whora he describes as "very skilful in his little way." Two years afterward he passed into the hands of Mr. Hun- ter, the head-master, who, according to Johnson's own account, ' ' was very severe, and wrong-headedly severe. He used," said he, " to beat us unmercifully ; and he did not distinguish between ignorance and negligence ; for he would beat a boy equally for not knowing a thing as for neglecting to know it. He would ask a boy a question, and if he did not answer it, he would beat him, without considering whether he had an opportunity of knowing how to answer it. For in- stance, he would call up a boy and ask him Latin for 512 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. candlestick, wliicli the boy would not expect to be asked. Now, sir, if a boy could answer every ques- tion, there would be no need of a master to teach him." But Mr. Hunter was a good Latin scholar, and Johnson was obliged to confess that his severity was useful in his own case. " My master," he says, " whipped me very well. Without that, sir, I should have done nothing.'' With every stroke of the rod, the master used to pronounce the solemn benediction, " Remember, I do this to save you from the gallows." Mr. Hunter had reason to be proud of his scholar, for Johnson was the undisputed head scholar of Lichfield Grammar School. His schoolfellows readily acknowl- edged his supremacy, and three of them used to call for him every morning and carry him to school, an onerous performance, considering the massiveness of his limbs even when a boy. We do not know what Johnson's mother thought of the flagellations inflicted uj^on him by his school- master. Mothers in those days more generally ap- proved of whippings than they do now, when appeals to the understanding and the will-power even of chil- dren have been found to be " a more excellent way.'' But that she attended to his religious instruction ac- cording to her lights is attested by himself. " Sun- day," he says, " was a heavy day to me when I w^as a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read ' The Whole Duty of Man,' from a great part of which I could derive no instruction. When, for in- stance, I had read the chapter on theft, which from my infancy I had been taught was wrong, I was no more convinced that theft was wrong than before ; so there HIS EARLY MAXIM. 513 was no accession of knowledge." He further adds, " I fell into dn inattention to religion, or an indifference about it, in my ninth year. The church at Lichfield, in which we had a seat, wanted reparation, so I was to go and find a seat in other churches ; and having bad eyes, and being awkward about this, I used to go and read in the fields on Sunday. This habit continued till my fourteenth year ; I then became a sort of lax talker against religion, for I did not much tMnk against it." The truths impressed upon him by his mother no doubt kept alive the spark of religion in his heart. He kept his little diary from his earliest years. Deep must have been the thoughts, precocious the learning, and strong the will of one who, when a child of ten, made this entry in it, dated October, 1719 : '■'■ Desidixe naledlxi ; sirenis istius cantibus surdam postJiac aurem ohversurusy " I have bidden fare- well to sloth, and intend henceforth to turn a deaf ear to the strains of that siren." After an interval spent at the house of a relative, Johnson was, at the age of fifteen, sent to Stourbridge School, in Worcestershire. The master, a Mr. Went- worth, was, he says, "a very able man, but an idle man, and to me very severe ; but I cannot blame him much. I was then a big boy ; he saw I did not rever- ence him, and that he could get no honor by me. I had brought enough with me to carry me through ; and all I should get at his school would be ascribed to my own labor, or to my former master. Yet he taught me a great deal. " Of the difference in the sort of prog- ress he made in the two schools of Lichfield and Stourbridge he used to say : " At one, I learned much 514 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. in the school, but little from the master ; in the other I learned much from the master, but little in the school." "Of the power of his memory," writes Boswell, ' ' for which he was all his life eminent to a degree almost incredible, the following early instance was told me in his presence at Lichfield, in 1776, by his stepdaughter, Mrs. Lucy Porter, as related to her by his mother. When he was a child in petticoats, and had learned to read, Mrs. Johnson one morning put the Common Prayer-book into his hands, pointed to the collect for the day, and said, ' Sam, you must get this by heart. ' She went up stairs, leaving him to study it : but by the time she had reached the second floor, she heard him following her. ' What's the mat- ter V said she. ' I can say it, ' he replied ; and re- peated it distinctly, though he could not have read it more than twice. ' ' The same famous, though sometimes too partial biographer tells us that Johnson, when a child, had the misfortune to be much afiiicted with the scrofula, or king's evil, which disfigured a countenance well formed, and hurt his visual nerves so much that he did not see at all with one of his eyes, though its appear- ance was little different from that of the other. There is among his prayers one inscribed ''When miy eye was restored to its use.^'' " Which ascertains a defect that many of his friends knew he had, though I never perceived it. I supposed him to be only near-sighted, and, indeed, I must observe that in no other respect could I discern any defect in his vision ; on the con- trary, the force of his attention and perceptive quick- TOUCHED BY QUEEN ANNE. 515 ness made him see and distinguish all manner of objects, whether of nature or of art, with a nicety that is rarely to be found. When he and I were travelling in the Highlands of Scotland, and I pointed out to him a mountain which I observed resembled a cone, he cor- rected my inaccuracy, by showing me that it was in- deed pointed at the top, but that one side of it was larger than the other. And the ladies with whom he was acquainted agree that no man was more nicely and minutely critical in the elegance of female dress. .... It has been said that he contracted this grievous malady from his nurse. His mother yielded to the superstitious notion, which, it is wonderful to think, prevailed so long in this country, as to the virtue of the regal touch — a notion which our kings en- couraged, and to which a man of such inquiry and such judgment as Carte could give credit — and carried him to London, where he was actually touched by Queen Anne. Mrs. Johnson, indeed, as Mr. Hector informed me, acted by the advice of the celebrated Sir John Floyer, then a physician in Lichfield. Johnson used to talk of this very frankly ; and Mrs. Piozzi has pre- served his very picturesque description of the scene, as it remained upon his fancy. Being asked if he could remember Queen Anne, ' he had, ' he said ' a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn, recollection of a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood. ' This touch, how- ever, was without any effect. I ventured to say to him, in allusion to the political principles in which he was educated, and of which he ever retained some odor, that ' his mother had not carried him far enough, she should have taken him to Rome.' " Tlie reference 516 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHKSON. in Boswell's remark is not to the pope or the Roman Catholic religion, bnt to the genuine heir of the throne of the Stuarts, who was then resident at Rome, Johnson was only thirty months old when his mother took him to London to be touched by Queen Anne. During this visit, he tells us, his mother purchased for him a small sUver cup and spoon. "The cup," he adds touchingly, " was one of the last pieces of plate which dear Tetty (his wife) sold in our distress. I have now the spoon. She bought at the same time two tea- spoons, and, till my manhood, she had no more." Dr. Johnson spent three years at Pembroke College, Oxford, when jDOverty compelled him to leave it and return to Lichfield, in 1731, and his father died in December of that year. His state of poverty when he died appears from an entry in Latin which Johnson made in his diary on the 15th of July, 1732, and which, translated into English, runs : " I laid by eleven guineas on this day, when I received twenty pounds, being all that I have reason to hope for out of my father's effects, previous to the death of my mother, an event which I pray God may be very remote. I now therefore see that I must make my own fortune. Meanwhile 1 must take care that the powers of my mind be not debilitated by poverty, and that indigence do not force me into any criminal act. ' ' Samuel Johnson's ideas of reverence to parents and of the special affection which he owed to his mother would find little favor with the young men of the present day. He would not marry, although he was then nearly twenty-six years of age, without his mother's consent. Mrs. Jolmson coukl hardly think LETTER TO HIS MOTHER. 517 tlie match a suitable one, but she loved her son too well to refuse her blessing on it. In the month of January, 1759, Johnson's mother died, seven years after the loss of his wife, of whom we shall speak presently. He writes to his aged parent as soon as he heard of her illness : To Mrs. Johnson, in Lichfield. " January 13, 1759. " Honored Madam : The account which Miss [Porter] gives me of your health pierces my heart. God comfort and preserve you, and save you for the sake of Jesus Christ. " I would have Miss read to you from time to time the Passion of our Saviour, and sometimes the sentences in the Communion Service, beginning, ' Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ' " I have just now read a physical book, which inclines me to think that a strong infusion of the bark would do you good. Do, dear mother, try it. " Pray, send me your blessing, and forgive all that. I have done amiss to you. And whatever you would have done, and what debts you would have paid first, or anything else that you would direct, let Miss put it down ; I shall endeavor to obey you. " I have got twelve guineas to send you, but unhappily am at a loss how to send it to-night. If I cannot send it to-night, it will come by the next post. " Pray do not omit anything mentioned in this letter. God bless you forever and ever. " I am your dutiful son, Sam. .Johnson." The Miss Porter alluded to in this letter was John- son's stepdaughter, with whom, according to some of his biographers, he was in love before he mamed her mother. Some of his letters in relation to his mother's last illness and death are addressed to Miss Porter 518 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. herself. It may be noticed that Bos well writes of her as Mrs., but " Mistress," of which Mrs. is an abbrevia- tion, was used at that period of single as well as of married ladies. Miss Porter lived with Johnson's mother. To Miss Portek at Mrs. Johnson's, in Lichfield. "My Dear Miss : I think myself obliged to you beyond all ex- pression of gratitude for your care of my dear mother. God grant it may not be without success. Tell Kitty that I shall never forget her tenderness for her mistress. Whatever you can do, continue to do. My heart is very full. " I hope you received twelve guineas on Monday. I found a way of sending them by means of the Postmaster, after I had written my letter, and hope they came safe. I will send you more in a few days. God bless you all. I am, my dear, " Your most obliged and most humble servant, " Sam. Johnson." " Over the leaf is a letter to my mother." "January Ifi, 1759. " Dear Honored Mother : Your weakness affects me beyond what I am willing to communicate to you. I do not think you unfit to face death, but I know not how to bear the thought of losing you. Endeavor to do all you can for yourself. Eat as much as you can. " I pray often for you, do you pray for me. I have nothing to add to my last letter. I am, dear mother, " Your dutiful son, Sam. Johnson." To Mrs. Johnson, in Lichfield. "January 18, 1759. " Dear Honored Mother : I fear you are too ill for long letters ; therefore I will only tell you, you have from me all the regard that can possibly subsist in the heart. I pray God to bless you for ever- more, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. " Let Miss write to me every post, however short. I am, dear mother. Your dutiful son, " Sam. Johnson." DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. 519 To Miss Porter, at Mrs. Johnson's, in Lichfield. " January 20, 1759. " Dear Miss : I will, if it be possible, come down to you. God grant that I may yet find my dear mother breathing and sensible. Do not tell her, lest I disappoint her. If I miss to write next post, I am on the road. I am, my dearest Miss, " Your most humble servant, Sam. Johnson." On the other side : " Dear Honored Mother : Neither your condition nor your char- acter make it fit for me to say much. You have been the best mother, and I believe the best woman .in the world. I thank you for your indulgence to me, and beg forgiveness of all that I have done ill, and all that I have omitted to do well. God grant you his Holy Spirit, and receive you to everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. Lord Jesus receive your spirit. Amen. " I am, dear, dear mother, " Your dutiful son, Sam. Johnson." Among his " Prayers and Meditations'^ we find the following prayer on this occasion : '' Almighty God, Merciful Father, in whose hands are life and death, sanctify unto me the sorrow which I now feel. For- gme me wJiatever I liave done unkindly to tny mother^ and whatever I have omitted to do kindly. Make me to remember her good precepts and good example, and reform my life according to thy Holy Word." Mrs. Johnson probably died on the 20th or 21st of the month. Her age was ninety-one years, and she was buried on the day when the next letter was written : To Miss Porter, in Lichfield. "January 23, 1759. " You will conceive my sorrow for the loss of my mother — of the best mother. If she were to live again, surely I should behave better 520 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. to her. But she is happy, and what is past is now nothing to her ; and for me, since I cannot repair my faults to her, I hope repentance will efface them. I return you and all those that have been good to her my sincerest thanks, and pray God to repay you all with infinite advantage. Write to me. I shall send a bill of twenty pounds in a few days, which I thought to have brought to my mother ; but God suffered it not, I have not power or composure to say much more. God bless you, and bless us all. I am, dear Miss, " Your affectionate, humble servant, Sam. Johnson," To pay the expenses of his mother's funeral and a few debts she had left, Johnson wrote his " Rasselas," which was published in the spring of 1759, He com- posed it in the evenings of one week, sent it to the press in portions as it was written, and never looked at it again until many years afterward, when he found it accidentally in a chaise, and read it eagerly. He re- ceived for this work one hundred pounds, and, on its reaching a second edition, twenty-five pounds more. In the summer of 1762 the young King George the Third, on the advipe of the Prime Minister, Lord Bute, bestowed the pension of three hundred pounds a year upon Johnson for life, which relieved him henceforth of all embarrassment about pecuniary matters. In the following year he was first introduced to his future biographer, Boswell. Some of Dr, Johnson's biographers give the year of his marriage as 1734, others as 1735, but all agree that the day and month were the 9th of July, His wife was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow, whose baptismal register shows her to have been born on the 4th of February, 1688-9. The discrepancy as to the jenr doubtless arises from what was known as the " old AN UNEQUAL MARRIAGE. 521 ■ style" and " new style." As Johnson speaks of hav- ing passed eighteen years with her in the married state, and as she is said to have been in her forty- eighth year when they married, the statement of Bos- well that she was double his age must have been an ex- aggeration. Leslie Stephen, in the " English Men of Letters" series, writes that "having no money and no prospects, Johnson naturally married. The attractions of the lady were not very manifest to others than her husband. She was the widow of a Birmingham mercer named Porter. Her age at the time (1735) of the second marriage was forty -eight, the bridegroom being not quite twenty-six."" The notes of Edward Malone to Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson" tell us that " though there was a great disparity of years between her and Dr. Johnson, she was not quite so old as is here represented, being only at the time of her mar- riage in her forty-eighth year." Bos well gives the year of her marriage to Johnson as 1734, Leslie as 1735, and the latter, as we have seen, makes her to have been in her forty-ninth instead of her forty- eighth year. At all events, the disparity of their ages was such that she was old enough to be his mother. Such unequal marriages create at first an unpleasant feeling, especially if we accept Leslie Stephen's sug- gestion that Johnson married Mrs. Porter for the sake of the small fortune of eight hundred pounds which she possessed. Johnson himself, however, always declared that he married her for love, and that his love was returned. Leslie Stephen adds that "the biog- rapher's eye was not fixed upon Johnson till after his wife' s death, and we have little in the way of authentic 522 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. description of her person and character. Garrick, who had known her, said that she was very fat, with cheeks colored both by paint and cordials, flimsy and fantastic in her dress, and affected in her manners. She is said to have treated her husband with some con- tempt, adoj^ting the airs of an antiquated beauty, which he returned by elaborate deference. Garrick used his wonderful powers of nnmicry to make fun of the uncouth caresses of the husband, and the courtly Beauclerc used to provoke the smiles of his audience by repeating Johnson's assertion that " it was a love- match on both sides." Before attributing mean motives to Johnson, whose whole character belies the charges, we ought to remem- ber that his physical peculiarities would have given him no chance of an alliance with youth and beauty. To understand this, we have only to recall his appear- ance and idiosyncrasies at the time. ' ' The morbid melancholy," says Bos well, " which was lurking in his constitution, and to which we may ascribe those par- ticularities, and that aversion to regular life, which at a very early period marked his character, gathered such strength in his twentieth year as to afflict him in a dreadful manner. While he was at Lichfield, in the college vacation of the year 1729, he felt himself over- whelmed with a horrible hypochondria, with perpetu- al irritation, fretfuiness, and impatience, and with a dejection, gloom, and despair which made existence misery. From tliis dismal malady he never afterward was perfectly relieved, and all his labors and all his enjoyments were but temporary interruptions of its baleful influence. How wonderful, how unsearchable A DEFECTIVE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 523 are the ways of God ! Johnson, who was blessed with all the powers of genius and understanding in a degree far above the ordinary state of human nature, w^as at the same time visited ^ith a disorder so afflictive, that they who know it by dire experience will not envy his exalted endowments. That it was, in some degree, occasioned by a defect in his nervous system, that in- explicable part of our frame, appears highly probable, . . . But let not little men triumph upon knowing that Johnson was an Hypocliondrlac^ was subject to what the learned, philosophical, and pious Dr. Cheyne has so well treated under the title of ' The English Malady.' Though he suffered severely from it, he was not therefore degraded. The powers of his great mind might be troubled, and their full exercise sus- pended at times ; but the mind itself was ever entire. As a proof of this, it is only necessary to consider that when he was at the very worst, he composed that state of his own case, which showed an uncommon vigor, not only of fancy and taste, but of judgment. I am aware that he himself was too ready to call such a comfjlaint by the name of rriadness ; in conformity with which notion, he has traced its gradations, with exquisite nicety, in one of the chapters of his ' Rasselas.' But there is surely a clear distinction between a disorder which affects only the imagination and spirits, while the judgment is sound, and a disorder by which the judgment itself is impaired. ... To Johnson, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his reason, the disturbance or obscuration of that facultv was the evil most to be dreaded. In- sanity, therefore, was the object of his most dismal 524 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. apprehension ; and lie fancied himself seized by it, or approaching to it, at the very time when he was giving proofs of a more than ordinary soundness and vigor of judgment. ' ' Boswell says that he inherited the ' ' vile melancholy," as Johnson himself called it, which pro- cures " a weariness of life, an unconcern about those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general sensation of gloomy wretchedness," from his father. Such was the suitor of the Widow Porter — a voune: man of wonderful powers of mind and learning, but ill-dressed and uncouth in manners ; lean and bony, with the scars of scrofula deeply marked upon his face, with haii' straight and stiff, for he had not then taken to a wig, and above all addicted to " convulsive starts and odd gesticulations." Some have imagined that he had touches of St. Vitus' s dance, but his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was an acute observer, attributed them to bad habit, as did Johnson himself. " He could sit motionless," says Sk Joshua, " when he was told to do so, as well as any other man." Accord- ing to this view, Johnson's extraordinary motions were peculiar effects resulting from the "bad habit" of absent-mindedness and of accompanying his thoughts ' when alone with grotesque action. The following anecdote is in Sir Joshua Reynolds's own words : "When he and I took a journey together into the West, we visited the late Mr. Banks, of Dorsetshire ; the conversation turning upon pictures, which Johnson could not well see, he retired to a corner of the room, stretching out his right leg as far as he could reach before him, then bringing up his left leg, and stretch- WIDOW PORTER'S OPINION. 525 iug his right still further on. The old gentleman, observing him, went up to him and in a very courteous manner assured him, though it was not a new house, the flooring was perfectly safe. The doctor started from Ms reverie, like a pejson waked out of his sleep, but spoke not a word." Hogarth first met Johnson at the house of Richardson, the author of ''Pamela," who has been called, in competition with Fielding, "the father of the English novel."" While the two were conversing, Hogarth observed a person standing at a window in the room, shaking his head, and rolling himself about in a strange, ridiculous manner. He thought the man must be an idiot, but when he struck into the Conversation Hogarth was confounded at his wit and wisdom. When a young girl once asked Dr. Johnson, " Pray, sir, why do you make such strange gestures V ' he replied, ' ' From bad habit. Do you, my dear, take care to guard against ' bad habits.' " Whatever may have been the rotundity of Widow Porter s form, or her rubicund complexion, she proved herself no fool by remarking to her daughter, after their first introduction, " This is the most sensible man I ever met in my life." Bos well remarks truly : " In a man whom religious education has secured from licentious indulgences, the passion of love, when once it has seized him, is exceedingly strong ; being unim- paired by dissipation and totally concentrated in one object." This was the strange first love that attached Johnson indissolubly, even by death, to a common- place and perhaps vulgar woman so many years his senior. Yet we have the account given to Lady Knight by Mrs. Williams, an intimate friend of the 526 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. Johnsons, and an inmate of their home for many years, that Mrs. Johnson "had a good understanding, and great sensibility, though inclined to be satuical. Her first husband died insolvent ; her sons were much dis- gusted with her for her second marriage, perhaps because they, being struggling to get advanced in life, were mortified to think she had allied herself to a man who had not any visible means of being useful to them ; however, she always retained her affection for them. While they [Dr. and Mrs. Johnson] resided in Gough Square, her son, the officer, knocked at the door, and asked the maid if her mistress was at home. She answered, ' Yes, sir, but she is sick in bed.' ' Oh,' says he, 'if it's so, tell her that her son Jarvis called to know how she did,' and was going away. The maid begged she might run up to tell her mistress, and without attending his answer, left him. Mrs. Johnson, enraptured to hear that her son was below, desired the maid to tell him she longed to embrace him. When the maid descended the gentleman was gone, and poor Mrs. Johnson was much agitated by the adventure ; it was the only time he ever made an effort to see her." Dr. Johnson did all he could to con- sole his wife, but told Mrs. Williams, " Her son is uni- formly undutiful ; so I conclude that, like many other sober men, he might once in his life be drunk, and in that fit nature got the better of his pride." One can understand that the disparity of the mar- riage might offend her sons, but Jolinson's character and his devotion to their mother ought to have recon- ciled them to it. She had done nothing to deserve such unfilial neglect and Johnson's satirical remark was A BRIDAL TOUR. 527 a just one. His affection was compensation to her, however, for the unkindness of her childi'en. It aiDpears that the marriage ceremony was per- formed at Derby and not at Birmingham, where the lady resided, for what reason we do not ascertain, but possibly from the fear of opposition or annoyance from her sons. The bride and bridegroom set out on horse- back, and Boswell had from Johnson himself the foUouing curious account of their journey to church upon the nuptial morn : " Sir, she had read the old romances, and had got into her head the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first she told me that I rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me ; and, when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and comi)lained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the slave of caprice ; and I resolved to begin as I meant to end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I was sure she could not miss it ; and I contrived that she should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed her to be in tears," An old proverb tells us that " the quarrels of lovers are the renewing of love." There was no quarrel between Johnson and his bride, but no doubt she loved him the better for this playful rebuke of her imperi- ousness. We need not trace the struggles of the newly married pair, in Johnson's unfortunate experiments of keei)ing school and subsequently becoming the ill-paid drudge of booksellers in London. To that world's centre he set out about three years after his marriage, accompanied 528 THE MOTHER AXD WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. by his old friend and pupil, David Garrick. He left his wife at Lichfield till he could make a home for her. The journey of the great philosopher and great actor of the future was begun on the 2d of March, 1737. Garrick used to say of it, "We rode and tied." •Johnson once remarked in company, trying to fix the date of some event, " That was the year when I came to London with twopence-halfpenny in my pocket." Garrick, overhearing him, exclaimed, " Eh ! what do you say ? with twopence-halfpenny in your pocket V ' Johnson replied : " Why, yes ; when I came with two- l)ence-halfpenny in my jDOcket, and thou, Davy, with three halfpence in thine." He carried w^ith him also his unpublished tragedy Irene. A bookseller, on learning that he intended to live by literature, eyed his huge frame attentively and said, " You had better buy a porter's knot." Johnson, well schooled in poverty, had now to prac- tice rigid economy. " I dined," says he, "very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pine- Apple, in New Street, just by. Several of them had travelled. They expected to meet every day ; but did not know one another's names. It used to cost the rest a shilling, for they drank wine ; but I had a cut of meat for sixpence, and bread for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny ; so that I w^as quite well served, nay, better than the rest, for they gave the waiter noth- ing." During his previous two years' residence at Birmingham he had met an Irish painter who had lived in London and brought economy to a fine point. He told Johnson, " Thirty pounds are enough to enable a man to live in London without being contemptible. I allow ten pounds for clothes and linen. You may live A HARD STRUGGLE. 