The following was written on the envelope enclosing a very long letter from Mrs. Grattan, and was written, I think, in 1840:—
* * * * *
"I cannot avoid squeezing in a few words more just as the ship is on the point of sailing or steaming away for England … 'The President' has been a fatal title this spring. Poor Harrison, a good and honest man, died in a month after he was elected, and this fine ship, about which we have been at this side of the Atlantic so painfully excited ever since March, is, I fear, gone down with its gallant captain (Roberts, with whom we crossed the Atlantic in theBritish Queen) and poor Power, whom the public cannot afford to lose.
"Since I wrote my letter three days ago—pardon the boldly original topic—the weather has mended considerably. Tell Tom that every tree is also striving to turn over a new leaf, and it is well for you that I have not another to turn too. God bless you.
* * * * *
I beg to observe that the exhortation addressed to me had no moral significance, but was the writer's characteristic mode of exciting me to new scribblements.
The following, also written on the envelope enclosing a letter fromMrs. Grattan, is dated the 30th of July, 1840:—
* * * * *
"I cannot let the envelope go quite a blank, though I cannot quite make it a prize … In literature I have done nothing but write a preface and notes for two new editions of the oldHighways and Byeways, and a short sketchy article in this month's number of theNorth American Reviewon the present state of Ireland. I am going to follow it up in the next number in reference to the state of the Irish in America, and I hope I shall thus do some good to a subject I have much at heart. I have had various applications to deliver lectures at Lyceums, &c, and to preside at public meetings for various objects. All this I have declined. I have been very much before the public at dinners for various purposes, and have refused many invitations to several neighbouring cities. I must now draw back a little. I think I have hitherto done good to the cause of peace and friendship between the countries. But I know these continued public appearances will expose me to envy, hatred, and malice. I hope to do something historical by and by, and perhaps an occasional article in theNorth American Review. But anything like light writing I never can again turn to."
* * * * *
From a very long letter written on the 13th of May, 1841, I will give a, few extracts:—
* * * * *
"MY DEAR AND VALUED FRIEND,—Your letter from Penryth [sic] without date, but bearing the ominous post-mark, 'April 1st,' has completely made a fool of me, in that sense which implies that nothing else can excuse a grey head and a seared heart for thinking and feeling that there are such things in the world as affection and sincerity. Being fond of flying in the face of reason, and despising experience, whenever they lay down general rules, I am resolved to believe in exceptions, to delight in instances, and to be quite satisfied that I have 'troops of friends'—you being one of the troopers—no matter how few others there may be, or where they are to be found.
"You really must imagine how glad we were to see your handwriting again, and I may say also, how surprised; for it passeth our understanding to discover how youmaketime for any correspondence at all. We have followed all your literary doings step by step since we left Europe, and we never cease wondering at your fertility and rejoicing at your success. But I am grieved to think that all this is at the cost of your comfort. Or is it that you wrote in a querulous mood, when you said those sharp things about your grey goose quill. Surely composition must be pleasant to you. No one who writes so fast and so well can find it actually irksome. I am aware that people sometimes think they find it so. But we may deceive ourselves on the dark as well as on the bright side of our road, and more easily, because itisthe dark. That is to say, we may not only cheat ourselves with false hopes of good, but with false notions of evil, which proves, if it proves anything just now, that you are considerably mistaken when you fancy writing to be a bore, and that I know infinitely better than you do what you like or dislike."
It is rather singular to find a literaryworkmantalking in this style. Grattan was not a fertile writer, and, I must suppose, was never a very industrious one. But he surely must have known that talk about the pleasures of "composition" was wholly beside the mark.Thatmay be, often is, pleasant enough, and if the thoughts could be telephoned from the brain to the types it would all be mighty agreeable; and the world would be very considerably more overwhelmed with authorship than it is. It is the "grey goose quill" work, the necessity for incarnating the creatures of the brain in black and white, that is the world's protection from this avalanche. And I for one do not understand how anybody who, eschewing the sunshine and the fields and the song of birds, or the enjoyment of other people's brain-work, has glued himself to his desk for long hours, can say or imagine that his task is, or has been, aught else than hard and distasteful work, demanding unrelaxing self-denial and industry. And however fine the frenzy in which the poet's eye may roll while he builds the lofty line, the work of putting some thousands of them on the paper when built must be as irksome to him as the penny-a-liner's task is tohim—more so, in that the mind of the latter does not need to be forcibly and painfully restrained from rushing on to the new pastures which invite it, and curbed to the pack-horse pace of the quill-driving process.