529 in a garret at eighteenpence a week ; few people will inquire where you lodge ; and if they do, it is easy to say, ' Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spending threepence in a coffee-house you may be for some hours every day in very good company ; you may dine for sixpence, breakfast on bread and cheese for a penny, and do without supper. On clean-shirt day you go abroad and pay visits." It was a hard struggle, but Johnson fortunately met with a gentleman who had kno^vn him in Lichfield and had now a house in London, to which he made him always welcome. This was Mr. Henry Hervey, of the noble family of which the Marquis of Bristol is now the head, and Johnson never forgot his kindness, but used to say, '' If you caU a dog Hervey, I shall love .him." In the summer of the same year, 1737, Johnson returned to Lichfield, stayed with his wife three months, during which he finished his tragedy, and then took her back with him to London. He was unsuc- cessful in getting it put upon the stage, until eleven years after its completion. He continued to be a bookseller's drudge until Cave, the editor of the Gen- tleman'' s Magazine, gave him work. One of his letters to that patron is signed, "■ Yours imi^ransus," " Yours without a dinner." He never lost his magnanimity and independence, however, and writing to Cave, who owed him money for work, at a late date, he only says : " If you could spare me another guinea for the history, I should take it very kindly, to-night, but if you do not, I shaU not think it an injury. I am almost well again." He had been iU, and perhaps his supper depended on it. 530, THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. On the 14tli of March, 1752, Johnson's " Tetty," as he endearingly called his wife, died in the night. The Rev. Dr. Taylor, who had been immediately sent for by the bereaved husband, arrived early in the mroning, and found Johnson in tears and greatly agitated. Shortly after he entered Johnson asked him to engage in i)rayer. They both prayed — each in turn ; and this exercise of devotion in some degree tranquillized the mind of the sorrowing man. On the 18th he writes to Dr. Taylor : " Dear sir, let me have your company and instruction. Do not live away from me. My distress is great. Pray desire Mrs. Taylor to inform me what mourning I should buy for my mother and Miss Porter, and bring a note in writing. Remember me in your prayers, for vain is the help of man." His wife was buried in Bromley Church, Kent, and he composed a funeral sermon for her, which, however, was never preached. Thirty years after the event Johnson wrote a Latin epitaph which he had inscribed on his wife's tombstone, the translation of which is as follows : Here lie the remains of E LIZABETH, Sprung from the ancient family of the Jarvises of Peatling, near Leicester, Fair, cultured, gifted, dutiful ; Wife, by her first marriage, of Henry Porter, By her second, of Samuel Jolinson : Who covered with this stone Her -whom he loved much, and wept for long. She died in London, in the month of March, A.D. MDCCLIL JOHNSON'S PRAYERS. 531 The follo\^i.ng affecting prayer was found by Dr. Johnsons trusted colored servant, Francis Barber, after his death : '' April 26th, 1752, being after 12 at night of the 25th. — O Lord 1 Governor of heaven and earth, in whose hands are embodied and departed spirits, if Thou hast ordained the souls of the dead to minister to the living, and appointed my departed wife to have care of me, grant that I may enjoy the good effects of her attention and ministration, whether exercised by appearance, impulses, dreams, or in any other manner agreeable to Thy government. Forgive my presumption, enlighten my ignorance, and however meaner agents are em- ployed, grant me the blessed influence of Thy Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." Johnson has been accused of superstition and ten- dency to Roman Catholicism for such prayers as this. One might as well accuse the late John Keble, the author of " The Christian Year," of superstition when he sings : " Oh, soothe us, cheer us, day by day, Ye happy spirits far away "With whom we shared the cup of grace !" His belief in ghost stories may have been supersti- tious, but we can see no superstition in his praying even for his departed wife, as he sometimes did. His love for her lasted through fifty years of his own life, unchanged by her death, and there is something exquisitely touching in the fidelity of a strong man who had so much to endure in mind and body. In his diary we find such entries as : " March 28th, 1753.— I kept this day as the anni- 533 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. versary of my Tetty's death, with prayer and tears in the morning. In the evening I prayed for her con- ditionally, if it were lawful." " April 23d, 1753. — I know not whether I do not too much indulge the vain longings of affection ; but I hope they intenerate my heart, and that when I die like my Tetty, this affection will be acknowledged in a happy interview, and that in the meantime I am incited by it to piety. I will, however, not deviate too much from common and received methods of devotion. " The wedding-ring he had given his wife at their wed- ding was preserved by him, as long as he lived, in a little round wooden box, in the inside of which he pasted a slip of paper, thus inscribed by him in Latin : "Eheu ! ELIZ. JOHNSON, Nupta Jul. 9, 1736 ; Mortua, eheu ! Mart. 17, 1752." Perhaps Johnson had forgotten the date of their marriage, though that does not seem likely, but it is remarkable that 173'6 should now be tlie year given, the two previous years being respectively assigned for that event by Boswell and Leslie Stephen, The affec- tion of Johnson for his wife stands out bright and beautiful, the more so if it be true, as a Mrs. Desmou- lins, who lived with the Johnsons for a considerable time before her own marriage, states that Mrs. Johnson was selfish and indulged herself in country air and nice living, at an unsuitable expense, while her hus- band was drudging in the smoke of London, and that JOHNSON'S LOVE FOR HIS WIFE 533 her temper and treatment of him were not always of the sweetest. " All this," says Boswell, '' is perfectly compatible with his fondness for her, especially when it is remembered that he had a high opinion of her understanding, and that the impressions which her beauty, real or imaginary, had originally made upon his fancy, being continued by habit, had not been effaced, though she herself doubtless was much altered for the worse." The mean insinuation of Sir John Hawkins, that Johnson's love for his wife was assumed and not real, is too absurd for comment. A man who did not care deeply for his wife would not have commemorated her each year and in his daily prayers for more than thirty years after her death. What hypocrite could write the following outpouring of a humble and con- trite heart, a year after she was taken away from him, " O Lord, who givest the grace of repentance, and hearest the prayer of the penitent, grant that by true contrition I may obtain forgiveness of all the sins com- mitted and of all duties neglected, in my union with the wife whom Thou hast taken from me ; for the neglect of joint devotion, patient exhortation, and mild in- struction" ? Her death had left him more lonely and despondent than before, and his great heart readily accused itself of omission in his duty to her. On Easter day, April 22d, 1764, his memorandum says, " Thought on poor, dear Tetty with my eyes full. Went to church. After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself ; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me." In this pious, even if it 534 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF DR. JOHNSON. be ineffectual, custom of praying for the dead, Dr. Johnson continued to the end of his life. If our state when our earthly life closes is the final criterion of our everlasting condition, prayers for the dead can do no good. But Johnson believed in an intermediate state and in a communion and sympathy between the living and the dead. Protestant churches do not sanc- tion Dr. Johnson's practice, but many of the greatest divines of the English Church, to which he belonged, have approved of it. At any rate, the practice origi- nated in the best feelings of our nature, and is the heart's protest against the stern decrees of death. Such prayers are really benedictions ; they are mes- sages of love and memory to the other world ; they keep the beloved ones who have gone before us into the world of spirits always in our mind, and they incite us so to live as to be deemed worthy of eternal reunion with them in the heavenly land. Men would be more manly than they are if they had the child-like faith, the constant love and fidelity to mother, wife, and friends which make the genius and learning of Samuel Johnson shine with brighter lustre through succeeding years. MOTHERS OF ANTIQUITY. The theory that mothers were the ruling influence on the characteristics of theu^ children is not a new one, having been held by the ancients as an indisputa- ble truth. To the mothers they looked as the source of the improvement or degeneracy of the race. Plu- tarch, alluding to the training and position of Avoman under the laws of Lycurgus, remarks : " Hence they were furnished with sentiments and language such as Gergo, the wife of Leonidas, is said to have made use of. When a woman of another country said to her, " You of Lacedemon are the only women in the world that rule the men," she answered, "We are the only women that bring forth men. " Of many of the mothers of antiquity, even of those who are known to have moulded the character of their children, very little is known, and for them there is only material for a general classification, not a separate chapter. Volumnia, the mother of Coriolanus, as is finely indicated by Shakespeare, had a powerful influ- ence on the qualities and actions of her son. Thus, when she is urging Coriolanus to adopt a conciliatory policy toward the people, she pleads with him : " I prithee now, sweet son ; as thou hast said, My praises made thee first a soldier ; so, To have my praise for this, perform a part Thou hast not done before." 536 MOTHERS OF ANTIQUITY. And, again, when she is lamenting his banishment, Coriolanus cries : " Nay, mother, Resume that spirit, when you were wont to say, If you had been the wife of Hercules, Six of his labors you'd have done, and saved Your husband so much sweat." , His wife, on the other hand, is little better than a lay figure in the scene where he consents to withdraw his troops, and it is holding his mother by both hands that he exclaims : " O mother, mother ! You have a happy victory for Rome, But for your son — " Nothing is known of the mothers of many of the greatest orators and writers of antiquity. All that we know, for example, of the mother of Julius Caesar is that her name was Aurelia, and even that fact is not mentioned by Plutarch. She carefully watched over the education of her children, and Caesar always treated her with the greatest affection and resjDect. All that is known of Olympias, the mother of Alexan- der the Great, strongly confirms the theory of maternal influence ; for the intemperance and bursts of passion which sullied his greatness may be traced to her, as well as the restless and discontented nature which made liim weep because there were no more worlds to con- quer. " In violence of temper," says Grote, " in jeal- ous, cruel, vindictive disposition, she forms almost a X)arallel to the Persian Queens Amestris and Parysa- OCTAVIA AS WIFE AND MOTHER. 537 tis." Alexander quarrelled with PMlip of Macedon, his father, for denouncing her, and always treated her with the greatest respect, although she gave him so much trouble by her intrigues, during his absence in Asia, that he " was wont to say that his mother ex- acted from him a heavy house-rent for his domicile of ten months." After his death she usurped the sui^reme authority in Macedonia, and caused more than one hundred of the jDarty opposed to her to be put to death ; but within a few months she was de- serted by her adherents, and brought as a criminal before a popular assembly, when sentence of death was passed upon her ; yet such was the awe and reverence inspired by the mother of Alexander, that the sen- tence would have remained inoperative if the sons of her victims had not volunteered to execute it." OcTAviA, the sister of Augustus Cassar, was one of the most illustrious women of ancient Rome. Her second husband, Antony, treated her so contemptu- ously, under the influence of Cleopatra, that the peojDle of Eome were indignant, and while expressing hatred and contempt for him, they showed Octavia every honor. Antony was her second husband, and her household consisted of one son by her first husband, her daughters by Antony, and several children of Antony's by his first wife. She was an admirable mother and stepmother. Her son was a lad of great genius, whom her brother married to his daughter, and declared him heir to the throne. He died shortly afterward, and was believed to have been poisoned by his ' mother-in-law, who was also his ■ aunt. Virgil 538 , MOTHERS OF ANTIQUITY. wrote in honor of this youth a eulogy, in the conclu- sion of the sixth ^neicl, and when he read it to Octavia she fainted. Afterward she generously rewarded the poet. Few women of antiquity are more admirable in character than Octavia, who, as woman, w^ife, and mother, was a shining example to her sex. Agripphsta, the mother of Nero, was a woman of superior mind and immense ambition. She was the daughter of Agrippina and her husband Germanicus. She ascended the throne of her grandfather Augustus, as the wife of Claudius, and was the first woman who acquired the privilege of entering the capitol in the vehicle assigned to the priests in religious ceremonies. Her title, after she married, was Augusta. Upon her son Nero she centred her ambition, and so unwise was she in her conduct toward him that she was warned to be careful or her folly would be her ruin. Others doubted the son upon whom she lavished such un- stinted praise and attention. She was told that his elevation might be her ruin, and she replied, " Let me perish, but let Nero reign." She was an astute politician and a wise ruler, but she w^as weak in her conduct toward her son. At the age of eighteen she succeeded in making him emperor, and for a time he was grateful to her, and paid her marked respect. But in time his true character showed itself, and he was not the son his fond mother believed him to be. At last he publicly insulted her. On the occasion of a public reception to an embassy from the East, as she moved forward to take her usual seat beside him, Nero sprang forward, and with officious x^oliteness and ironi- AGRIPPIXA AND HELVIA. 539 cal courtesy prevented her from doing so. Too late she realized the wrong she had done herself in her course toward her son. He was one of the most cruel and utterly despicable characters that ever lived, and Ills mother strengthened his worst characteristics by her self-abnegation toward him. He had her mur- dered in return for the fondness and favor she had shown him. Agrippina wi'ote her own memoirs, and was a woman of undoubted intellectual endowments and great personal attractions. One of the most remarkable of the early Christian women was the mother of Symphorian, whose son, in the time of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, was con- demned to die because he w^as a Christian. It is re- lated that on his way to execution, his mother, unable to see him while in prison, mounted the wall in order to bid him farewell, and instead of wails of lamentation she greeted him with these words : " My son, my son Symphorian, cleave to the living God ! Resume your courage, my child ! We cannot fear death, for it surely leads to life. Lift up your heart, my son ! Behold Him who reigneth in the heavens ! Your life is not taken away to-day ; you go to life above !" Surely, such coiirage is not surpassed in any age or by any mother. Helvia, the mother of Cicero, is never alluded to by her son. She was of good family, and was rich, and must have been a woman of some education. Tlie only mention of her that has come down to us is an incident told by her young son Quintus, v/lio, ^vriting a famil- 540 MOTHERS OF ANTIQUITY. iar letter to one of Ms fathers slaVes, a young man, tells him that his mother sealed up the empty wine- jars, as well as those which were full, so that a Jar emptied on the sly by a thieving servant might at once be detected. So trivial a thing as this is all that is told of the mother of Cicero, and it is all the more to be remarked because he speaks repeatedly of his father. The mother of St. Ambrose conducted his educa- tion, and when it became necessary for him to seek other teachers than herself, she accompanied him to liome and became the companion of his studies. Years later, when acknowledged the foremost prelate of his time, in his own account of his sister, a lovely Christian woman, he paid earnest tribute to the influ- ence exerted by this mother upon his youth and early manhood, as a preparation for the service to which he afterward consecrated his life. Indeed it was to a bevy of Christian mothers that the movement against imperial oppression, in the reign of Julian the Apos- tate, owed its greatest leaders. Under the eye of their mother Emmelia and their grandmother, Basil and Csesarius learned the law of liberty, which became the law of their lives. Under the guidance of their mother Gregory, their friend and companion, dedicated be- fore his birth to the service o:^ the Master, was educated from his childhood, like the infant Samuel, as an offer- ing to the Highest. Jerome speaks in his writings of his mother and his maternal grandmother as the teachers of his infancy, HELENA AND CHKYSOSTOM. 541 and gives testimony to the fact that to his mother he owed his religious training. From the arms of his grandmother, he says, he had to be taken by force when he was sent away to a master. Helena, the wdfe of Constantius and the mother of Constantine, was one of the more eminent of the early Christians. Her hi^sband divorced her on his eleva- tion to the rank of Csesar, but w^hen Constantine as- cended the throne she was proclaimed the Empress Mother. She was paid every honor, and was dearly beloved by the religious sect whose cause she had es - poused. When nearly fourscore years old she set out on a pilgrimage to Palestine, then, as now, the Holy Land of the Christians. All along the route her charities and sumj)tuous devotions were most marked, and her presence was everywhere hailed with delight. She caused several churches to be erected, and the Emperor Constantine had erected a magnificent basilica on the spot where she thought she found, in the sepulchre of the Saviour, the cross upon which He died. Her later years were devoted to the observance of her religious duties. Chrysostom owed to his mother, Anthusa, the widow of an imiDerial general, the tenderest care, and he gave in return the sincerest affection. \Yhen her son had made up his mind to retire to a convent and spend his life apart from the world, as his nearest friend had done, his mother prevented such a step, believing that his usefulness to the world would be more marked out- side than within the convent walls. He tells us how 5-i3 MOTHERS OF ANTIQUITY. she influenced liis decision. Taking liim by the hand, she led him into her chamber, where she broke into tears and " into words more moving than any tears." She told him of her grief over the death of his father 'Soon after his birth, and spoke of the efforts she had made to provide for his education and preserve to him her husband's property. Her request to him was that he would not leave her in a second widowhood, or renew a sorrow that had been partly assuaged. "Wait, at least," she said, "until I am dead; and that will not be long." Obeying his mother, Chrysostom attained to a dig- nity and usefulness that would not have been reached by him perhaps within the cloister. So potent and beneficent had been his mother's influ- ence over him that he honored all women, and enter- tained an exalted idea of the power , of a Christian mother. The position he accorded a Christian woman in the fourth century is more advanced than that granted her in many denominations in this nineteenth century. In a letter to a noble Roman lady, he thus expressed his views on this subject : "In the order of affairs in this world, as in that of nature, each sex has its particular sphere of ac- tion : to the woman, household affairs ; to the man, public business, the government of the city, discus- sions in the agora. But in the work which has the service of God for its object, in the Church militant, these distinctions are effaced, and it often hapj)ens that the woman excels the man in the courage with which she supports her opinions, and in her holy zeal. . . . Do not consider as unbecoming to your sex that ear- PAULA, THE RECLUSE. 543 nest work wliicli in any way promotes the welfare of the faithful. On the contrary, I nrge yon to use every effort to calm, either by your own influence or by that of others whom you can convince, the fearful storm which has burst upon the Eastern churches. This is the great work which I beg you to undertake with the utmost diligence ; the more frightful the tempest, the more precious the recompense for your sliare in calm- ing it." Paula, the illustrious recluse and high-born widow of Rome, was a mother whose religious frenzy caused her to sacrifice her maternal feelings for the sake of her belief. She gave up Rome and society and abandoned four of her children to go to the Holy Land, and there live the life of a recluse. She was the mother of five children, and her teacher Jerome says of the four she left behind her : " Her little son stood on the shore, stretching out his suppliant hands. Her daughter of marriageable years appeared to beseech with silent tears that her mother would wait her nuptials. Yet she fixed her dry eyes on the heavens, conquering her love toward her children by love toward her God." Let it not be supposed that she found rest or spirit- ual freedom in the distant Jerusalem convent. Twenty years she struggled and suffered, and her charities were incessant. Toils and penances kept pace with her charities ; but Jerome, who had persuaded her to make the sacrifice she did in behalf of her religion, admits that her life was a long martyrdom. Even on her death-bed she could not say that "all was quiet and 544 MOTHERS OF ANTIQUITY. tranquil." She had given up her earthly duties in the hope of gaining a spiritual reward, but her mother heart was broken in the effort. She was miserable, even though her religious zeal was sufficient to keej) her in the way she had determined to go. Among the beautiful pictures of the mothers of olden time, what more touching than that of Rachel, daughter of Laban, wife of Jacob, and mother of Joseph and Benjamin. How faithful the affection of the husband, who served seven long years for the dear reward of E-acheFs hand, "and they seemed to him but a few days, for the love he bore her." And yet another seven years he served the cunning Laban, who deceived him in giving the eldest, instead of the youngest daughter, to the patient lover. That she was exceedingly lovely in character as well as in person must be the case, since the affection of his manhood continued undimmed iintil his latest breath, and he passionately cherished the memory of the one chosen out of all the world, and even her grave was kept pre- cious. Her sons Joseph and Benjamin are picturesque and important characters in Hebrew history. Among the most celebrated of the statues to be found in Rome is one of Faustina, the daughter of Antoninus Verus, prefect of the Imperial city, and the wife of the great and good Titus Antoninus Pius. She was also mother of Annia Faustina, who married the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. These beautiful women shared the throne with the noblest, wisest, and most revered of all who came to the highest honors of HISTORY UNJUST. 545 ■ the City of the Seven Hills. History has been terribly unjust to these beautiful wives and mothers, for one account renders them dissolute and unscrupulous. That, however, is incredible, nor is it impossible to guess at the source of the calumnies which have been circulated about them, since ancient history is too often only common rumor transfixed by the art of the writer. We are sure that the noble Antoninus built temples to the honor of his empress, and coins have been found bearing her beautiful effigy, and that he loved her with tenderness and constancy words written by his own hand attest. After her death temples were dedicated to the memory of the woman so lovely and beloved. And there is still extant a medal representing Antoninus Pius on one side, and on the other Faustina ascending heavenward under the figure of Diana. Her daughter inherited her virtues with her name, Faustina. And Marcus Aurelius, whose meditations and maxims have been the admu'a- tion of all time, gives thanks to the gods for a consort so lovely and so loving. Yet she, like her mother, was slandered by the envious. The elder Faustina died about the year 140 ; the younger, who was the grand- mother of the wife of Heliogabulus, died a.d. 175. MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. The world lias never seen and never can see a sadder and more pathetic biograi^hy than that of Marie Antoi- nette. As Andromache and Hecuba moved by their accnmnlated and mysterious sorrow the sympathy and tears of the ancient world, so has the story of Marie Antoinette moved those of the modern. It will in a very few years more be a century since the French Revolution broke out, and it was ninety years ago, on the 16th of October, since her noble and afflicted life was ended by the guillotine. Yet her figure is as prom- inent and distinct in its personality to-day as when she died ; and when even a child still in its teens is asked to give instances of beautiful women distin- guished for their misfortunes and their heroism, the first that occurs to it in answer is nearly always Marie Antoinette. The blush of shame that first touched the hard face of her executioner, and made his right hand tremble and forget its wonted cunning in unfastening the axe, spread over the face and neck of France, pro- ducing the reaction from the Reign of Terror which called forth Napoleon, and made monarchy again pos- sible to a peojjlewho had shown their inability to real- ize the sacred name of republic. The hapless queen is still an object of sympathy as well as of the sense of national shame to all intelligent and honest Frenchmen. A DESCEXDA^;T OF THE C^SARS. 547 And not only in France, but in England and America, and in every country of the Old World and the New where there are minds to study history and hearts to feel for the unutterable woes and cruel sufferings of a woman, the grave of Marie Antoinette is kept green and flower- strewn and tear- watered in the memory. Around her majestic and imperial figure, worthy descendant of the Csesars as she was, cluster so many serious and salutary reflections that it is difficult to keep one's mental hold on any one of them. Here is a woman, supported through such experiences as make the least emotional of us shudder even now to think of, and we wonder how she retained her reason and her trust in God. Here are millions of blood-stained beasts in human form around her, who prate of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Here are judges, elected from the slums and dens of an accursed and polluted city, canting about justice and filling the tumbrils with their murdered victims. In other tragedies there is an in- terlude of light and hope ; in this one there is none. From the discovery and arrest of the fugitive royal family at Varennes to the scaffold that faced the gar- dens of the Tuileries, there is no respite, no relief, no ray of hope, no parenthesis of pity. From palace to prison, from prison to dungeon, from the Tuileries to the Temple, from the Temple to the Conciergerie, from the Conciergerie to the common felons' prison and the • guillotine — this is the cumulative story of the royal victim, these the steps of the ensanguined ladder that bore her heroic footsteps from earth to heaven. How tliankf id ought we, as Americans, to feel that our own Republic originated in true liberty, just rights, 548 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. and patriotic feeling, and was not stained mtli tlie atrocious crimes that attended and finally destroyed the sham Republic of the French Revolution of 1789. Especially ought we to feel this as we contemplate the mean figure which Lafayette cut in his own country's revolution, after all the noble examples of manly cour- age and lofty principle which he must have seen in his friend George Washington and the other fathers of our new-born Republic. As commander-in-chief of the National Guard of Paris, Lafayette had the jjrotec- tion of the king's palace assigned to him. He dis- charged this trust, not as a guardian, but as a jailer and .a sx3y, because, as that keen judge of character, Napo- leon Bonaparte, afterward remarked, his popularity depended upon his keeping the king a close prisoner, as he had no great talents, military or political, of his OAvn. The Marshal de Bouille, who was his cousin, also said of him : ''The bishop of Panders has pict- ured to me the miserable situation of the king and royal family, which the rigor and harshness of Lafay- ette, who lately became their jailer, rendered day by day more insujoportable.'" He was moved also by personal dislike to the unhappy Louis XYL But while the jailers and the false accusers, the ene- mies and the executioners of the royal pair, and of the sainted and self-consecrating Madame Elizabeth, the king's sister, group themselves necessarily around the sublime figure of Marie Antoinette, we prefer for a * time to glance briefly at her earlier history, beginning with her childhood in the Austrian palaces, and to let her, as the dawn of womanhood breaks upon her girlish heart, surround herself with the husband and children MARIA THERESA OF AUSTRIA. 549 to whom slie was " faithful unto death.- ' We shall find, as we pass her childhood briefly in review, that her own mother's training of her children, sixteen in num- ber, w^as anything but a preparation for the heroic martyrdom that awaited her. One has only to glance at the portrait of ^laria Theresa of Austria, mother of Marie Antoinette, to see in her resolute features and bold, aggressive eyes the woman born to rule, and not scrupulous about the means of ruling. Marie Antoi- nette inherited doubtless from this mother her firmness and physical courage, but frf»m her father her gentle- ness and charity, and love of happiness and peace. She herself once said that she had learned from thp example of her mother not to fear death. Marie Antoinette Josephe Jeanne was the youngest daughter of Francis, originally Duke of Lorraine, afterward Grand Duke of Tuscany, and eventually Emperor of Germany, and of Maria Theresa, Arch- duchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, more generally known, after the attainment of the im- perial dignity by her husband in 1745, as the Empress- Queen. Of her brothers, two, Joseph and Leopold, succeeded in turn to the imperial dignity, and one of her sisters, Caroline, became the Avife of the King of IN'aples. She was born on the 2d of ]N"ovember, 1755, a day which was often referred to in her later years as having been ominous of her misfortunes, being that upon which the terrible earthquake occurred which laid Lisbon in ruins. In the days of Charles YL, the father of Maria Theresa and grandfather of Marie Antoinette, the Aus- trian imperial court had been famed for pompous dig- 550 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. nity and punctilious etiquette, but the Lorraine prov- inces had been bred in simj^ler fashions, and Francis had a dislike to all ostentation, while Maria Theresa had her time and thoughts occupied with the weightier affairs of state. They therefore j^referred greatly to their gorgeous jDalace at Vienna a smaller one which they possessed in the neighborhood, called Schim- brunn, where they could cultivate rural and domestic tastes and bring uj) their children healthily. In this quiet home Marie Antoinette j^assed a happy childhood. Her beauty, intelligence, and affectionate disposition made her the favorite of her father, and the ^rst sorrow she ever knew was at his death, which oc- curred in 1765, before she was ten years old. He was going to Innspruck on some business, and his carriage was drawn up in the courtyard of his palace. Before starting he asked for his little daughter, that he might kiss her good-by. '' Adieu, my darling child. Pai^a wished to press you once more to his heart,'' are the M'ords ascribed to him. If so, they were prophetic, for he was seized vsdth illness at Innspruck, where he died, and they never saw each other again. The superintendence of her vast empire occupied a far larger share of his widow Maria Theresa's atten- tion than the education of her children. But as Marie Antoinette grew in beauty and attractiveness, the em- press-queen, her mother, saw a prospect of cementing more closely her recent alliance with Prance. For two centuries and a half — that is, from the day when Charles Y. of Spain j)revailed over the French King, Francis I., in the competition for the imperial crown, the EmjDeror of Germany and the King of France had MARRIAGE TO THE DAUPHIN. 551 been hostile to each other. The very first years of her own reign had been embittered by the union of France with Prussia, in a Avar whicli had deprived her of an important province, and she regarded it as a master stroke of dii)lomacy that she had succeeded in v^^inning over the French ministry from the friendshij) of Fred- erick of Prussia to her own. This friendship she de- sired to strengthen by a marriage bet^veen Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin of France, grandson of the reigning King, Louis XV. For this j)urpose she made proficiency in French the chief aim in the young- girl's education. Two French actors were brought to Tienna to teach the young princess elocution, and the Abbe de Yermand, a learned man, whose character is variously regarded by different biographers, was sent from Paris to be her resident tutor and director in all matters. Metastasis taught her Italian ; and Gluck, then recognized as one of the chief musicians of his time, gave her lessons on the har]3sichord. Marie Antoinette was perhaps too fond of play to apply steadily to her studies. At any rate, she her- self regretted sincerely in after life her own w^ant of literary information and culture, and endeavored to make up her deficiencies by taking lessons in more than one accomplishment during the first j'ears of her residence at Versailles. She felt, wdien Dauphiness, and afterward Queen, her inferiority in culture to the ladies of the old French noblesse, and once exclaimed sadly, " What a resource amid the casualties of life is a well-cultivated mind I One can then be one's own companion, and find society in one' s owti thoughts." 552 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. Sach, then, was Marie Antoinette, when, at the age of fifteen, she went to Paris and became the bride of the Dauphin, afterward Louis XVI. The wedding took place on the 16th of May, 1770, and was a matter of rejoicing to the bride's family, and of satisfaction to the French King, Louis XV., who was much pleased with the frank and artless vivacity of his Viennese grand- daughter-in-law. On the day on which she set out from Vienna, her mother had written the following letter to her son-in-law elect : " Your bride, my dear Dauphin, has just left me. I do hope that she will cause 3'ou happiness. I have brought her up with the de- sign that she should do so, because I have for some time foreseen that she would share your destiny. " I have inspired her with an eager desire to do her duty to you, with a tender attachment to your person, with a resolution to be at- tentive to think and do everything which may please you. I have also been most careful to enjoin upon her a tender devotion toward the Master of all Sovereigns, being thoroughly persuaded that we are but badly providing for the welfare of the nations which are intrusted to us when we fail in our duty to Him who breaks sceptres and over- throws thrones according to His pleasure. " I say, then, to you, my dear Dauphin, as I say to my daughter : ' Cultivate your duties toward God. Seek to cause the happiness of the people over whom you will reign (it will be too soon, come when it may). Love the king, your grandfather ; be humane like him ; be always accessible to the imfortunate. If you behave in this manner, it is impossible that happiness can fail to be your lot.' My daughter will love you, I am certain, because I know her. But the more that I answer to you for her affection and for her anxiety to please you, the more earnestly do I entreat you to vow to her the most sincere attachment. " Farewell, my dear Dauphiu. May you be happy. I am bathed in tears. ' ' WEDDING FESTIVITIES IN PARIS. 553 Those who are superstitious will no doubt deem an accident that occurred during the prolonged festivities of the wedding a providential counterpart to the storm and the Lisbon earthquake that took place on the day of the bride's birth. The 30th of May closed a succes- sion of balls and banquets in Paris with a magnificent display of fireworks. Three sides of the Place Louis XV. were filled up with pyramids and colonnades. "Here," says a recent historian, "dolphins darted out many-colored flames from their ever-open mouths. There rivers of fire poured forth cascades spangled with all the variegated brilliancy with which the chem- ist's art can embellish the work of the ]^yrotechnist. The centre was occupied with a gorgeous temple of Hymen, which seemed to lean for support on the well- known statue of the king, in front of which it was constructed ; and which was, as it were, to be carried up to the skies by above three thousand rockets and fireballs, into which it was intended to dissolve. The whole square was packed with spectators, the joedes- trians in front, the carriages in the rear, when one of the explosions set fire to a portion of the platform on which the different figures had been constructed. At first the increase of the blaze was regarded only as an ingenious surprise on the part of the artist. But soon it became clear that the conflagration M^as undesigned and real ; panic succeeded to delight, and the terror- stricken crowd, seeing themselves surrounded with flames, began to make frantic efforts to escape from the danger ; there was only one side of the square un- inclosed, and that was blocked up by carriages. The result may be imagined. At the lowest estimate, six 554 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. hnndi'ed were killed and manv moiv irrievoiislv wounded. The DaupMn and Daujihiness had been spectators of the awful scene from a distance, while drivinir to the spot in their carria£?e. Thev srave theii* entire month's income for the relief of the stiff erei-s. Even the very day of her marriage has its untoward incident. The only blood-ivlation of Maiie Antoinette who was at Versailles ar the time was the Princess of Lorraine, and the king gave this lady precedence of the nobilirv. placinir her next in the order of dancinsr to the roval famUv. This irave snch offence to the French X^eers and peeresses that they held a consultation and resolved to Absent themselves, and the king had to send a command for their attendance. The earlier vears of the maiiied life of Marie Antoi- nette were frivolous and gay rather than happy. Her husband treated her with respectful coldness, for his nature' was not ardent or demonstrative of affection- He had no idea of wounding her feelings, but he did not seek her society in private, and had no perception that marriage was to her, as a warm-hearted woman, anythiug more than the matter of convenience and ac- quiescence that it was to himsell Married at the early aee of fourteen vears and a half to a vouth onlv a few years older than hersell the pair were childless for eight and a half years after their union. Louis XT. died on the 10th of May. 1774, and the Dauphin and Xhiuphiness became King and Queen of France. There seemed little prospect of a family, and this disappoint- ment was keenly felt by the queen. Her natural de- sire for children of her own was srreatlv increased when her sister-in-hiw, the Countess d'Artois. presented her MARIE ANTOINETTE AND CHILDREN. HER CHARACTERISTICS. 557 husband with a son. She treated the young mother with sisterly affection, but she could not restrain her feelings on the subject when writing to her mother, and she expressed candidly the extreme pain she suffered " at thus seeing an heu- to the throne who was not her own child. " She probably felt more keenly than be- fore the coldness of her husband, and at Little Trianon, the pavilion he had given her at her own request, about a mile from the palace of Versailles, she sought to quench her gi'ief in a constant whirl of pleasurable excitement. Her open and confiding disposition made her the easy dupe of designing persons, against whom her true friends cautioned her in vain. Malicious construc- tions were put upon her innocent frankness of word and deed, but no woman's character ever shone forth in clearer purity from the misty atmosphere of tempta- tion. Slie was unguarded and self-vdlled, but as she was always forgiving to her enemies and faithful to her friends, so to her husband she was a chaste and honor- able wife. She complains occasionally in her letters of his indifference to her society, and that he cared for nothing but hunting and mechanical employments. She even speaks of him as " The poor man," whom she did as she pleased with, but all this was the petulant expression of a young wife' s disappointment, that she who was admired and beloved by so many should be an object of indifference to one, and that one her hus- band. Little did the yearning but giddy young queen im- agine that she was helping by her extravagance and prodigality to bring on that revolution of which hatred 658 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. to rank and wealth was the spark that was to consume herself and her husband and all her dearest friends. Especially imprudent was her dislike to Turgot, the comptroller-general of finance, because he gently tried to check her lavish expenditures on her favorites. She persuaded the young king to dismiss him, and suc- ceeded the more readily, as neither Louis nor herself had the least misgiving as to the right of sovereigns to spend as much of the people's money as they pleased. " What," said Louis XYI., on one occasion to this up- right minister of state, who was urging him to refuse an utterly unwarrantable application for a pension — " What are a thousand crowns a year ?■' " Sire," re- plied Turgot, " they are the taxation of a village.'' This prudent counsellor, had he been listened to on other occasions as he was on this particular one, and had he retained his thankless office, might have averted the impending danger. In a letter to her mother, dated May 16th, 1778, Marie Antoinette alludes to the quarrel pending between Austria and Prussia, to the action of the king regarding it, to his warmer kindness to herself, and to the hope she entertained that she will soon be a mother, " In other respects, and especially in my present condition, he (her husband) behaves most ad- mirably, and is most attentive to me. I protest to you, my dear mamma, that my heart would be torn by the idea that you could for a moment suspect his good- will in what has been done. No ; it is the terrible weak- ness of his ministers, and his own great want of self- reliance, which does all the mischief, and I am sure that if he would never act but on his own judgment, BIRTH OF A PRINCESS. 559 every one would see his honesty, his correctness of feeling, and his tact, which at present they are far from appreciating." Her joy at the prospect of having a child was fully shared by her husband. All his coldness and apathy seemed to vanish, and he wrote himself both to her mother and her brother Joseph, the Emperor. The news created equal joy at Paris and Vienna, and the poor young queen showed her grateful sense of happi- ness by liberal gifts to the poor, and by founding a hos- pital for women in a similar condition to her own. On the 19th of December, 1778, she gave birth to a prin- cess, who was named Maria Theresa, in honor of her imperial grandmother, and who became in due time the IMadame Royale of the revolution and the Duchess d' Angouleme, when the sorrows of her young life were recompensed by long years of hapi)iness and peace. After the loss of her j)arents and her beloved aunt, Madame Elizabeth, she was at last j^itied and released by the Parisian bloodhounds, and permitted to seek the protection of her mother's family in Vienna, her uncle being Emperor. She alone of the four children of Marie Antoinette lived to maturity and a good old age. " Boys will come after girls," wrote Maria Theresa to her daughter. The birth of the princess came near being the death of the queen. By the barbarous cus- tom of that time in France, every one, even the rabble, who could gain an entrance into the chamber, was ad- mitted to be witness of a royal birth. The heat was so intense that the queen became insensible and had to be bled in the foot. The king rushed to the windows. 560 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. and with all his strength got them open. His was the voice that whispered tenderly to her that she had been delivered of a daughter. She herself was not disaj)- pointed. When the nurse brought her the babe, she pressed it to her bosom and said : ' ' Poor little thing ; you are not what was desired, but you shall not be the less dear to me. A son would have belonged to the state ; you will be my own : you shall have all my care, you shall share my happiness and sweeten my vexations." Besides the gifts to the poor and the hospital which were made before the birth, the happy mother now sent large sums of money to the prisons to release poor debtors, gave dowries to one hundred poor maidens, applied to the chief officers of the army and navy to send her a list of veterans worthy of reward, and to the clergy of Paris for the names of worthy ob- jects for her bounty. She also settled pensions on a number of poor children who were born on the same day as the princess, one of whom, who owed her educa- tion to this pension, became known to fame as Madame Mars, the greatest of comic actresses in Paris. In the spring of 1780 Marie Antoinette was shocked by the news of her mother's death. They had been much attached to each other since Marie became a queen, and had corresponded regularly upon impor- tant subjects. Maria Theresa gave far more prudent advice to her daughter than did the haughty Catharine of Russia, who once wrote to her that kings and queens should do as they pleased and pursue their own plans, regardless of the interests of their dogs of subjects. On the morning of October 22d, 1782, a son and heir to the throne blessed the love of Louis XVI. and Marie THE YOUNG DAUPHIN, 561 Antoinette. Tlie king, whose affection for her had steadily grown in intensity since she began to have children, would not allow her life to be endangered this time by a crowd of strangers in her apartments. He forbade any one but himself to announce to her the sex of the child, and it was with a heart full of joy and j)ride that he told her that their hopes of an heir were fulfilled. Then he called to the Princess de Guimence, who was then governess of the royal nursery, and who was exhibiting the child to witnesses in the antecham- ber, and who now advanced at his summons and said, " Your Majesty, the Dauphin of France begs to be ad- mitted.'' The mother, remembering no more her anguish for joy that "a man," and he the heir to a kingdom, " was born into the world," pressed the in- fant to her bosom. But she did not forget her former thought on the birth of the princess, and after she had traced some points in the infant's features which re- sembled those of his father, she returned him to the governess, saying, "Take him; he belongs to the state ; but my daughter is still mine." Then the king himself carried his little son to the window and showed him to the crowd, who rent the air with acclamations, as in a few years thev were to rend it with curses and insults. '' Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." The child was not destined to liye. The Dauphin, whose sad lot and early death from neglect and ill-treat- ment form one of the tragedies of that awful series, was Marie Antoinette's third child, not yet born. The elder son and second child was sickly, and had spinal complaint from his birth. He had no stamina to sup- port him through the ordinary ailments of children. 