"You must not," he continues, "allow yourself to be, or even to fancy that you are tired or tormented, or worn out. Work the mine to the last. Pump up every drop out of the well. Put money i' thy purse; and add story after story to that structure of fame, which will enable you to do as much to that house by the lake side, where Iwillhope to see you yet."
* * * * *
He then goes on to speak at considerable length of the society of Boston, praising it much, yet saying that it is made more charming to a visitor than to a permanent resident. "In this it differs," he says, "from almost all the countries I have lived in in Europe, except Holland."
Speaking of a visit to Washington during the inauguration of General Harrison, which seems to have delighted him much, he says he travelled back with a family, "at least with the master and mistress of it, of whom I must tell you something. Mr. Paige is a merchant, and brother-in-law of Mr. Webster; Mrs. Paige a niece of Judge Story. From this double connection with two of the first men in the country their family associations are particularly agreeable. Mrs. Paige is one of three sisters, all very handsome, spirited, and full of talent. One is married to Mr. Webster's eldest son. Another, Mrs. Joy, has for her husband an idle gentleman, a rare thing in this place. Mrs. Paige was in Europe two years ago with Mr. and Mrs. Webster senior (the latter by the bye is amostcharming person) and had the advantage of seeing society in England and France in its best aspect, and is one who can compare as well as see … Among the men [of the Boston society] are Dr. Chinning, a prophet in our country, a pamphleteer in his own; Bancroft,thehistorian of America, a man of superior talents and great agreeability, but a black sheep in society, on account of his Van Buren politics, against whom the white sheep of the Whig party will not rub themselves; Prescott, the author ofFerdinand and Isabella, a handsome, half blind shunner of the vanities of the world, with some others, who read and write a good deal, and no one the wiser for it. Edward Everett is in Italy, where you will surely meet him [we saw a good deal of him]. He is rather formal than cold, if all I hear whispered of him be true; of elegant taste in literature, though not of easy manners, and altogether an admirable specimen of an American orator and scholar. At Cambridge, three miles off, we have Judge Story, of the Supreme Court, eloquent, deeply learned, garrulous, lively, amiable, excellent in all and every way that a mortal can be. He is decidedly the gem of this western world. Mr. Webster is now settled at Washington, though here at this moment on a visit to Mrs. Paige. Among our neighbouring notabilities is John Quincy Adams, an ex-President of the United States, ex-Minister at half the courts in Europe, and now at seventy-five, a simple Member of Congress, hard as a piece of granite, and cold as a lump of ice."
Speaking of his having very frequently appeared at public meetings during the first year of his Consulship, and of his having since that refrained from such appearances, he continues: "I was doubtful as to the way my being so muchen evidencemight be relishedat home. Of late public matters have been on so ticklish a footing, that all the less a British functionary was seen the better.
"In literature I have done nothing barring a couple of articles on Ireland and the Irish in America, a subject I have much at heart. But much as I feel for them and with them, I refused dining with my countrymen on St. Patrick's Day because they had thegaucherie(of which I had previous notice), to turn the festive meeting into a political one, by giving 'O'Connell and success to repeal' as one of their 'regular' toasts, and by leaving out the Queen's health, which they gave when I dined with them last year."
Then after detailed notices of the movements of his sons, he goes on:
"We have many plans in perspective, Niagara, Canada, Halifax, the mountains, the springs, the sea; the result of which you shall know as soon as we receive a true and faithful account of your adventures in just as many pages as you can afford; but Tom must in the meantime send me a long letter … Tell Tom I have half resolved to give up punning and take to repartee. A young fellow said to me the other day, 'Ah! Mr. Consul (as I am always called), I wish I could discover a new pleasure.' 'Try virtue!' was my reply. A pompous ex-Governor said swaggeringly to me at the last dinner party at which I assisted, 'Well, Mr. Consul, I suppose you Europeans think us semi-civilised here in America?' 'Almost!' said I. Now ask Tom if that was not pretty considerable smart. But assure him at the same time, it is nothing at all to what Icoulddo in the way of impertinence! Need I say how truly and affectionately we all love you?