562 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. and he died on June 4tli, 1789, when not yet seven years old. On the 27th of March, 1785, the future des- olate and slowly murdered Dauphin came into the world, which was for him a j^rison and a slaughter- house, a habitation of cruelty, and the grave of all his young affections. The reader of history thanks the justice of a too inert and crime-permitting Providence, that his keeper, Simon the shoemaker, who starved him and beat him and kept him in filth and darkness for the last three years of his young life, was carried to the guillotine before his child-victim's death. What a contrast was his brief life to the day when Marie Antoinette wrote to her brother the Emperor that the second son " had all that his elder brother wanted ; he was a thorough peasant's child, tall, stout and ruddy." His father had taken him in his arms, called him " his little Xorman," and saying that the name alone would bring him hax3j)iness, created him Duke of Normandy. As the roj al mother i)aid a visit to Paris, to return thanks for this child of future sor- rows in the churches of Notre Dame and in St. Gene- vieve, the citizens were so enthusiastic in their affec- tion for her that they could hardly be prevented from unharnessing her horses and dragging her coach in triumph through the streets. Such is the mutability of human passions and the fickleness of " the sover- eign people" ! The Princess Soj^hie Helene Beatrix was the fourth and last child of Louis XYI. and Marie Antoinette. She was born on the 9th of July, 1786, was a sickly child, and died on the 9th of June, 1787, aged eleven months. THE STORY OF THE DIAMOND NECKLACE. 503 We have taken tlie pains to be thus exact in enumer- ating the children of Marie Antoinette, because some of the popular lives of the queen published in this country are exceedingly inaccurate in their accounts of them. The " History of Marie Antoinette," by John S. C. Ab- bott, for instance, contains the following misstatement in narrating the episode of the diamond necklace, which brought so much misery and calumny to the unfortu- nate queen, whose name had been forged by a con- spirator in league with the Countess de la Mothe, to a letter to Cardinal Rohan, authorizing its jDurchase and delivery by him to that notorious woman : " Matters continued in this state for some time, until the baj)- tism of the Duke d'Angouleme, Marie Antoinette's infant son. The king made his idolized boy a present of a diamond epaulette and buckles, which he pur- chased of Boehmer" [the crown jeweller, who had been swindled out of the necklace which the queen had positively declined to purchase, and which, unknown to her, had subsequently been delivered to the Cardinal upon the strength of the forged order from her], " and directed him to deliver to the queen. As the Jeweller presented them, he slii)ped into the queen's hand a letter, in the form of a petition, containing the follow- ing expression : ' I am happy to see your Majesty in the possession of the finest diamonds in Europe ; and I entreat your Majesty not to forget me.' " The re- quest referred, of course, to the iDayment for the neck- lace, which the queen had never received nor ordered to be purchased, but which the infamous Countess de la Mothe had obtained by fraud and forgery, whether with or without the connivance of the Cardinal Rohan 564 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. can never be positively known. But the statement that the infant Duke of Angouleme was the son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette is a conspicuous instance of the inaccuracy and carelessness with which histories are written to sell. The Duke, w^ho after- ward became the husband of Maria Theresa, the eldest child and daughter of the king and queen, w^as the very infant whose possible reversion to the crown we saw Marie Antoinette lamenting before she herself had any prospect of a family. He afterw^ard became Dau- i:)hin of France, when the Count d'Artois succeeded to the throne as Charles X., and the Duke and Duchess were residents, in their exile from France, of Holy wood Palace, near Edinburgh, formerly the residence of Mary Queen of Scots. It was the Duchess, not the Duke, who was Marie Antoinette's child, and a modern French writer says of this queen : " Yes, she was the mother of Louis XYIL, a martyr" [meaning the Dau- phin, w±o died at the age of ten, as w^ e have seen, from long confinement and starvation, and who would be legitimately so entitled after his father was beheaded] " of Maria Theresa of France, Duchess of Angouleme, a saint — she w^ho had them brouglit up in the com- jmny of Madame Elizabeth, an angel upon earth, was a great mother ; and not only in prosperous days, when happiness makes virtue easier — she was so in the midst of those unheard-of miseries which tauglit mankind (in the w^ords of Chateaubriand) what tears might be contained in the eyes and heart of a queen." We have Marie Antoinette before us at the begin- ning of the Revolution as the mother of two children only, the Princess Royal, now nine, and the Dauphin, LETTER FROM MARIE ANTOINETTE. 565 seven years old, the two others having died. She made it her happiness and her duty to study the dis- iwsitions of the young prince and i)rincess, and in a letter to Madame de Tourzel, when apijointing her gov- erness to the Dauphin, dated July 25th, 1789, the anxious mother writes : " My son is four years and four months old, all but two days. I say nothing of his size nor of his general appearance ; it is only necessary to see him. His health has always been good, but even in his cradle we perceived that his nerves were very delicate. . . Any noise to which he is not accustomed frightens him. For instance, he is afraid of dogs, because he once heard one bark close to him ; and I have never obliged him to see one, because I believe that as his reason grows his fears will x:)ass away. Like all children who are strong and healthy, he is very giddy, volatile, and passionate ; but he is a good child, tender, and even caressing, when his giddiness does not run away with him. He has a great sense of what is due to himself, which, if he be well managed, one may some day turn to his good. Till he is entirely at his ease A\'ith any one, he can restrain himself, and even stifle his impatience and his inclination to anger, in order to apjjear gentle and amiable. He is admirably faithful when once he has promised anything, but he is very in- discreet ; he is thoughtless in repeating anything that he has heard ; and often without in the least intending to tell stories, he adds circumstances which his own im- agination has put into his head. This is his greatest fault, and it is one for which he must be corrected. However, taken altogether, I say again, he is a good o6G MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. child ; and by treating Mm with allowance, and at the same time with firmness, which must be kept clear of severity, w^e shall always be able to do all that we can wish with him. But severity would revolt him, for he has a great deal of resolution for his age. To give you an instance : from his very earliest childhood the word pardon has always offended him. He will say and do all that you can wish when he is wrong, but as for the word pardon, he never pronounces it without tears and infinite difficultT. " I have always accustomed my children to have great confidence in me, and when they have done wTong, to tell me themselves ; and then, when I scold them, this enables me to appear pained and afflicted at what they have done rather than angry. I have ac- customed them to regard 'yes' or 'no,' once uttered by me, as kre vocable ; but I always give them reasons for my decision, suitable to their ages, to prevent them thinking that my decision comes from ill-humor. My son cannot read, and he is very slow at learning ; but he is too giddy to apply. He has no pride in his heart, and I am very anxious that he should continue to feel so. Our children always learn soon enough what they are. He is very fond of his sister, and has a good heart. Whenever anything gives him pleas- ure, whether it be the going anywhere or that any one gives him anything, his first movement always is to ask that his sister may have the same. He is light- hearted by nature. It is necessary for his health that he should be a great deal in the open air ; and I think it is better to let him play and w^ork in the garden on the terrace, than to take him longer walks. The exer- "THE YOUNG CAPET." 567 cise which children take in running about and inlaying in the open air is much more healthy than forcing them to walk, which often makes their backs ache." Much of this letter may seem j)rim and too i:)recise to us. It seems odd for a mother to expect an old head upon the shoulders of a boy of four, and to talk of his being indiscreet and unreserved as faults to be corrected. But it shows that her mind was bent on training him not as a common child, but as one who was heir to the throne of a great and illustrious nation. She is minute for fear the governess should be unobservant or negligent, and she is candid both as to the faults and merits of her boy. The letter proves her to have been a good, a prudent, and a watchful mother. Poor little Louis ! a far different fate awaited him from what she fondly hoped for. In 1793 he was torn from this good mother forever. The Committee of Public Safety decreed that the young Capet, as they called him, should be placed in solitary confinement, under the charge of the brutal shoemaker Simon, who had private orders to get rid of him by degrees. It was night when the officers of the Com- mittee came to carry him away. His mother flung her arms around him, and resisted all efforts to tear him from her, exclaiming, '•'■ Tuez moi done (Tabord'^ — "Then kill me first." They only prevailed by threatening to kill the child, when she relaxed her hold and sank ex- hausted with the struggle. The unhappy Dauphin was shut up for nearly two years before his merciful release by death, in solitude, without employment, Avithout human sympathy or kindness, denied even the light and air. When the door was opened it was 568 MARIE AiS'TOI^;ETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. to place a flagon of dirty water and a crust of bread for liim. He was never washed, and his clothes and linen were never changed. It was a slow death in a living tomb. His limbs became rigid, his mind vacant and insensible. After his keeper was executed for his other crimes, his persecutors relented, but it was too late. The celebrated physician, Dersault, was sent to his lowly bedside. His mother's image — that mother from whom he had been so cruelly separated two years be- fore, when she was doomed to the guillotine, but whom he was now perhaps to rejoin in everlasting reunion — was the last that filled his dying vision. The physi- cian asked him if he suffered much. " Oh, yes, I suffer still," he answered, "but much less than I did, the music is so beautiful.'' " On what side do you hear this music?" "There, on high; listen! listen I" Then, after a brief silence, his eyes kindled with the heavenly light, and he exclaimed, with the rapture of an enfranchised and departing soul, " Amidst all the voices, I have recognized that of my mother." He waved his hand, wafted a kiss to her, and sank back dead. The opening of the year 1789 was the beginning of troubles for Marie Antoinette. Hitherto she had been alternately lauded and insulted by the artisans of Paris. Now the very canaille and refuse of humanity were to fling their dirt at her. Hers is one of those characters that are Avashed and made white by passing- through great tri])ulation. All that was frivolous and extravagant in her conduct disappeared forever, and the heroic queen was only less admirable than the de- voted . wife and mother. The vilest slanders were cir- culated against the queen, one of them being that she MUTTERIXaS OF THE REVOLUTION. 569 had a mine ready to blow up the Parliament of Paris, or National Assembly. On the 14th of Juh" the cry " To the Bastile !" was echoed from mouth to mouth bv a drunken mob alone; the banks of the Seine. This was on the third day of the insurrection, and they had already gained X30ssession of the city gates and of the Hotel de Yille, with the municipal chest contain- ing three millions of francs. They had stormed the Hotel des Invalides, and armed themselves with thou- sands of muskets that were stored there. Now thev stormed the ii'on and stone forms of the Bastile, and murdered the governor and military that defended it, who had been taken by surprise and could malie little resistance. At midnight couriers arrived at Yersailles to apprise the king and queen of the terrible aspect of affairs. On the 6th of October, 1789, when the mob insisted that she should make her appearance, she came forth on the balcony, holding the Dauphin with one hand and the Princess Royal with the other. '''Point d'en- f ants'''' — " No children !" was the angry cry. She led them away, and reappeared alone. Even the insensate crowd were astonished at her calmness and courage, and with true French fickleness burst into rounds of applause. On the night of the 13th of April, 1790, the night for which Lafayette had given warning of an attack of the Tuileries, the king, after vainly looking for her in her own apartments, found her in the Dau- phin's nursery, holding him in her arms. " Madame,' ' said Louis, " I have been looking for you everywhere, and you have caused me much uneasiness." '' Su'e," replied Marie Antoinette, " I am at my i:)ost." 570 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. When she was brought, at a later date, before the Revobitionary tribunal, Herbert, the public prosecutor, accused her of undermining, the morals and health of the Dauphin, that she might gain an undue influence over his mind as he grew up. A charge so ridiculous against a mother was unworthy of her serious reply, but she answered, with dignity and self-possession, " Je croyais que la nature me dispenderait de repon- dre a une telle imputation ; mais j'en appelle au C03ur de toutes les meres ici presentes" — " I believed that nature would dispense me from replying to such an im- putation, but I appeal against it to the heart of every mother here present." Had Louis XYI. listened to the advice of Marie An- toinette after the taking of the Bastile and the slaugh- ter of its governor, De Launay, and the garrison, he might even yet have been saved. But vacillation was his great infirmity, and when he sat brooding and said it was a time for serious deliberation, it was to no pur- pose that she answered that it was rather a time for promptness in action. When he announced to the Assembly that he had ordered the withdrawal of the troops from the capital, she earnestly besought him to accomi:>any them, but he chose rather to visit Paris as the mob demanded, and as the Ministerial Council advised. She believed he would be assassinated on the road or in the city, but, even so, she would gladly have gone with liim had she not known that her pres- ence would increase his danger. It cost more forti- tude for her to remain at Versailles, which was already threatened with an attack. As he set out she sat with her children in a private room, shedding no VERSAILLES ATTACKED. 571 tears, lest the knowledge of her grief should add to the fears of her attendants. Her carriages were kept in readiness, so that if the worst news came she might hasten to the Assembly and claim its protection for her children. " They will never let him return !" she mnrmnred sadly. When Versailles was really attacked, Louis tried to induce. his i^-ife to fly with the children, but she re- fused to leave her husband, declaring that her place was by his side, and that, as a daughter of Maria Theresa of Austria, she had no fear of death. It was a sorrowful journey which the king, now accompanied by the queen, his children, his sister the Princess Elizabeth, and his brother the Count de Provence, took back to Paris. The procession was painfully slow, and as no food had been provided for the journey the little Dauphin cried from hunger. The good mother, who never shed a selfish tear, wept at the sufferings of her child. She begged him to be patient, and the little fellow ceased complaining. " Mamma," he said, when they reached the Tuileries, which had been neglected, and whose chambers were dismantled, "how bad everything looks here ! " " My boy," she replied, " Louis Quatorze lived here comfortably enough." The king announced to the Assembly that he would reside in Paris for the future. But from the hour w-hen they left A^ersailles, the queen said " they were undone ; they were being dragged off, perhaps to death." Charles I. of England was ever before her mind, and it was henceforth with a foresight of the end that she as queen, as well as wife and mother, strove to maintain her hu.sband's honor and her son's 572 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. inlieritance. She preserved lier patience, her courage, and her dignity unwavering, till she laid her head upon the block, and long after all hope had left her heart. It would be beside our purjDose to stain oiir pages with the nameless and inhuman crimes of the Reign of Terror. Let us cling to the queen-woman, true and noble to the last, who is so soon to leave us. A little plot of ground was railed off in the garden of the Tuil- eries for the Dauphin's amusement, and one of her favorite recreations was to watch him w^orking at the flower-beds with his little rake and hoe, althongli neither she nor he were left for a moment without the grenadiers of the city guard, who watched her as though she were a criminal already condemned. Pri- vacy and rest were never to be hers again in this world. *' The king," said Mirabeau, " has but one man about him, and that is his wife." More than one attempt was made to murder her. " If my death only secures the throne to my son," she said, " I shall willingly die." Still, for the sake of others, she would gladly have escaped from Paris. She urged it upon the king, but he alw^ays hesitated till the ojiportunity was gone. And when, in the sj)ring of 1791, they wished to retire to their country j^alace at St. Cloud, and the carriages were at the gates of the Tuileiies, they found that the guard had mutinied and closed the doors, so that they had to return to their own apartments as prisoners. To the obstinacy and imprudence of the king in having a carriage of unusual size and appearance built for them, added to the accident which caused an LAST APPEARANCE IN PUBLIC. 573 hours delay upon the road, the failure of their last attempt at tlight, and their ignominious capture and return to Paris, must be attributed. Had they once passed the borders of France, all Europe would have given them a safe asylum. When, at a later date, the honnet rouge was placed upon the head of the captive monarch, a young man in the crowd turned upon his heel, and exclaimed in disgust : " The wretches ! the wretches ! they ought to be mown down by grapeshot." The young man was ]S"apoleon Bonaparte. "Ah, Madame," said Louis to Marie Antoinette, " why did I take you from your country, to associate you with the ignominy of such a day as this !" The fete in the Champ de Mars, on the 14th of July, 1792, was the last occasion on which they ap- l^eared in public, except on the day when each of them was taken alone to execution. A dagger-proof corset had been prepared for the queen, but she re- fused to wear it. " If they assassinate me," she said, " it will be a happy event. It will release me from a life of sorrow, and may save my husband and children from a cruel death." Even in their imprisonment in the Temple they had at least for a time the consolation of each other's society, and that of their children and their ever-faith- ful aunt, the king's sister Elizabeth. But they were soon separated, and worse than the bitterness of death was the separation of the wife and mother, first from her husband, then from each of her children. On the 11th of December, 1792, the mock trial of the king took place. On the 21st of January, 1793, he met 574 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. death like a man, the Abbe Edgeworth, uncle, we be- lieve, of Maria Edgeworth, the Irish novelist, attending him on the scaffold, and as the axe fell, uttering the benediction, " Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven !'' Marie Antoinette, now a widow still young, but ■s\dth locks white as snow through sorrow, was removed to solitary imprisonment in the Conciergerie, and the last inhuman cruelty that can be inflicted on a mother fell upon her in the seizure of her darling son. Dearly did 'she love him, and when, while they were yet together, her friends proposed another plan of escape, she refused the offer, and wrote : " The interest of my son is my sole guide ; and whatever happiness I might find in being out of this j)lace, I cannot consent to separate myself from him. ... I could enjoy nothing if I were to leave my children." And when, on the night of the 3d of July, the little king was sleeping, and, as we have already told, was snatched from her embrace, the last words which the unhapjiy child of misfortune was ever to hear on earth from his poor mother' s lips were these : ' ' My child, they are taking you from me ; never forget the mother who loves you tenderly, and never forget God ! Be good, gentle, and honest, and your father will look do^vn on you from heaven and bless you !" And then she fainted and saw his face no more. To the Princess Elizabeth, her true sister in affliction, and who was soon to share the same fate, she wrote from the common prison in which she was herded with the lowest felons, her last letter, dated October 16th, 4.30 A.:\r., in which she said : "It is to you, my sister, that I write for the last LETTER FROM HER PRISON. 575 time. I have just been condemned, not to a shameful death, for such is only for criminals, but to go and re- join your brother. Innocent like him, I hope to show ihe same firmness in m}^ last moments. I am calm, as one is when one's conscience reproaches one with nothing. I feel profound sorrow in leaving my poor children : you know that I only lived for them and for you, my good and tender sister. You who out of love have sacrificed everything to be with us, in what a position do I leave you ! I have learned from the I)roceedings at my trial that my daughter was sepa- rated from you. Alas ! poor child ; I do not venture to vrrite to her ; she would not receive my letter. I do not even know whether this will reach you. Do you receive my blessing for both of them. I hope that one day, when they are older, they may be able to rejoin you, and to enjoy to the full your tender care. Let them both think of the lesson which I have never ceased to impress upon them, that the i^rincijjles and the exact performance of their duties are the chief foundation of life ; and then mutual affection and con- fidence in one another will constitute its happiness. Let my daughter feel that at her age she ought always to aid her broth.er by the advice which her greater ex- l^erience and her affection may inspire her to give him. And let my son in his turn render to his sister all the care and all the services which affection can in- spire. Le't them, in short, both feel that, in whatever positions they may be placed, they will never be truly happy but through their union. Let them follow our example. In our own misfortunes, how much comfort has our affection for one another afforded us ! And in 576 MARIE A^'TOIXETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. times of ]iapj)iness, we have enjoyed that doubly from being able to share it with a friend ; and where can one find friends more tender and more united than in one's own family? Let my son never forget the last words of his father, which I repeat emphatically : let him never seek to avenge our deaths, I have to speak of one thing" [referring to the depositions which the captive little king had been compelled by his persecu- tors to sign, containing accusations against his aunt and his mother] " which is very painful to my heart ; I know how much pain the child must have caused you. Forgive him, my dear sister ; think of his age, and how easy it is to make a child say whatever one wishes, especially when he does not understand it. It will come to pass one day, I hope, that he will better feel the value of your kindness and of your tender affection for both of them. ... I beg pardon of all whom I know, and especially of you, my sister, for all the vexations which, without intending it, I may have caused you. I pardon all my enemies the evils they have done me. I bid farewell to my aunts, and to all my brothers and sisters. I had friends. The idea of being forever separated from them and from all their troubles is one of the greatest sorrows that I suffer in dying. Let them at least know that to my latest moment I thought of them. " Farewell, my good and tender sister. May this letter reach you. Think always of me ; I embrace you with all my heart, as I do my poor, dear chil- dren. My God, how heart-rending it is to leave them forever ! Farewell ! farewell !" Her apprehensions proved well founded. Tlie letter HER LAST HOURS. 577 never reached her sister-in-law, but fell into the hands of Fouguier, who preserved it among his special X)apers. Had one spark of hnmanity survived in the monsters of the Reign of Terror, they would have re- spected the doomed j)risoners last wishes and last w^ords. Those almost dying thoughts and anxieties, let it be remembered to her immortal honor, were not for herself, but for her children and her friends. It was dark when she began the letter, but now the faint beams of sunrise stole through the narrow window of her cell. She lay down on her straw bed and tried to sleep. At seven the executioner came in. The streets were thronged by that Parisian mob, whose faces, lurid with crime and cruelty, were like a vision of pande- monium. She was used to their looks and their revil- ings, and minded them no more. It is a merciful dis- pensation that the extreme of sorrow blunts the keenness of it, and excess of pain and anguish pro- duces an awful calm and apathy. Otherwise this world of ours would be a vast madhouse, with only the few happy ones for keepers. Other women, and strong men also, have gone stark, raving mad at one tenth part of the sufferings this sublime woman endured. Yet the wounds were deep, and had left their scars in the white hair, and the wan, furrowed face, upon which still those lines of beauty lingered which had evoked the praises of Europe and have been described with the eloquence of Lamartine. A few weeks before her death she struck her head against a door in following her jaUer. Being asked if she was hurt, she answered, " No, nothing can hurt me now." An English lady saw her in her dungeon, 578 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. for any one who asked was allowed to look at her, on the one condition of expressing no sympathy, and said, in a letter to Lord Auckland : ' ' She was sitting on an old worn-out chair made of straw, which scarcely suj)- I)orted her weight. Dressed in a gown which had once been white, her attitude bespoke the immensity of her grief, which appeared to have created a kind of stupor, that fortunately rendered her less sensible to the injuries and reproaches which a number of inhuman wretches were continually vomiting forth against her.'' Well might Horace ^Yalpole write in this very October, 1793 : " While assemblies calling themselves men are from day to day meditating torment and tort- ure for his (Louis XVI. 's) heroic widow, on whom with all their power and malice, and with every page, footman, and chambermaid of hers in their reach, and with the rack in theu- hands, they have not been able to fix a speck. Nay, do they not talk of the inutility of evidence 1 What other vktue ever sustained such an ordeal V In a common cart, seated on a bare plank, the executioner by her side holding the cords with which her hands were already bound, she was borne to the place of execution. It was midday when they reached the scaffold. Her last words showed the true lady and the queen. In descending from the cart she had ste2:)ped on the executioner's foot. "Excuse me, sir," she said, " I did not do it on purpose," and she added, " Please make haste." In a few moments all was over. So perished, by a death which as she nobly said was to her not ignominious because she was no criminal, one of the very noblest ^\ives and mothers. She had ONE MORE VICTIM. 579 never injured or borne malice against a single human being. Benevolence was native to her soul, and her charities were only bounded by her means. She had those virtues of purity, fidelity, courage, and affection which exalt humanity and redeem our fallen race. She was an angel. w^hom accident had put undeo.- the power of devils. If families are reunited in a brighter world than this, there is no reunion that heavenly spirits would more gladly gaze upon than that of these poor Capets, King and Queen of France. One more victim from that family was still to follow her. The saintly, meek and self-sacrificing aunt steps out upon the blood-red canvas and completes the tab- leau. Madame Elizabeth, as the king's sister was called since titles had been done away, with a courage and contempt of life worthy of her faith and lineage, as a sincere Roman Catholic Christian as well as a king's daughter and a king's sister, committed the orphan children to God's holy keeping, and went calmly from those who, in the words of Socrates, falsely call themselves judges upon earth, to the pres- ence of the eternal justice. Her life and character are a study worthy of a volume by itself. How little does the world appreciate the quiet life-service of such an aunt and sister as the Princess Elizabeth had proved herself to her brother Louis and his wife and children. Young and beautiful, she had chosen to share their sorrows when she might have wedded nobly or passed a brilliant life in the court of other brothers, two of whom were in turn Emperors. At Vienna the Reign of Terror could not have made her a victim and a mar- tyr, but she was one of those sweet women of whom, 580 MARIE ANTOINETTE AS WIFE AND MOTHER. let US thank God, there are still many in a selfisli world, who have no thought of self, who forego all thoughts of marrying and giving in marriage to tend a brother's or a sister's little ones, and who resemble in this our blessed Saviour, who came "not to be min- istered to, but to minister and to give His life a ran- som for many." THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. Agnes Brown, the wife of WUliam Burness or Burnes, for he siDelled his name both ways, was an Ayrshire lass of humble birth, who is described as a very sagacious woman, sincerely religious, quick in reading character, of an equable temper, and with a memory stored with old songs, ballads, and Scottish traditions, which she used to tell or sing to her chil- dren. Of these children, Robert Burns, the greatest song-writer that Scotland, or, indeed, any other country has produced, was the eldest. It was in a clay-built cottage, reared by his father's own hands and situated about two miles from the town of Ayr, that this extraordinary genius was born, on the 25th of January, 1759. His father was advanced in years when he married, and his wife was many years younger than himself. In his personal appearance the poet re- sembled his mother. The youngest daughter of Mrs. Burns gives this ac- count of her mother's life, which may be found in Chambers's " Life of Burns." " She was only nine years of age when her mother died, leaving four younger children. When the mother' s death was looked for, a sister came to see her, and was surprised to find how cheerful she was. ' Are you not sorry to leave your husband and children ? ' 582 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. asked the sister. ' No,' was the answer. ' I leave my chiklren to the care of Gocl, and Gilbert will soon get another wife.' " The father, being of extra-frugal habits, kept all his servants engaged in the farm and housework, so that the charge of the children fell to the care of the eldest, herself a mere child, but no doubt forced into a premature thoughtfulness by the extraordinary circumstances. Agnes had been taught to read her Bible and repeat the Psalms by a weaver in the village, who kept such young pupils beside his loom as he sat at work. At her mother's death, this kind of education came to a stop, and it was never resumed. The mother of Burns was never able even to write her own name. Her mind was shrewd and intelligent, but unavoidably warped with j)rejudices, though not to a serious extent. After her father's second marriage, Agnes Brown was sent to live with her mother's mother, a good, worthy soul, who in her younger days had sheltered the persecuted Covenanters. When this old person was more than ordinarily pleased with her grand- daughter's doings at her wheel, she gave her as her ten Jtours^ or lunch, a piece of brown bread with a piece of white as Jcitchen to it, both being only varieties of oatmeal cake. While here Agnes occa- sionally acted as guardsman or horse-driver to the ploughman, William Nelson, and assisted him to thrash the corn with the flail. They became attached, and were engaged for seven years, wiien, at the mature age of twenty-six, she gave him up, in consequence of a moral lapse on his part, of the kind most apt to obliterate the affections of a pure-minded woman. PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 583 Soon after William Burns liai^pened to meet her at a maypole fair. He had been well affected to a girl he used to meet frequently at Alio way Mill, and he had kept a letter addressed to that maiden for some time locked up in his trunk. He was now so much pleased with Agnes that immediately on returning home he took the epistle from his trunk and burned it. After he had been Agnes's devoted admirer for a twelve- month, they were married, and little more than another year made them the parents of the most remarkable man of Ms age in Scotland. Mrs. Burness had a fine complexion, with pale red hair and beautiful dark eyes. She was of a neat, small figure, extremely active and industrious ; naturallj'^ cheerful, but in later life possessed by anxieties, no doubt a consequence of the life of hardships and diffi- culties through which it had been her lot to pass. . . The low deal chair on which Agnes Brown nursed all her offspring — a very interesting relic of a poet's mother — is preserved at Closeburn Hall, Dumfries- shire, on which estate she lived many years. When Robert Burns was in his seventh year his parents removed to Mount Oliphant, a small upland farm, about two miles from the Brig o' Doon. He had reached his eighteenth year when the lease came to a close. Tlie soil was barren, and during all these inter- vening years the Burns family suffered great priva- tions. They toiled hard, but could not " draw blood out of a stone" or succeed against a niggard soil and bad seasons. It was this period of his life which Burns described as combining " the cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of a galley-slave.'" 584 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. In Ms autobiograpMcal sketch he says : " The farm proved a ruinous bargain. I was the eldest of seven children, and my father, worn out by early hardshixD, was unfit for labor. His spirit was soon irritated, but not easily broken." His two sons, Robert and Gilbert, had to do the manual labor of full-grown men while they were still boys. But their education was not neglected. Their parents combined with four other families to hire a young teacher, named Murdock. From his descri^Dtion we gain some insight into the family life. Of the father, Murdock speaks as by far the best man he ever knew. He describes him as tender and affectionate toward his children, seeking not to drive, but to lead them to the right by aj)pealing to their conscience and their better feelings rather than to their fears. To his wife he was gentle and consider- ate to an unusual degree, always thinking of her ease and comfort ; and she repaid his regard with the greatest reverence and affection. She was a careful and thrifty housewife ; but whenever the cares of her family permitted she delighted in the wise and prudent discourse of her husband, who was a man of strong religious principle and moral convictions. In 1777 the family removed to Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton, an undulating farm on the north bank of the Avr, with a wide outlook southward over the hills of Carrick, westward toward the Isle of Arran, Ailsa Craig, and down the Frith of Clyde toward the Western Sea. This was the home of Burns and his family from his eighteenth till his twenty-fifth year. For a time the family life here was more comfortable than it had been at Mount Oliphant, DEATH OF HER HUSBAXD. 585 probably because several of the children were now able to assist their parents in farm labor. It was during this time that Robert, now" growing into manhood, dis- regarded the wishes of his i)arents by attending a dancing school in the neighboring village. Yet his brother Gilbert testifies that his conduct, though full of love-making, was " governed by the strictest rules of virtue and modesty, from which he never deviated till he reached his twenty-third year." Burns's father died in February, 1784. The son reached Lochlea to find misfortunes thickening around his family and his father on his death-bed. The old man had long struggled against his misfortunes in agriculture, and now consumption had set in. As his last moments drew near, the father said that there was one of his children of whose future he could not think without fear. Robert, who was in the room, came -uj) to his bedside, and asked, " Oh, father, is it me you mean ?" The old man said it was. Robert turned to the window and hid his face, down which the tears of remorse and grief were streaming. His father had • early i)erceived his genius, and even in the Mount Oliphant days had said to his wife, " Whoever lives to see it, something extraordinary will come from that boy." He had noted also with apprehension his headstrong passions. It was well for the old man that he was laid away in Allowav churchyard before his forebodings were realized. To the mother fell as hard an ordeal as any through which a mother can well be called upon to submit. Toward the close of 1783 Robert and his brother Gilbert had taken on their own account a lease of the 580 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. small farm of Mossgiel, two or three miles distant from Loclilea. Thither after then* father's death they con- veyed their widowed mother and youngest brothers and sisters in March, 1784. Burns was now in the be- ginning of his twenty -sixth year, and he remained at Mossgiel four years. " Three things those years and that bare moorland farm witnessed — the wreck of his hopes as a farmer, the revelation of his genius as a poet, and the frailty of his character as a man." His immorality sought excuse in infidelity, or what he deemed '" liberal opinions." He gloried in his shame, and tried to stifle the upbraidings of his conscience for the irreparable wrong he had done a woman. His poor old mother had to receive the child that was the innocent memento of her son's wrong-doing and its own mother's shame. As Lockhart says: " His false pride recoiled from letting his jovial associates know how little he was able to drown the w^hispers of the still small voice, and the fermenting bitterness of a mind ill at ease within himself, escax)ed — as may be often traced in the history of satmsts — in angry sar- casms against those who, whatever their private sor- rows might be, had at least done him no wrong." Carlyle remarks upon this crisis of his life: "With principles assailed by evil example from without, by passions raging like demons from within, he had little need of sceptical misgivings to whisper treason in the heat of the battle, or to cut off his retreat if he were already defeated. He loses his feeling of inno- cence ; his mind is at variance with itself ; the old divinity no longer presides there ; but wild Desires and wild Repentance alternately oppress him. Erelong, A SORROWFUL TASK. 587 too, he has committed himself before the world ; his character for sobriety, dear to a Scottish peasant as few corrupted worldlings can ever conceive, is de- stroyed in the eyes of men, and his only refnge con- sists in trying to disbelieve his guiltiness, and 'tis but a refuge of lies. The blackest desperation gathers over him, broken only by the red lightnings of re- morse." The care of his illegitimate child must have been a sorrowful task to the mother of Robert Burns. Xo doubt she performed a duty she might have excused herself from undertaking, with the kindness of a woman and the long-suffering and forgiveness of a Christian. But her son' s reckless boasting of his own misdeeds and defiance of moral obligations must have filled the cuj) of her humiliation to overflowing. The ribald verses which he wrote, satirizing the parish minister, who in accordance with the discipline of the Presbyterian Kirk required him to do jDublic penance, must have grieved to the soul the sincere Christian mother, whom his outrage of the moral law had dis- graced and burdened. We need not think the less of Burns' s genius because truth compels us to reject the flimsy palliations that have been made for his conduct. To put it merely upon human ground, he inflicted upon a poor widowed mother and her household a shame that very few mothers would have tolerated or pardoned. Xo reproaches seemed to have escaped her, and no doubt the kindness she showed him by caring for his child at this critical time increased the affection with which he seems always to have regarded her. After his memorable first visit to Edinburgh, where he was re- 588 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. ceived on equal terms in the best circles of that literary centre, he revisited Mossgiel on the 8th of June, 1787. after six months' absence. His mother met liim witli the simple exclamation, " Oh, Robert !" In that brief welcome she conveyed to him both her affection and anxiety, and what his feelings were toward her may be inferred from the noble sentiments he had exj)ressed concerning her before he left Edinburgh, while at the height of his fame and in the presence of the aristoc- racy of birth, wealth, and learning. It reflects credit on his manhood that amid such attractions he did not forget the old mother, to whom in his early years he owed so much. Something also he tells us he owed to an old woman who resided in the family when he was a child, who was " remarkable for her ignorance, credulity, and superstition. She had, I supjDose, the largest collection in the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead lights, wraiths, aj)paritions, cantrips, giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong an effect upon my imagination that to this hour, in nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharj) lookout in sus- picious places ; and though nobody can be more scep- tical than I am in such matters, yet it takes an effort of philosophy to shake off their idle terrors." The quiet family and humble farm he now revisited without previous notice of his coming might well be filled wdth pleasure. When he had left them he was in sore poverty and disgrace ; he was now an acknowl- edged poet of his native land. His youngest sister told JEAN ARMOUR. 589 Mr. Cliambers that " her brother went to Glasgow, and thence sent home a present to his mother and three sisters — namely, a quantity of mode silk, enough to make a bonnet and a cloak to each, and a gown besides to his mother and youngest sister." It is pleasing to mark this acknowledgment on his part of their natural right to participate in a son and brother's prosperity. Mrs. Begg, the sister referred to, remembered going for more than a week to Ayr to assist in making up the dresses ; and w^hen she came back, on a Saturday, her brother had returned, and requested her to put on her dress that he might " see how smart she looked in it." It was during this visit that he accidentally met Jean Armour, his wafe, again, and they renewed their former intimacy. We will not enter upon the oft-told story of his many other loves, real and imaginary. They had not dispelled her image from his heart, nor the wrong he had done her from his conscience. In this matter his conduct admits of palliation, for it was she who had discarded Burns, at the command of her father. Burns' s subsequent legal marriage with her was not only an act of prudence, but of honor. Jean Armour was the daughter of a respectable master mason in Mauchline, the neighboring village to Mossgiel. All through the year 1785 they had been intimate, and early in 1786 a secret and in-egular mar- riage, with a written acknowledgment of it, had to be effected. When her father learned this, his anger was such that he unwisely compelled Jean not only to give up Bums, but to destroy that document. He set the law in motion against him, and the poet had to conceal himself ; and out of the twenty pounds he received for 590 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. liis poems, j)aid nine pounds for a passage to the West Indies, to become a slave-driver to a Jamaica jDlanter. The fortunate delays of the vessel, and the fame his poems began to secure him in Edinburgh and through- out Scotland, finally dissuaded him from his purj)ose. This was in the spring 1786, and in September of that year Jean Armour became the mother of twin children. In a letter to his friend, Robert Aiken, written in the following month. Burns speaks of "the conse- quences of my follies, which perhaps make it im- practicable for me to stay at home ; and besides, I have for some time been pining under secret wretchedness, from causes which you pretty well know — the pang of disappointment, the sting of i^ride, with some wander- ing stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is not called away by the calls of society or the vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these reasons I have onlv one answer — the feelings of a father. This, in the present mood I am in, overbalances everything that can be laid in the scale against it, " You may perhajDS think it an extravagant fancj-, but it is a sentiment which strikes home to my very soul ; though sceptical in some points of our current belief, yet I think I have every evidence for the reality of a life beyond the stinted bourn of our present ex- istence ; if so, then, how« shoidd I, in the presence of that tremendous Being, the author of existence — how should I meet the reproaches of those who stand me m MARRIED TO BURNS. 591 the relation of children, whom I deserted in the smiling innocency of helpless infancy." During his second visit to Edinburgh, in the winter of 1788, Burns received news from Mauchline which greatly agitated him. His renewed intercourse with Jean Armour had resulted in consequences which again aroused her father's indignation ; this time he turned his daughter out of doors. Burns provided a shelter for her under the roof of a friend. For a time he seems to have had no thought of further reparation. But in March he received an appointment on the Ex- cise, and leased a farm at Ellisland. In April he left Edinburgh and returned to Ayrshire, where he married Jean Armour, although it was not until the following August that the pair appeared before the Kirk Sessions and were formally recognized by society as man and A^T.fe. " Whether, in taking this stej). Burns thought that he was carrying out a legal as well as a moral obligation," says one of his recent biographers, "we know not. The interpreters of the law now assert that the original marriage in 1786 had never been dissolved, and that the destruction of the promissory lines, and the temporary disownment of him by Jean and her family, could not in any way invalidate it. Indeed, after all that had haiDpened, for Burns to have deserted Jean, and married another, even if he legally could have done so, would have been the basest infidelity. Amid all his other errors and inconsistencies — and no doubt there were enough of these — we cannot but be glad, for the sake of his good name, that he now acted the part of an honest maij, and did what he could to repair the much suffering and shame he had brought 592 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. on liis frail but faithful Jean." And Lockhart justly remarks that " had he hesitated to make her his wife, whom he loved, and who was the mother of his chil- dren, he must have sunk into the callousness of a ruffian." Burns's own account is contained in two of his letters — the one to Mrs. Dunlop, the other to Miss Chalmers. We quote them because they give us' a vivid picture of his wife. To the former he writes : " You are right that a bachelor state would have insured me more friends ; but from a cause you will easily guess, conscious peace in the enjoyment of my own mind, and unmistrusting confidence in approaching my God, would seldom have been of the number. I found a once much loved and still much loved, female, literally and truly cast out to the mercy of the naked elements ; but I enabled her to purchase a shelter ; there is no sporting with a fellow- creature's happiness or misery. The most placid good- nature and sweetness of disposition ; a warm heart, gratefully devoted with all its j)owers to love me ; vig- orous health and sprightly cheerfulness, set off to the best advantage by a more than commonly handsome figure — these, I think, in a w^oman may make a good wife, though she should never have read a page but the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, nor have danced in a brighter assembly than a penny- j)ay wedding." To Miss Chalmers he says : " I have married my Jean. I had a long and much loved fellow-creature's happiness or misery in my determination, and I durst not trifle with so important A PROUD OLD MOTHER. 593 a deposit, nor have I any cause to repent it. If I have not got xDolite tittle-tattle, modish manners, and fash- ionable dress, I am not sickened and disgusted with the multiform curse of boarding-school affectation ; and I have got the handsomest figure, the sweetest temper, the soundest constitution, and the kindest heart in the country. ... A certain late publica- tion of Scots poems she has perused very devotedly, and all the ballads of the country, as she has the finest wood-note wild I ever heard.'' Cunningham, one of Bums's many biographers, says of his affection for Jean: "He loved her; he never had ceased to love her ; he considered her sacrifices of him as made to the pious feelings and authority of her father. " And he quotes Burns' s remark on the same subject, where he says : " I can have no nearer idea of the place of eternal punishment, than what I have felt in my own bTeast on her account, l^ever man loved, or rather adored, a woman more than I did her, and I do still love her to distraction after all." Burns' s mother and sisters rejoiced in his fame, and his poems were sent them as soon as printed. The sisters read them to the proud old mother, who never wearied of hearing ' ' The Cotter' s Saturday Night, * ' "Halloween," and other favorite pieces. "The mother," it was said, "had no drawback to her ad- miration of his genius but the fear that the eclat at- tending it might make him refiect less on the Giver of all good gifts than was his duty." After Burns' s marriage he settled down to farm at Ellisland, and tried in poet fashion to support his 594 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. family by tilling the soil. He was not prosperous, and though his Jean was a faithful wife to him and made their little go far, he had to give up the farm, and, to better his fortunes, he moved to Dumfries. The poet's health failed six years after his marriage, and his last days were embittered by poverty and fear of want. He superintended the education of his children with great care, and to his eldest son, a lad of great promise, he devoted much time, directing his studies and stor- ing his mind with knowledge. The Tvife was ever gentle and thoughtful of his comfort, making all things bend to his moods, and trying in wifely wa^ys to keep his home bright and restful for him. It was said, to the credit of both, that no reproachful words were ever heard between them, and Burns' s neighbors often saw, within the open door of his home, the family circle gathered about him ; he reading to his children, Ms wife moving about setting matters in order, and occa- sionally stopping to hear the eager questions of the children and her husband's replies to them. Burns was a tender father and affectionate husband, and his faults were overlooked by his w^ife, who never ceased to cherish toward him the love given him in her girlhood. Many touching stories might be related of Mrs. Burns' s thoughtful consideration and appreciation of her gifted but rather unmanageable husband. He was variable of mood, and by no means a man who could be dealt with as ordinary men may. The wife knew him well, and when in one of his compos- ing spells she wisely left liim alone. She relates this incident of one of his poetical obsessions : She DEATH OF BURNS. 595 saw Mm walking with long swinging sort of strides, and apparently muttering as he went, and left him alone for some time ; at length she took the children with her and went forth to meet him. He seemed not to observe her, but continued his walk. " On this," said she, "I stepped aside with the bairns among the broom — and past us he came, his brow flushed and his eyes shining : he was reciting these lines : ' Now Tarn ! O Tam ! had thae been queans, A' plumb and strapping in their teens, Their sarks, instead o' creeshie flannen. Been snow-white seventeen hunder linen ! Thir breeks o' mine, my only pair, That once were plush, o' gude blue hair, I wad hae gi'en them off my hurdles, For ae blink o' the bonnie burdies ! ' '^ I wish ye had but seen him ! he was in such ecstasy that the tears were happing down his cheeks.'' Wise Jean, that she did not disturb his trance bv word or sign. Surely she were fit to be wife to a poet. On the 14th of July the anxious wife received a let- ter from her husband, who was at the sea-shore. He calls her his " Dearest Love," and tells her that the bathing had eased his pains, but had done nothing to restore his health. A few days previously he had written to his brother that he was dangerously ill and not likely to get better, and adding : " God keep my wife and childi-en ! If I am taken from their head they will be poor indeed. Remember me to my mother. " This was Burns' s last message to his mother. On the 21st he died. A biographer describes the inci- 596 THE MOTHER AND WIFE OF ROBERT BURNS. dents connected with his last days as follows : " His household iDresented a melancholy sj)ectacle : the poet dying ; his wife in hourly expectation of being con- fined ; four helj)less children wandering from room to room, gazing on their miserable parents, and but too little food or cordial kind to pacify the whole or soothe the sick," Burns died at the age of thu-ty-seven years and seven months, and his wife was several years younger. She lived to old age, and died in the house that he had died in. She was placed beyond the reach of want by the admirers of her husband shortly after his death, and was thus enabled to rear her children in comfort. Much attention was paid her and her chil- dren, and she, knowing that it was for her husband's sake so much kindness was shown, deported herself with dignity and prudence, and was an honor to herself and her name. SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. LUCRETIA MOTT. The little island of Nantucket, lying south-west of Massachusetts, is to be honored as the birthplace of Lucretia Coffin Mott, who first saw the light on the 3d of January, 1793. The daughter of a seafaring man, Lucretia was one of many girls who grew up in that lonely spot, thoughtful, practical, independent in opinion, and eminently religious in nature. Never rich, the family were reduced to unwonted self-denial, dur- ing her girlhood, by her father losing his property through indorsing for a friend who afterward failed in business. It was^then that Lucretia's mother exhibit- ed that remarkable tact, foresight, and energy which women so frequently develop under trials. There were eight children in all, and Lucretia, after attending boarding-school in Dutchess County, New York, for the space of two years without visiting home, was offered the position of assistant teacher at the age of fifteen, which, the second year, was changed for that of teach- er of important classes. At eighteen years of age Lu- cretia became the wife of James Mott, according to the silent ceremony of a Quaker marriage — a union as beautiful and sacred as ever tied two loyal chastened spirits in one solemnly joyful bond. Personally they 598 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. were sufficiently unlike to supply each wliat the other needed. He was cool, quiet, thoughtful ; she glowing, enthusiastic, intuitive. She recognized the fact of this difference, and her love of humor often led her to refer to the capacity of her husband for silence. Once when James's brother Richard was visiting at their house, she was startled on entering the drawing-room to find them ensconced on either side the fire. "Oh," said she, " I ought to have known you were both here, it was so quiet." In speaking of the married life of Mr. and Mrs. Mott, Robert Collyer has said : "If James and Lucretia had gone around the world in search of a mate, I think they would have made the choice which Heaven made for them. They had lived together more than forty years when I first knew them. I thought then, as I think now, that it was the most perfect wedded life to be found on earth. They were both of a most beautiful presence. He large, fair, with kindly blue eyes and regular features. She slight, w itli dark eyes and hair. Both of the sunniest spirit, both free to take their own way, as such fine souls always are, and yet their lives were so perfectly one that neither of them led or follow- ed the other, so far as one could observe, by the breadth of a line. He could speak well, in a slow, wise way, when the spirit moved him ; and the words were all the choicer because they were so few. But his greatness — for he was a great man — lay still in that fine, silent manhood which would only break into fluent speech as you sat with him by the bright wood fire in winter, while the good wife went on with her knitting, putting it swiftly down a score of times in an hour to pound a LUCRETIA MOTT. 599 vagrant spark which had snapped on the carpet, or as we sat under the trees in the summer twilight." Her friend of forty years and her best biographer, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, thus characterizes her : "Rarely have so many different and superior qual- ities been combined in one woman. She had great personal beauty ; her brow and eye were remarkable. Although small in stature, it is said of her as it was of Channing, he too being of diminutive size, that she made you think she was larger than she was. She had a look of command. The amount of will force and intelligent power in her small body was enough to direct the universe. Yet she was modest and unassum- ing, and had none of the personal airs of leadership. Her manners were gentle and self-possessed under all circunjstances. Her conversation, though generally serious, earnest, and logical, was sometimes playful and always good-humored. Her attitude of mind was receptive. She never seemed to think, even in her latest years, that she had explored all truth. Though she had very clearly defined opinions on every subject that came under her consideration, she never dogma- tized. It was this healthy balance of good qualities that made her great among other women of genius, and the multiplicity of her interests in human af- fairs that kept her fresh and young to the last." Mrs. Mott' s diary is more interesting than any other source from which knowledge of her life may be gath- ered. She says : "I always loved the good in childhood, and desired to do the right. In those early yeq^'S I was actively useful to my mother, who, in the abs(mce of my father 600 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. • on Ms long voyages, was engaged in mercantile busi- ness, often going to Boston to purchase goods in ex- change for oil and candles, the staple of the island. The exercise of women's talents in this line, as well as the general care which devolved upon them in the absence of their husbands, tended to develop and strengthen them mentally and physically. " In 1804 my father's family removed to Boston, and in the public and private schools of that city I mingled with all classes, without distinction. It was the custom then to send the children of such families to select schools ; but my parents feared that would minister to a feeling of class pride, which they felt was sinful to cultivate in their children. And this I am glad to re- member, because it gave me a feeling of sympathy for the patient and struggling poor, which but for this experience I might never have known." Some time after Lucretia' s marriage, when she was the mother of live children, reverses came to her hus- band, and they were poor. Equal to the emergency, the wife and mother opened a school and helped sup- port the family until fortune smiled again. Many are the anecdotes on record of her care and thrift as well as of her charity. Her diary continues : "At twenty-five years of age, surrounded with a family and many cares, I felt called to a more public life of devotion to duty, and engaged in the ministry in the Society of Friends, receiving every encouragement from those in authority until the separation amongst us in 1827, when my convic- tions led me to ^adhere to those who believed in the sufficiency of the light within, resting on ' truth for LUCRETIA MOTT. 601 authority, rather than authority for truth.' The pop- ular doctrine of original sin never commended itself to my reason or conscience, except on the theory of original holiness also. I searched the Scriptures daily, ofttimes finding a construction of the text wholly dif- ferent from that which had been pressed on our ac- ceptance. The highest evidence of a sound faith being the practical life of the Christian, I have felt a far greater interest iij the moral movements of the age than in any theological discussion." Gerrit Smith describes a call he once made at Mrs. Mott' s home in Philadelphia in these words : ' ' In a conversation of an hour, she was interrupted half a dozen times %\dth applications for charity. At last in came the glorious Fanny Kemble, meeting Mrs, Mott in a manner that clearly showed they were warm and well-known friends : and soon came Frederick Douiz- lass." Her house was always the resort of those who loved good things and good work. The foremost people in England and America used to gather around the family hearth of that large house in Arch Street, Philadel- phia, which was so long their haj)py home. And an ideal home it was^ — the abode of love, intelligence, and sympathy with everything that is noble and beauti- ful. The hostess skilfully led, so that all would be interested and induced to talk, and she herself was the most delightful and sjonpathetic of listeners. At the hospitable board sat, at one time or another, many of the distinguished people of the age. But in the midst of it all, Mrs. Mott never lost her simple house- hold ways. After the cheery meal was over, she C02 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. waslied the silver and cMiia in the dining-room, at tlie same time joining in the conversation, which was al- ways striking, animated, and informed with charity and philanthropy. The anti-slavery sentiments of James and Lucretia Mott were never concealed, any more than their sym- pathy for any who were wronged and oppressed, at a time when reforms were most unpopular. Underneath it all was a spiritual life, earnest and glowing. The eyes of this heroine lighted up with a holy fervor whenever she arose to speak " of the things of the Spirit," or of human rights and privileges. At such times she was the incarnation of eloquence. She seemed filled with the very flame of eloquence, and at times spoke two hours without pause on "life and righteousness," while the crowd stood speechless and spell-bound, chained by the magnetism of her rare, fine presence. It was a fervid outpouring of masterful eloquence, coming from a soul filled with highest thoughts, and warmed with the tenderest affection. To woman and for woman Lucretia Mott was at the same time preacher, teacher, and prophet. She be- lieved in equal opportunities and common rights ; she voiced the injustice of laws which weighed too heavily on a large jDortion of humanity. The cause of tem- perance, of peace, of the downfall of monopolies, always found in her an advocate who convinced the head while touching the heart. "Truth for authority, not authority for truth," was the motto of her long and blessed life, and her great soul lived up to that noble sentiment. In her daily life Mrs. Mott was a rigid but not a LUCRETIA MOTT. 603 mean economist. What she saved that people usually waste was spent in furthering some charity dear to that great heart that beat responsive to every struggle, to every woe. And through it all was an influence, strongly tending to such good-will, peace, and har- mony, that even the bitterness of ignorance and bigot- ry were overcome by the sunshine of her sweet and saintly presence. Mrs. Mott' s clear-headedness was not at all obscured by her tender-heartedness, and no one could ever accuse her of prejudice or bigotry. Of a frail organization, she looked large and grand when inspired by some glowing truth. Her faculties were so evenly balanced, her good sense so paramount, that she moved quietly along her appointed grooves of life, scattering influences as beneficent as those of the cheerful sunshine to the outer world. A few years before her demise, James Mott fell asleep to this world, but his widow was cheered by the unfaltering faith of meeting him in a better, where there are no partings. But she lingered not long. On November 11th, 1880, Lucretia Mott yielded up her latest breath on earth, to meet the glorified spirits of the "Just made perfect." AVell may the biographer from whom we have quoted say : ' ' The name of Lucretia Mott represents, more fully than any other in the nineteenth century, the sum of all womanly virtues." 604 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. THE MOTHER OF GAMBETTA. The mother of Leon Gambetta was one of the strongest of characters, and to her was her son indebted not only for the nature he inherited, but the advan- tages that enabled him to become a statesman. He was closely attached to his old father, but by race and temperament he was a member of the Massabie family. His mother, Onasie Massabie, was of Jemsh extraction, and was possessed of extraordinary strength of char- acter. In spealving of himself on one occasion to a friend he remarked : '' My impetuosity of blood I have constantly applied myself to quell, and I have not yet quite succeeded. It was my mother's gift ; for my temperament, I know, I owe it almost entirely to her." She was good-natured and sympathetic, and in the village of Cahors, where she lived, she was a great favorite. Her father was a pharmaceutical chemist, and her brother was educated to be a priest. She her- self was a thinker, and was greatly the superior in mental attributes of her husband. She had a head for public affairs, and but for her husband's opposition might have become a political woman. In France, of all countries, women of brains have opportunities for enjoying i)olitical influence and wielding power in their salons not shared by the sex in other countries. She lived in a dull provincial town, and her husband was a small hardware dealer and grocer. He designed nothing better for his son ; but his wife, while she be- longed, as did Madame Roland, to the petltes bour- geoises^ was intensely ambitious for the intellectual THE MOTHER OF GAMBETTA. 605 advancement of her son. Patiently, bnt with a brave spirit, she met the hard facts of her life : managed her household with thrift, worked in the shop with her husband, and from the rising to the setting sun had no relief from toil. Had she not been greater than the position she held, the world would not have heard of Gambetta, for there was really no outward encourage- ment for her. The hope and strength was from with- in, and it was sufficient to bridge the chasm of poverty and obscurity and enable her to plant her feet firmly on the higher plane she saw and aspired to reach. Madame Gambetta' s influence over her son w^as in proportion to her gifts of intellect and her disinter- ested love for him. The word disinterested is used advisedly, for this quality of love is not common, and even between mother and son it is rarer than it should be. The poor mothers of strong and healthy sons look to them for pecuniary help, or at least they expect them to care for themselves, and the escape from drudgery and poverty is almost imj)ossible for a son where the mother is a burden instead of an inspiration. There was much simplicity in Madame Gambetta' s nature ; she had none of the vulgar pride that flaunts itself in the faces of superiors. She tended the shop with no outward sign toward her betters who came in to buy of her. She could not enter the cii'cle of the upper bourgeoisie of Cahors, and she would not take her friends from among inferiors. But when her hus- band made known his plans for their son, whom she had kept at school through her persistency, she took the ground of an aristocrat, and declined to let her boy remain on her level. 606 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. He should go to other and better schools than he had attended ; he was now sixteen years old, and had out- grown all the lads of his age in Cahors. The father objected, and compelled him to go into his shop and begin the business that was before him. The mother said nothing until her plans were formed, and then she showed him a bag of money which she had saved — no- body knew how or when — and A\T.th it he won his freedom. A friend of Gambetta's has given this ac- count of the departure of the youth from his home : " One day his mother called him to her and handed him a bag of money — enough to defray the cost of his journey to Paris and enable him to study law there for some time. A trunk full of clothing had been pre- pared, and was at the office of the stage-coach, where a place was booked for him to the nearest railway. Madame Gambetta instructed him to slip quieth* away, in order to avoid a painful scene with his father, who was determined that his son should succeed him in the business. This communication was so unexpected and delightful that for the rest of the day Leon was in a state of bewilderment. He rose betimes next morn- ing, and stole off as instructed." To Paris he went directly, and was domiciled in a garret until his father pardoned him and allowed him an income. It is not related that he forgave his wife, but doubtless he never knew the extent of her sinning in the matter. He certainly did not know this inci- dent connected with her son's support in Paris, which is told by M. Emile Menier, who went to Cahors in 1856, the year that Gambetta went to Paris. He was a choco- late manufacturer at Noisiel, and went to Cahors on a THE MOTHER OF GAMBETTA. 607 business tour. He thus tells the story : Calling at the " Bazar Genois" he was received by Madame Gani- betta. In answer to his proposal to sell his goods on commission, she, with tears in her eyes, met it with another. It was this. " I have a son of great promise, whom I want to send to Paris, against his father's will, to study law. He is a good lad, and no fool. But my husband, who wants him to continue his business here, will, I know, try to starve him into submission. What I am about to proX)ose is, that if I buy your chocolate at the rate you offer it, and buy it outright, instead of taking it to sell on commission, you will say nothing if I enter it at a higher price, and you will pay the difference to my son." M. Menier agreed, and for some years carried out the arrangement. There are those who will deem such an act impossible to a good woman, but injustice breeds many wrongs, and M. Gambetta, and not his wife, is to be held ac- countable for this deceit. She worked without pay, doing double duty in her home and in the shop, and in return was denied the privilege of using her earnings to educate their child. Indeed, she had no earnings, for a wife is practically the property of her husband in many countries, and she cannot claim wages from him. She cannot earn money outside, and if she wants it, is either compelled to obtain it by deceit of one form or another. Madame Gambetta had intelligence beyond women of her rank, and she well knew that what was her husband's was hers for any lawful or right pur- pose. The lesson of her persistency, if not her plan of procedure, should be admired. A mother's in- tuitions told her that her son's future course would G08 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS, justify lier in overreaching her narrow-minded hus- band, whom, though she loved, she yet knew to be her inferior in worldly wisdom and intellectual force. Madame Gambetta's jjersonal appearance is thus described : Though plain-mannered and unpretending, she was the contrary of vulgar. A citizen of the world falling in casually with her in her latter days would not have supposed that her school education was of the most elementary kind, and that she had led the cramped life of a small provincial tradeswoman. It was from her that Gambetta derived those faculties which have rendered him so apt to personify the democratic move- ment which he inaugurated toward the close of the Second Empire. To her, also, he owes that taste for the eloquence of the tribune which carried him so high. This remarkable woman and admirable mother designedly stimulated her son's oratorical vocation and turned his mental energies into the channel in which they have been flowing. Madame Gambetta never lost her influence over her son. Even after he became President of the French Republic, she exercised it with prudence and care, for she knew that her slightest wish was a law to Mm. Her daugliter revered her as did L6on, but her career was a private one, and there was no need for decisive action in her case as there had been in his. Her sister Mollie Massabie kept house for Gambetta when he became a prominent young advocate and afterward a successful party leader. The mother re- sided in Paris occasionally with her son, but never made it a permanent home. His public career was re- CHIEF-JUSTICE MARSHALL'S WIFE. 609 markable, and his mother was an eager and interested spectator of his every act. He deferred to her when her views were exjDressed, for his warm nature was the counterpart of hers, and her mind was, if untrained, as strong and clear as his. On all points relating to his welfare, immediately or remotely, she was a judicious monitor, and not unfrequently it was her voice that warned him against those who attached themselves to him when fortune smiled upon him. When she died, in July, 1882, the tidings w^ere im- parted to him as he sat in the Chamber listening to the speech of an opponent. .He hastened from the scene about him and went into the library, where his sobs attested the grief he felt. Madame Gambetta's death was sudden, and, while the news was not wholly un- expected, for she had been failing for some time, her son was not prepared to hear that his best earthly friend had gone. He did not long survive her, dying in January, 1883. CHIEF-JUSTICE MAESHALL'S WIFE. John" Marshall, of Virginia, Chief Justice of the United States, was a man the simplicity and beauty of whose private life has been frequently commented upon in print. He was a model of what a husband should be to the wife of his bosom, in respect to the love which he should cherish for her, the tenderness with which he should watch over her and nurse her in failing health, and the fondness ^vith which he should think of her when death has taken her from him. On the first anniversary of his wife's death he wrote the following beautiful tribute to her memory : 610 SHOBT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. "December 25, 1832. " This day of joy and festivity to the whole Christian world is to my sad heart the anniversary of the keen- est affliction which humanity can sustain. While all around is gladness, my mind dwells on the silent tomb, and cherishes the remembrance of the beloved object it contains. " On the 25th of December it was the will of Heaven to take to itself the companion who had sweetened the choicest part of my life, had rendered toil a pleasure, had partaken of* all my feelings, and was enthroned in the inmost recess of my heart. " IS'ever can I cease to feel the loss, and to deplore it. Grief for her is too sacred ever to be profaned on this day, which shall be during my existence devoted to her memory. " On the 3d of January, 1783, I was united by the holiest bonds to the woman I adored. From the hour of our union to that of our separation I never ceased to thank Heaven for this its best gift. Not a moment passed in which I did not consider her as a blessing from which the chief happiness of my life was derived. This never-dying sentiment, originating in love, was cherished by a long and close observation of as amiable and estimable qualities as ever adorned the female bosom. " To a person which in youth was very attractive, to manners uncommonly pleasing, she added a fine under- standing, and the sweetest temper which can accompany a just and modest sense of what was due to herself. "I saw her first the week she attained the age of fourteen, and was greatly pleased with her. CHIEF-JUSTICE MARSHALL'S WIFE. 611 " Girls tlien came into company mucli earlier tlian at present. As my attentions, tliongli mtliont any avowed XDurjjose, nor so open and direct as to alarm, soon became ardent and assiduous, Iter heart received an impression which could never be effaced. Having felt no prior attachment, she became at sixteen a most devoted wife. All my faults — ^and they were too many — could never weaken this sentiment. It formed a part of her existence. Her judgment was so sound and so safe that I have often relied upon it in situations of some perplexity. I do not remember ever to have regretted the adoption of her opinion. I have some- times regretted its rejection. " From native timidity she was opposed to every- thing adventurous, yet few females possessed more real firmness. " That timidity so influenced her manners that I could rarely prevail on her to display in company the talents I knew her to possess. They were reserved for her husband and her select friends. Though serious as well as gentle in her deportment, she possessed a good deal of chaste, delicate, and playful wit, and if she permitted herself to indulge this talent, told her little story with grace, and could mimic very success- fully the peculiarities of the person who was its sub- ject. " She had a fine taste for belles-lettres readings, which was judiciouslj^ applied in the selection of pieces she admired. " This quality, by improving her talents for conver- sation, contributed not inconsiderably to make her a most desirable and agreeable companion. It beguiled 612 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. many of those winter evenings during which her pro- tracted ill-health and her feeble nervous system con- fined us entirely to each other. I can never cease to look back on them with deep interest and regret. Time has not diminished, and will not diminish, this interest and this regret. " In all the relations of life she was a model which those to whom it was given cannot imitate too closely. As the wife, the mother, the mistress of a family, and the friend, her life furnished an example to those who could observe intimately which will not be forgotten. She felt deeply the distress of others, and indulged the feeling liberally on objects she believed to be meri- torious. " She was educated with a profound reverence for religion, which she preserved to her last moment. This sentiment among her earliest and deepest impres- sions gave character to her whole life. Hers was the religion taught by the Saviour of man. She was cheer- ful, mild, benevolent, serious, humane, intent on self- improvement and the imj^rovement of those who looked to her for precept or example. She was a firm believer in the faith inculcated by the Church in which she was bred, but her soft and gentle temper was incapable of adopting the gloomy and austere dogmas which some of its professors have sought to engraft on it. " I have lost her, and mth her I have lost the solace of my life. Yet she remains still the companion of my retired hours, still occupies my inmost bosom. When alone and unemployed, my mind unceasingly recurs to her. THE MOTHER OF GEORGE SAND. 613 " More than a thousand times since the 25th of December, 1831, have I repeated to myself the beauti- ful lines written by Burgoyne under a similar affliction, substituting Mary for Anna : " Encompassed in an angel's frame An angel's virtues lay : How soon did Heaven assert its claim, And take its own away ! " My Mary's worth, my Mary's charms. Can never more return. What now shall fill these widowed arms ? Ah me ! my Mary's urn — Ah me ! ah me ! my Mary's urn." THE MOTHER OF GEORGE SAND. The Mother of George Sand (Madame Dude- vant) was remarkable for her great beauty and for her passionate devotion to those whom she loved. Ma- dame Dupin was the daughter of a bird-fancier who trained and sold birds on the Quai of Paris in the middle of the last century. His young daughter was an adept at the art, and her powers if not her expe- riences are signalized in that book of her daughter called "Tenerino," where the heroine tames wild birds to follow her and eat out of her hand. She belonged, of course, to the bourgeoise or peasant class of French society, who are never supposed to meet socially or to marry those who belong to the so-called noble houses of that mercurial nation. But love overleaps all such artificial barriers. The young Maurice Dupin, grandson of Marshal Saxe, handsome, young, proud, brave, and dazzling, sees the beautiful girl by chance in the streets of Paris, and G14 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. straightway falls in love with her. Nothing could be more unlike than the training of the two lovers. Young Dupin had been, since the death of his father, under the care of a mother who belonged b}' pride as well as birth to that old regime whose family trees are of more import than are the destinies of dy- nasties and nations. A scrupulous observer of the proprieties, proud to the extent of haughtiness, dis- dainful of those of mean origin, she was cold to all the world save to her dashing only son and child. It did not occur to her that he could make a misalliance, and it was a sore thing for the aristocratic old lady when the pride of her life announced to her that he was the husband of the gay, beautiful, but untrained peasant child-woman who was soon to become a mother. Young Dupin, an officer in the Imperial service, took his wife to dwell under his mother's roof while he went with the army. And nothing could present a greater contrast than these two women, who had not one single point of sympathy other than their mutual love for him who, to use French phraselogy, "adored " them both. They could not understand one another, so widely divergent were their tastes, habits, and views. The old lady's religion was bound up in those convention- alities which the younger lady continually shocked. Ignorant, wild, moody, passionate, she gave way to violent bursts of temper, which the mother of the hus- band only increased by her coolness and provoking disposition. It was in such extremes of feeling that the little Aurore first grew into consciousness, and THE MOTHER OF GEORGE SAND. 615 there can be no doubt that they affected her life and her genius, causing many of those unhappy irregulari- ties which she, in later years, fully outgrew. One cannot suffer such violent moral and mental extremes with impunity. As was natural, the mother and grandmother fought for possession of the child. While yet of tender years, Aurore' s father was killed by a fall from his horse, and for a while the two most bereft were drawn nearer together by the greatest of all seeming calami- ties to theii' loving hearts. They turned to their only consolation, the little girl, who was a striking copy of him they had lost, and each courted and petted, scolded and rebuked, the child, over whom each wished to secure influence. Nothing could be more unwholesome than their con- tention over this girl of genius. She early learned that what would please one would incense the other, and her days passed in a series of rebounds from in- dulgent frankness and liberty to excessive and injuri- ous repression. And one cannot wonder at her after- extravagances, in regarding her hereditary influences and circumstances of that period in which j^outh is so impressible. The mother of little Aurore never learned self- restraint and wisdom. Her nature, like the surf after a storm, beat tremendously upon the barriers of the shore of limitation and restraint which hedge all life, even to the end. She still lived at Nohaut with her child and her mother-in-law, rebellious, untamed, fiery as ever. Gradually her extreme beauty faded, thougli she was always noticeably graceful and winning, and 616 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. it was with a feeling of relief tliat lier friends saw this perfect child of nature sink into that repose of death, where all the angry turbulence of a vehement nature is forever calmed. The career of Aurore, who wrote under the name of George Sand, was to the very end wonderfully influenced by the mingling within her being of these two kinds of blood, whose effervescence was only slowly overcome. THE MOTHER OF GEORGE ELIOT. Mrs. Evans, the mother of George Eliot, the first among women novelists, has little mention in the his- tory of her daughter's life. She died when that daughter was quite young, and this in part accounts for the circumstance. Again, she and her daughter were totally unlike in disposition, and while she cared for her as a parent she did not thoroughly appreciate her as a woman. She was a good person and a notable housekeeper, and is described as having great industry and marked qualities. The " Mrs. Hackif of Amos Barton is a perfect transcript of her character, and many of "Mrs. Poyser's" attributes were taken from life. She was matter-of-fact and epigrammatic of speech, and had little of the literary taste which her famous daughter exhibited while vet a small child. Mrs. Hackit was a strongly marked figure, with a sharp tongue, a chronic liver complaint, and of quenchless energy. Her domestic affairs were managed in clock- work fashion ; in season and out of season she did what was planned to be done, and the laws of the land were not half so rigidly enforced as her housekeeping. She was a woman who did not change her plans any THE MOTHER OF GEORGE ELIOT. 617 more than she did the fashions of her dress, and was quick of temper while kind of heart. Mrs. Evans was a strict member of the Chnrch of England, as was her husband, and their daughter, up to her seventeenth or eighteenth year, was the most trnly pious of the family. She says of herself that she was earnestly bent upon the work of trying " to shape this anomalous English Christian life of ours into some consistency wdth the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament." In her autobiographical iDoem entitled " Brother and Sister" she alludes to her mother and her dearly be- loved brother Isaac. It begins as follows : " Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill, Then with the benediction of her gaze Chmg to us lessening, and pursued us still. Across the homestead to the rookery elms, Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, So rich for us, we counted them as realms With varied product.'" The death of Mrs. Evans and the remarkable course of her daughter widely severed the home circle. Miss Evans changed her religious views entirely, and greatly pained the father and brother, who loved her devotedly. AVhen Mr. Evans died she went abroad, and on her return did not live with her brother. Her home life seems to have been wholly wanting in like- ness to the average, and her mother was so little essen- tial to her hapi)iness that, had she lived, it is not prob- able that Marian would have remained at home. Her mind was bent on study, and she had little taste for or interest in the ordinary avocations of women. It does 618 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. not appear from any traditions extant that Mrs. Evans realized her daughter' s intellectual gifts, but with her practical views she would hardly have put the estimate upon them that the world did afterward. In many re- spects the daughter resembled her father, but none of her name or race ever possessed a tithe of her genius. She was like her mother in one respect, however — she was reticent to a degree, and industriously as many have gleaned for incidents regarding her domestic life, little has been gathered. She was a woman of ideas, and the commonplace had no part or parcel in her make-up either as child, maiden, or woman. Immaistuel Kant, the philosopher, was a great figure, and he has left an indelible impress upon the history of human thought. As professor, philosopher, and writer, he won distinction, and his " Critique of the Pure Reason" ranked him with the leading minds of the world. It is over a hundred years since this work appeared, and the centenary commemoration was celebrated at Konigsberg last year (1882). Kant was born in Konigs- berg, and his name is identified with it. His parents were poor tradespeople, his father being a working sad- dler, and both his father and his mother were enthusi- astically religious. They were German Protestants, and were members of a society of Pietists in that town. Kant himself has given us a touching picture of the goodness and piety of his parents, whom he says, " Never, not even once, in his knowledge, did they say an unbecoming word or do an unworthv act." His mother, he tells us, " was a lovely, affectionate, pious, THE MOTHER OF IMMANUEL KANT. 619 and upright mother, who led her chiklren to the fear of God by means of pious instruction and a virtuous example." There were eleven children in the saddler's home, and it must have been a remarkable mother who could have devoted the time and had the knowledge to impart, which she gave to each. She often took her son Immanuel outside the city, where he could enjoy nature, and under the trees, in presence of the birds and flowers, she taught him of the Maker of them all, and of the divine wisdom displayed in all nature. Unfortunately, this rare mother died while the son who was to make her famous was yet a lad. Nine years later his father died, -while he was a schoolboy. The religious character of his parents brought him under the notice of their pastor, Br. Schultz, who took a great interest in the lad, and placed him in the Gymnasium, from whence he went to the University of Konigsberg. The family was broken up after the death of Mr. Kant, and the brothers and sisters sei^a- rated, to be together no more. Kant, who seems to have been the only member of it who had the educa- tional advantages he enjoyed, saw little if any thing- more of his kindred. His only brother became a clergyman, and his sisters, who were in an inferior posi- tion to him, were almost totally ignored by him. In his old age, when in his last illness, one of his sisters, who was an inmate of the workhouse, was brought to take care of him, and when she entered his presence, she did not know him or he her. Kant was not a good son of a good mother, or he would not have neglected his family as he did. He had little respect for the sex, lived unmarried, and was especially hostile tow- 620 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. ard cultured women. His mother's influence over him might have made all this different, but few men, either learned or ignorant, have left behind them so unlovely a record. The early teachings of his devout mother were entu'ely obliterated in the years he spent in college. Elizabeth Cromwell, as wife and mother, deserves recognition. She filled her part as housewife, when no other duties were required of her, with commendable credit, and when, through her husband' s accession to power, she attained a dangerous height, she played her part well. She was not 'born to ex2:)ect a throne, but she M^as of a resj^ectable family, and had that degree of gentility which enabled her to deport herself well, and to protect her husband's interests by womanly rectitude and reticence. Her nine children were edu- cated with great care under her supervision, and though the Cavalier party invented much gossip concerning her, it does not appear that she ever failed to x)erform her public as well as her private duties in a creditable manner. AVhen Cromwell was first confirmed in his high posi- tion, it was with great regret that his wife removed from her obscure lodgings to Whitehall, where there was much pomp and grandeur. Her enemies, or rather her husband's, tauntingly suggested that she was cleverer at " turning the spit" than steering the helm of state, but it does not appear that she attempted the latter. That she could have done both was to her honor. She was a religious enthusiast, partaking in a great measure of her husband's spirit in this respect. Her THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. 621 mental resources were not great, nor does she appear to have possessed any personal attractions. She was a plain-looking woman, having a defect in one of her eyes. Her manner was dignified, and her mode of life simple and unassuming. She had much influence with her husband, and in several of his letters he alludes to circumstances in which he desires to be advised by his wife, and in one of his letters to her he says : "I could not satisfy myself to omit this post, although I have not much to wTite ; yet indeed, I love to write to my dear, who is very much in my heart." Cromwell, in his letters to his daughters — all of w^hom were women of worth, and one of them, Elizabeth, was a person of considerable ability — invariably speaks with tender- ness of their mother. He died holding his wife' s hand, and almost his last words were encouraging assurances to her that he would recover. Mrs. Cromwell survived him fourteen years, living a quiet, retired life in the house of her son-in-law, Mr. Claypole, and died on the 8th of October, 1672. The Duchess or Marlborough is one of the most picturesque and brilliant of all the heroines of his- tory. Her husband was that famous Duke whose courage and ability brought glory upon the English army. Sarah Jennings was born on the 29th of May, 1660, at Holywell, near St. Alban's, and was the daughter of a gentleman of good estate. She suc- ceeded her eldest sister, the Duchess of Tyrconnel, as maid of honor to Princess Anne, who afterward became Queen of England on the death of her sister Mary and Prince "William of Orange. 622 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. Of her beauty, wit, political power and ambition, and of lier ascendency over Queen Anne, lier contempora- ries never cease recounting. The friend and intimate of Anne while yet both were mere playmates, the Prin- cess loved, admired, and trusted her above any other friend. Sarah Jennings early had the choice of a mul- titude of lovers : she selected the handsome, dashing Duke, who was hardly her equal in intellect, but much her superior in amiability. They were a brave couple, truly. The picture extant of the Duchess, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, shows one of the most brilliant and noble-looking of women. The influence of the wilful Duchess completely dominated the indolent and silent Anne, and to a great extent her own husband. She was faithful, sincere, unselfish, but as she was exposed to envy and jeal- ousy, grew bitter, defiant, and domineering. The Duke loved her most tenderly, and she seems to have not only returned his love, but to have been worthy of his regard and confidence. Her grace, majesty, and loftiness of carriage illuminated the dull court, while her wit flashed like an unsheathed sword in the sun- light. Honors crowded thickly ujion them, following the Duke's splendid victories of Blenheim and Mal- plaquet ; riches were showered most abundantly upon their heads. Their fine, beautiful daughters all mar- ried noblemen of high rank, yet in one respect the celebrated Sarah was unfortunate. An estrangement occurred between her and the Sovereign, was increased by her own overbearing disposition, and the strange si)ectacle was exhibited of a subject withstanding and coercing Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain. THE MOTHER OF DANIEL WEBSTER. 623 No doubt it embittered the last days of both. The Duchess survived her Queen and her own hus- band, whom she tenderly mourned for twenty -two years. The mother of Daniel Webster united the powerful qualities of a strong intellect, an ardent ambition, and a determined spirit. She was an admirable woman in all relations, but as a mother she was remarkable. Her son' s earliest lessons were taught him by her. She made him acquainted with the Bible so soon as he could read, and his recollections of his youth always associated her and Bible verses. She recognized, be- fore any one else would admit the fact, that her son had a clear and vigorous brain, and she gave up less important duties to instruct him. Daniel Webster was born in 1782, and the means of obtaining an edu- cation, even in Massachusetts, at that time were diffi- cult. Schools were scarce and the farmers were poor. Until he was fourteen years old he was directly under the control and instruction of his mother, and was ready to take his place in school at the head of stu- dents much his senior. His father was in straitened circumstances and had a large family to support, but ways and means were found for placing him at school, and he had the opportunity his mother had longed to see him possess. A younger brother desired to be educated, and the mother's heart was as anxious for his intellectual development as she had been for her eldest born. The father felt that he could not spare both sons, but Mrs. AVebster thought they could, and with characteristic quickness saw how it might be 624 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. accomplished. The matter was broached to the hus- band and father, and it startled him. She said she had lived long in the world, and been happy in her children. She desired above all things to see them educated, and proposed that if her sons would promise to look after their parents' comfort in old age she would be willing to sell their property and give them the pro- ceeds. The father yielded, and the farm was sold. Webster's mother could never have accomplished such a thing had not her influence over her husband been powerful and her own courage and trust been extreme. Whatever her sons were, they owed it to their mother, who was a brave-hearted New England woman, a noble representative of the Puritan stock to which she be- longed. SiSMONDi, the French writer, and author of the " History of the Italian Republics of the Middle Ages," owed his literary success to his mother. He inherited his intellectual qualities from her, and was indebted for his encouragement in his earliest efforts to her. At one time he was on the point of aban- doning the literary career, when the remonstrances of his mother prevented the step. She wrote him these stirring words : " Cheer up, my child ! Electrify yourself by all possible means — of course, all that are honorable and sure. Dear child, I exhort you, I conjure you, do not suffer your heart to be oppressed by the contrarie- ties you encounter : they are the necessary conse- quence of the trade of authorship ; all authors begin with them. ... I will not suffer you to speak ill of THE MOTHER OF SCHILLER. C25 the vocation of men of letters. Come, let me teach you to look at things on the sunny side, and if you learn this from me, give me credit for it before the world. No doubt the man of letters is loaded with his particular burden, since every vocation has its own ; but ordinari- ly he bears a smaller part of the common burden than others ; he is only indirectly affected by the great shocks of life : trouble — that is, work— is one of his l^leasures ; it^ reward is often double and of winning sweetness. In fact, if I had to live over again and to choose, I would adopt the literary life as the hap- piest." After he became famous she deprecated the sceptical tone of his writings, and wrote him a warning letter, urging him to consider the harm he might do others, and reminding him that scepticism made no one happy. Another time, objecting to his intimacy with Madame De Stael, she says : " If I could find the fairy ring which pricked the finger every time the wearer was about to commit a fault, I would send it to you as an additional security." Of the mother of Schiller, Johannes Scherr one of his biographers says : " Frau Elisabeth Dorothea was, at the time of her marriage, a slender maiden with blonde hair, inclining to red. Without beauty, she pos- sessed a fine forehead, delicate, attractive features, and expressive eyes, which testified to the kindness of heart that distinguished her all through her life, and lent a great charm to her face. By nature timid and retiring, she bore with patience the trials of life, and fulfilled quietly and unostentatiously the duties of her position. G2G SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. She was neither a sentimentalist, nor an enthusiast, nor a musician, nor a poetess, as we have been told by some biographers ; but her religious feeling was deep, and, though her education did not surpass that of most burgher maidens, she had a genuine love of nature, as well as for the beautiful and great in history. In her leisure hours she delighted in the poems of Gellert and Uz, and was also very fond of reading history, esj>e- cially the lives of great men. " * Dr. Charles I. Hempel, another of Schiller' s biogra- l)hers, says : " Xo observation is at once more true and more hackneyed — that it is to the easy lessons of a mother men of genius have usually owed their earliest insjDiration. Schiller's mother had tastes and acquu^e- ments rare in women of her rank ; she was a good musi- cian, fond of poetry, and even wrote it ; and the gen- tleness of her temper gave a certain refinement to her manners." Isaac Watts had a mother who was possessed of strong characteristics, and who Avas singularly self- possessed and dignified. Her husband was a school- teacher, and she assisted him in his duties. At the time Isaac .was born, Mr. Watts was in prison for attending conventicles. Mrs, Watts, anxious to make his lot as endurable as possible, would go on sunny days and sit under the window of his cell with her little child in her arms, where he could see her and the babe, who was growing so finely. Released from prison, the father had to exile himself, and for several years he was separated from his family. At last King James's indulgence allowed the persecuted Nonconformist to CHRISTINA, QUEEN OF SWEDEN. 627 return to his family, and the wife aided her husband in keeping a boarding-school. Mrs. Watts beguiled the rainy afternoons by offering to the pupils who boarded in the house a prize for, the best poetical effusion. She was a helpful, earnest woman, and she was above all else a prudent one. The state of the times in which she lived required great caution on the part of those who were suspected of entertaining antag- onistic religious views, and she jDroved herself to be a wise woman by never causing herself or her friends the slightest anxiety on this account. She was the mother of nine children, the eldest of whom subsequently enriched Christian literature as no single individual has done before or since his time. Christina, Queen of Sweden, daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, was the famous child of a very ordinary mother. They w^ere utterly unlike in charac- ter, the mother being of capricious temper and weak in judgment. There was a natural antagonism between the two, which neither knew how to overcome. Chris- tina held her mother' s views in contempt, and displayed antipathy toward all that she did and said. She was excessively strong in will power, and bold and deter- mined in action, while her mother, who was Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg, was the other extreme, being nervous, irritable, and commonplace, and, like all com- moni)lace people, was self-opinionated and hostile toward those who manifested originality or indepen- dence in thought or action. She held narrow prejudices regarding women, and her daughter's course was a harrowing trial to her. However, her daughter was a G28 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. queen, and it was impossible for her to dictate to her. Christina's career was not one that brought her honors and reverence in her last years, but her mother was not held responsible far her characteristics or her conduct, for from the time she was two years old, when she went on a journey vdth her father alone, she had no desire to be with her mother. While Gustavus Adolphus lived, she was his constant companion, and she had not at any time in her life any intimates or even asso- ciates among women. Chateaubriand attributes the restoration of his faith in religion to his mother, and says, in the preface to his " Genius of Christianity,'' that his mother on her death-bed charged one of his sisters to recall him to the religion in which he had been brought up. He was then on his travels, and his sister's letter, commu- nicating and urging upon him his mother' s last wish, did not reach him until the sister who wrote it was herself dead. " These two wishes, rising from the tomb, this second death serving as an interpreter of the first, overwhelmed me. I became a Christian. I did not yield, I owti, to great supernatural lights. My conviction came from the heart : I wept, and I believed.' ' Elsewhere he writes : " The filial tenderness which I retained for Madame de Chateaubriand was profound. My infancy and my youth were intimately connected with the memory of my mother. All that I knew came from her. The idea of having j)oisoned the old age of the woman wlio had borne me in her bosom filled me with despair. I flung with horror into the fire the ' Essay on Revolutions,' as the instrument of THE MOTHEES OF GRAY AND DUMAS 629 my crime. If it had been possible for me to annihilate the work, I would have done so without hesitation. I did not recover from my distress till the thought struck me of expiating this work by a religious work, Sucli was the origin of the ' Genius of Christianity.' " The poet Gray seldom mentioned his mother with- out a sigh. In a letter he wrote to a friend he says : " I have discovered a thing very little known, which is, " that in one' s whole life one can never have any more than a single mother. You may think this is obvious, and (what you call) a trite observation. You are a green gosling ! I was at the same age (very near) as wise as you, and yet I never discovered this (with full evidence and conviction, I mean) till it was too late. It is thir- teen years ago, and seems but as yesterday, and every day I live it sinks deeper into my heart." He owed everything to his mother. She saved his life, when in infancy he was suffocating from fulness of blood, by opening a vein which removed the parox- ysm. Eleven of her children had died in this way, and her last son would have followed them but for her pres- ence of mind and independent course. And when her boy was ready to go to Eton and Cambridge, she earned the money that was required, by her own industry. His father was a poor tradesman who either could not or would not supply him with the means to obtain an ed- ucation. Dumas' s mother, the wife and widow of General Dumas, was the daughter of the chief innkeeper of Villers Coterets, a little town about sixty miles north- 630 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. east of Paris. Slie was allied to the gentry of the country as well as the bourgeois of the town. Persons of these different classes met at the same fete and joined in the same dance, and this without derogating from their rank or presuming uj)on the familiarity so as to cause an inconvenient result. Villers Coterets was the country residence of the House of Orleans, and was to it what Versailles was to the king. Dumas' s Memoirs contain charming pictures of vil- lage fetes and rustic festivities, sporting stories and de- scriptions of boar-hunts. His father's half pay dying with him, his mother and himself had nothing left but an insignificant sum, too small put out at interest to produce an income. Still they managed to live, and he even procured some education through her ex- ertions, before entering upon an apprenticeship as a notary's clerk. The great Buffon, who, according to Th. Ribot, " held the doctrine of cross-heredity, used to say that he himself took after his mother. " He believed that children usually inherit intellectual and moral qualities from their mother. In his own case, he claimed that this was true. His mother was a woman of much ability, and of great intellectual superiority. Buffon always spoke of her in terms of highest praise and admiration. Alexander Pope, who inherited from his father his physical deformity, alludes tenderly to his mother in the " Prologue to the Satires :" THE MOTHERS OF CURRAX AND FENELON. 631 " Me let the leader office long engage To rock the cradle of reposing age ; With lenient arts extend a mother's breath, Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death ; Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, And keep awhile one parent from the sky." CuerajST, the great Irish actor and wit, pays a high tribute to his mother : " The only inheritance I could boast of from my poor father was the very scanty one of a face and figure like his own ; and if the world has ever attributed to me something more valuable than face or person, or than earthly wealth, it was that another and dearer parent gave her child a fortune from the treasures of her mind." LoFiSE DE Saint Arbre, the mother of Fenelon, was the daughter of a noble house, and was endowed by nature with beauty and grace, and with a keen, dis- criminating judgment. She conducted the education of her son under the paternal roof until he was twelve years old, having as assistant a domestic preceptor in the study of sacred literature and the Greek and Latin classics. The vdves of men of genius are not always women of sentiment. When Sir Walter Scott said to his wife, as they were rambling about their estate, " Ah, 'tis no wonder that poets from the earliest ages have made the lamb the emblem of peace and innocence," the stupid Lady Scott replied, " They are indeed delightful animals, especially with mint sauce." 632 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. Cowley's mother was a widow in straitened cir- cumstances, who was able, but not without great diffi- culty, to secure him a literary education. She lived to rejoice that she had made the sacrifices she did for the sake of her poet son. He was an appreciative and eminent son. The mother of Thomas a Becket may rightly be classed with obscure mothers. Nothing is known of her, says Mr. Froude, excejDt that she was a religious woman, who brought up her children in the fear of God. She died when he was very young. The poets Campbell and Crabbe have left on record the debt they owed their mothers. Campbell's mother had the strong taste for music which the poet inherited, and from her he learned the ballad poetry of Scotland which he never lost. Thomson, the poet, was another man of letters who owed his education to the toils of his widowed mother. She earned the money that enabled him to live in Edinburgh and pursue his studies. We cannot doubt that many of the strong, self-con- tained characteristics of General Ulysses Simpson Grant, late President" of the United States, were derived from his mother. This excellent woman, who had faith- fully and lovingly fulfilled her duties in those quiet walks of life where the groundwork of the elements of manhood were laid in honor and integrity, was born in Pennsylvania, a few miles from Philadelphia, early in THE MOTHER OF GENERAL GRANT. 633 the century, and became tlie wife of Jesse Root Grant on June 24th, 1821, at Point Pleasant, Ohio. On the 29th of the next April Mrs. Grant became the mother of Ulysses Simi)son, whose name is coextensive with that of the War of the Rebellion and with the Ameri- can Union. Mrs. Hannah S. Grant, a sweet, kind, matronly woman, who had found her enjoyment in the domestic circle, survived her husband several years. He used to declare that his wife, though a simple country girl, was " handsome, but not vain." She must have had opportanities above the average country gui, since she was the sole daughter of a thrifty farmer, w^ho removed from Pennsylvania to Ohio two years before theh' marriage. Common report declares her to have been possessed of a sweet disposition, prudent, thoughtful, and pious, and accomplished in those household arts which add so much to the com- fort of a home. One of Gen. Grant's biograj^hers — and no man has had more than he — describes Mrs. Grant as follows, and gives her the credit of having bequeathed to her son many of his best traits : " She was amiable, serene, even-tempered, thor- oughly self-forgetful, kind and considerate to all, and speaking ill of none. Her children she governed with tender affection and without the rod ; and in return they were tractable and well-behaved, never boisterous nor rude in the family circle. She was exceedingly reticent and exceedingly modest. Whatever she thought of her boys and girls in her mother-heart, she never praised them before others. Though feeling high and just piide in her illustrious son, and fond of 034 SHORT SKETCHES OF SOME WIVES AND MOTHERS. reading all that was said of him, she not only refrained from boasting of him, but sometunes blushed like a giii and left the room when his praises were sounded in her ears ; for it seemed akin to hearing self-praise, which she regarded with unmitigated horror. In her old age she had calm, winning manners, and a face still sweet and still young in the nicest sense of Holmes : " For him in vain the envious seasons roll, Who bears eternal summer in his soul." Mrs. Grant, though the mother of the most success- ful general of the age, and who was twice elected President of the United States, was never to the least extent before the public in the social way that is true of so many mothers of great men. The reflection of his fame rested upon her, but she lived her old age in perfect seclusion, away from the world and apart from its vanities and pleasures, its. work and its duties. She was an elderly woman when he came before the people of his country as one of the leading officers of the Union armv in the Civil War, and chose to remain in her retirement. Her home was broken up by the death of her husband, and in her old age she was an honored member of her daughter's home in Wew Jersey. ABIGAIL ADAMS. In very many respects Abigail Adams, the wife of Jolm Adams, the second President of the United States, mother of the sixth, and " Portia of the rebel- lious provinces," is the greatest of American women. She had a great husband, one who encouraged her to be the thinker, reasoner, and fearless patriot that she was. He on one occasion wrote her, regarding a cer- tain statesman, words which were as true in his case as in that of the person of whom he w^as speaking. He said : "In reading history you will generally observe, . when you find a great character, whether a general, a statesman, or a philosopher, some female about him, either in the character of a mother, wife, or sister, who had knowledge and ambition above the ordinary level of women, and that mach of his eminence is owing to her precepts, examj^le, or investigation, in some shape or other." Mrs. Adams was a woman who in the strife of war, separated for months and years at a time from her husband, remained upon their little farm at Wey- mouth, Mass., and so wisely and judiciously managed that at the end of his public life they had a small com- petence to live upon and a home to shelter them in their last days. She had a wonderful understanding, the inheritance bequeathed her by ancestors, who on both sides were €36 ABIGAIL ADAMS. ministers. She was the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of a minister, and was herseK a teacher and preacher, though her abilities were not ex- ercised beyond the limits of home. Sidney Smith said that if quadratics affected a woman's womanliness, it was because she was poor stuff to begin with. The women of the Revolution affected much more than quadratics, and they remained the finest specimens of the sex. It is with a curious mixture of awe and amusement that one reads the letters of the letter- writ- ing women of this countiy during the closing years of the eighteenth century. Some of them are statesman- like, despite their stilted and formal style. Mrs. Adams stands at the head of her countrywomen in this respect. She was the finest correspondent a man could have, because while she was observing and discriminating in giving facts, she was full of sugges- tions, and her delicacy in treating social matters was remarkable. A hundred years hence they will be read with equal interest as now. She never had a day's schooling, and in referring to this fact she says : " My early education did not partake of the abun- dant opxDortunities which the present days offer, and which even our common country schools now afford. I never was sent to any school. I was always sick. Female education in the best families went no further than writing and arithmetic ; in some few rare in- stances, music and dancing." The knowledge she possessed was gathered without systematic instruction, and her acquirements M-ere therefore all the more remarkable. She had great re- ]i;:ious principle, and her training was of that serious, Tamifd i]y G Si\::in 7. n;^r3ved jjy G.?-S;orm._ THE MOTHER OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. INTEREST IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 639 l^ractical nature whicli enabled her to meet all the vicissitudes of life with equanimity and self-compos- ure. Her interest in public affairs was surprising, and from the time of her marriage until her death she discussed men and measures with a sustained interest and an unflagging zeal. The fact that her husband was one of the leading men of his time, and one of the best educated in the country, does not of itself account for her attainments ; her mind was as original and in- tellectual as her husband's, and she only lacked the occasion to display great qualities that lay dormant. When her husband was away from her she spent her time either in attending to her business affairs or in im- proving her mind. In one of her letters to him, written in 1774, she says, in regard to the condition of the country : " The great anxiety I feel for my coun- try, for you, and for our family, renders the day tedious and the night unpleasant. The rocks and quicksands appear upon every side. What course you can or will take is all wrapj)ed in the bosom of futurity. Uncertainty and expectation leave the mind great scope. Did ever any kingdom or state regain its liberty, when once it was invaded, without bloodshed ? I cannot think of it without horror. Yet we are told that all the misfortunes of Sparta were occasioned by their too great solicitude for present tranquillity, and from an excessive love of peace they neglected the means of making it sure and lasting. They ought to have reflected, says Polybius, that, ' as there is noth- ing more desirable or advantageous than jDeace, when founded in justice and honor, ' so there is nothing more shameful, and at the same time more pernicious, when 640 ABIGAIL ADAMS. attained by bad measures and purchased at tlie price of liberty." The next year matters in the struggling country were not looking better, and the clever woman was watching the changes going on about her with anxious dread. She wishes, she says, that she knew what mighty things were fabricating, and then she philoso- phizes on politics in this wise : " I am more and more convinced that man is a dan- gerous creature ; and that j)0wer, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries ' Give ! give ! ' The great fish swallow up the small ; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the peo- ple, when vested with power, is as eager after the pre- rogatives of government. You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriv- ing, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances. "The building up a great empire, which was only hinted at by my correspondent, may now, I suppose, be realized even by the unbelievers. Yet will not ten thousand difficulties arise in the formation of it ? The reins of government have been so long slackened that I fear the people will not quietly submit to those re- straints wliich are necessary for the peace and security of the community. If we sei^arate from Britain, what code of laws will be established ? How shall we be governed, so as to retain our liberties ? Can any government be free which is not administered by gen- eral stated laws 1 Who shall frame these laws ? Who will give them force and energy ? It is true, your THREATENS A REBELLION. 641 resolutions, as a body, have hitherto had the force of laws, but will they continue to have ? ^ " \Yhen I consider these things, and the prejudices of people in favor of ancient customs and regulations, I feel anxious for the fate of our monarchy, or democ- racy, or whatever is to take place. I soon get lost in a labyrinth of perplexities ; but, whatever occurs, may justice and righteousness be the stability of our times, and order arise out of confusion. Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance," To Abigail Adams belongs the fame of having been the first advocate of woman's rights in this country. In 1774 she wrote from her home in Weymouth, Mass., to her husband, who at that time was a member of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, these ring- ing words : " In the new code of laws ... I desire you would re- member the ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such un- limited power in the hands of the husband. Remem- ber, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation." The Constitution of the United States was framed, and women were disfranchised. Tliis, too, in the face of their heroic sacrifices in behalf of their country. Mrs. Adams was disappointed, and wrote her hus- band : " I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies, for while you are proclaiming peace and G42 ABIGAIL ADAMS. good-\vill to all men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining absolute power over wives. But vou must remember that absolute power, like most other things which are very bad, is most likely to be broken. ' ' Such were the subjects that Mrs. Adams considered as she watched over her family of five children and cared for her household. She dignified labor, and often expressed regret that the education of women was so trifling, narrow, and contracting. She uses the word "' female" for woman, which she would not have done had she lived half a century longer, but her loyalty and friendship for her own sex are strong. She did not believe with Bartle Massey, the schoolmaster in ' ' Adam Bede, ' ' that ' ' women have no head-piece ; it runs either to fat or to brats." Her exj^erience had taught her that what they needed more than aught else was opportunity, and she often recurs to the quiet heroism of women who made so many sacrifices, and so uncomplaining, for their country. She herself was a marvellous example of patience. Her husband went to Europe, to be gone an indefinite time, taking their eldest son with him, and later their second son joined his father. Her anxiety for this son's safety was intense. The vessel in which he sailed started just before a violent storm, and for four months she did not know whether it had foundered at sea or not. Months would pass before she would hear from her husband, and there was one period of fifteen months when no word reached her. She was asked during this season of waiting this question : "If you had known that Mr. Adams would AT THE COURT OF ST. JAMES'S. 643 have remained so long abroad, would you have consent- ed that he should have gone ?" and she answered, " If I had known, sir, that Mr. Adams could have effected Avhat he has done, I would not only have submitted to the absence I have endured, painful as it has been, but I would not have opposed it, even though three years more should be added to the number. I feel a pleasure in being able to sacrifice my selfish passions to the general good, and in imitating the example which has taught me to consider myself and family bat as the small dust of the balance, when compared with the great community." Mrs. Adams joined her husband in England in the summer of 1784, and spent the winter at Auteuil, France. She had but slight acquaintance with the French language, but so soon as she was settled she commenced, with the aid of her dictionary, to read Racine, Voltaire, and Corneille, and soon was able to converse in it. Later she went to England, her hus- band having been appointed Minister to St. James's. She appeared at Court, and gave her relatives at home clever accounts of the scenes she witnessed. But she was more interested in Mr. Pitt and other statesmen than in the social events she took part in. The temper of the English toward the American minister and his family was not pleasant. Aside from the bitterness felt toward America as a successful rebellious prov- ince, the immense debt due from merchants in the United States to English manufacturers had soured the latter beyond measure, and it greatly distressed thousands. Many disagreeable things were borne by Americans in England on this account, and by Mr. C44 ABIGAIL ADAMS. Adams and his family particularly ; they accepted the state of affairs as unfortunate, and made the best of their position. Mrs. Adams visited Holland and other countries before her return home, and on arriving in K"ew%York she lived at Richmond Hill. The seat of government was removed to Philadelphia, and there she established herself, as the wife of the Vice-Presi- dent, in a house called Bush Hill. In a letter to her daughter, Mrs. Smith, she describes the con- fusion in which she found everything in her new home. The only grandchild of Mrs. Adams, the son of her daughter, Mrs. Smith, was with her in Philadel- phia, and she writes her daughter in New York that she dined with President Washington in company with " the ministers and ladies of the court," and says " he asked very affectionately after you and the children, and at table picked the sugar-plums from a cake, and requested me to take them to Master John. " Her pen often took a serious turn, and she discusses the state of the country, the outlook for the future, and public affairs generally with as keen a relish as in her early married life. In 1800 she went to Washington as the wife of the second President of the United States, and took posses- sion of the White House, then an unfinished and un- comfortable habitation. The capital was removed from Philadelphia in the early part of that year, and Congress convened there for the first time in the fol- lowing December. President Adams served one term, and then was defeated by Jefferson, the Democratic candidate. In a letter to her second son, in speaking of his defeat she VIEWS ON WOMAN'S EDUCATION. 645 says : " Well, my dear son, South Carolina has be- haved as your father always said she would. The consequence to us, personally, is that we retire from public life. For myself and family I have few regrets. At my age, and with my bodily infirmities, I shall be happier at Quincy. Neither my habits nor my educa- tion or inclinations have led me to an expensive style of living, so that on that score I have little to mourn over. If I did not rise with dignity, I can at least fall with ease, which is the more difficult task." The differences that grew up between Adams and Jefferson had separated these old and tried friends, and the silence between them might have remained un- broken to the end had not Mrs. Adams written her husband's political foe, on the occasion of the death of his second daughter, Mrs. Eppes, who as a little child she had known and had with her in her London home for a time. Her letter called forth a long one from President Jefferson, and the correspondence was continued through several letters. Mr. Adams knew nothing of his wife's letters at the time, but later she showed him the correspondence, which was a credit to her noble mind and heart. Her views regarding woman's education she ex- pressed in a letter to her sister, from which these ad- mirable sentiments are excerpted : " You know, my dear sister, if there be bread enough, and to spare, unless a prudent attention man- age the sufficiency, the fruits of diligence will be scat- tered by the hand of dissipation. No man ever pros- pered in the world without the consent and co-opera- tion of his A\ife. It behooves us, who are parents or Gi6 ABIGAIL ADAMS. grandparents, to give our daughters and granddangli- ters, when their education devolves upon us, such an education as shall qualify them for the useful and domestic duties of life, that they should learn the proper use and improvement of time, since ' time was given for use, not waste.' The finer accomplishments, such as music, dancing and painting, serve to set off and embellish the picture ; but the groundwork must be formed of more durable colors. " I consider it an indispensable requisite that every American wife should herself know how to order and regulate her family, how to govern her domestics, and train up her children. For this purpose the all- wise Creator made woman a heli)meet for man, and she who fails in these duties does not answer the end of her creation. " ' Life's cares are comforts ; such by Heaven designed ; They that have none must make them, or be wretched. Cares are employments, and without employ The soul is on a rack, the rack of rest.' ''I have frequently said to my friends, when they have thought me overburdened with care, I would rather have too much than too little. Life stagnates without action. I could never bear merely to vegetate. " ' Waters stagnate when they cease to flow.' " Upon his retirement from public life Mr. and Mrs. Adams went to reside at Quincy, Mass., and there the last years of her life were spent. She never lost her buoyancy of spirit, or failed to be the cheerful com- panion she had ever been to her family circle. Party A SON'S TRIBUTE. 647 spirit, which was intense during Mr. Adams's presi- dential term, did not abate after his defeat a second time, and the task of soothing his wonnded spirit and enlivening his leisure hours was her occui)ation. She had strong influence over him, and from the day of her marriage until her death her opinions had great weight with him. Mrs. Adams as a wife was as admirable as a mother, and as a woman she has had no sujDerior in her own country. She lived to see her son, John Quincy Adams, elevated to high place, and died in the fulness of years and in the perfect possession of all her powers, in October, 1818. In his old age this son wrote of her as follows : " My mother was an angel upon earth. She was a minister of blessing to all human beings within her sphere of action. Her heart was the abode of heavenly purity. She had no feelings but of kind- ness and beneficence ; yet her mind was as firm as her temper was mild and gentle. She had known sorrow, but her sorrow was silent. . . . She had completed within less than a month of her seventy- fourth year. Had she lived to the age of the patriarchs, every day of her life would have been filled with clouds of goodness and of love. . , . She had been fifty-four years the delight of my father's heart. ... If there is existence and retribution beyond the grave, my mother is happy. But if virtue alone is happiness below, never was existence upon earth more blessed than hers." DUE DATE ^ K/ »-^'^«.- f i ■ J Printed in USA . * ^ COLUMBIA UN1VERS,TVL,BBAB|| 6623370467 Jim 92C Lan^fcrd L263 The mothers of great men and wo- men^ ^nd ?0Wf5» VriVes Oi' -^re^t men. ffifi 2 3 '49 ^ S.>'S V \ ^. 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