* * * * *
I wrote back that I would enter the lists with him in the matter of impertinence; and as a sample told him that I thought he had better return to the punning.
I could, I doubt not, find among my mother's papers some further letters that might be worth printing or quoting. But my waning space warns me that I must not indulge myself with doing so.
I said at the beginning of the last chapter, that during the period, some of the recollections of which I had been chronicling, the two greatest sorrows I had ever known had befallen me. A third came subsequently. But that belonged to a period of my life which does not fall within the limits I have assigned to these reminiscences. Of the first, the death of my mother, I have spoken. The other, the death of my wife, followed it at no great distance, and was of course a far more terrible one. She had been ailing—so long indeed that I had become habituated to it, and thought that she would continue to live as she had been living. We had been travelling in Switzerland, in the autumn of 1864; and I remember very vividly her saying on board the steamer, by which we were leaving Colico at the head of the Lake of Como, on our return to Italy, as she turned on the deck to take a last look at the mountains, "Good-bye, you big beauties!" I little thought it was her last adieu to them; but I thought afterwards that she probably may have had some misgiving that it was so.
But it was not till the following spring that I began to realise thatI must lose her. She died on the 13th of April, 1865.
I have spoken of her as she was when she became my wife, but without much hope of representing her to those who never had the happiness of knowing her, as she really was, not only in person, which matters little, but in mind and intellectual powers. And to tell what she was in heart, in disposition—in a word, in soul—would be a far more difficult task.
In her the aesthetic faculties were probably the most markedly exceptional portion of her intellectual constitution. The often cited dictum,les races se feminisentwas not exemplified in her case. From her mother, an accomplished musician, she inherited her very pronounced musical[1] faculty and tendencies, and, I think, little else. From her father, a man of very varied capacities and culture, she drew much more. How far, if in any degree, this fact may be supposed to have been connected in the relation of cause and effect, with the other fact that her mother was more than fifty years of age at the time of her birth, I leave to the speculations of physiological inquirers. In bodily constitution her inheritance from her father's mother was most marked. To that source must be traced, I conceive, the delicacy of constitution, speaking medically, which deprived me of her at a comparatively early age; for both father and mother were of thoroughly healthy and strong constitutions. But if it may be suspected that the Brahmin Sultana, her grandmother, bequeathed her her frail diathesis, there was no doubt or difficulty in tracing to that source the exterior delicacy of formation which characterised her. I remember her telling me that the last words a dying sister of her mother's ever spoke, when Theodosia standing by the bedside placed her hand on the dying woman's forehead were, "Ah, that is Theo's little Indian hand," And truly the slender delicacy of hand and foot, which characterised her, were unmistakably due to her Indian descent. In person she in nowise resembled either father or mother, unless it were possibly her father in the conformation and shape of the teeth.
[Footnote 1: But this she might also have got from her father, who was passionately fond of music, and was a very respectable performer on the violin.]
I have already in a previous chapter of these reminiscences given a letter from Mrs. Browning in which she speaks of Theodosia's "multiform faculty." And the phrase, which so occurring, might in the case of almost any other writer be taken as a mere epistolary civility, is in the case of one whose absolute accuracy of veracity never swerved a hair's-breadth, equivalent to a formal certificate of the fact to the best of her knowledge. And she knew my wife well both before and after the marriage of either of them. Her faculty was trulymultiform.
She was not a great musician; but her singing had for great musicians a charm which the performances of many of their equals in the art failed to afford them. She had never much voice, but I have rarely seen the hearer to whose eyes she could not bring the tears. She had a spell for awakening emotional sympathy which I have never seen surpassed, rarely indeed equalled.
For language she had an especial talent, was dainty in the use of her own, and astonishingly apt in acquiring—not merely the use for speaking as well as reading purposes, but—the delicacies of other tongues. Of Italian, with which she was naturallymostconversant, she was recognised by acknowledged experts to be a thoroughly competent critic.
She published, now many years ago, in theAthenaeum, some translations from the satirist Giusti, which any intelligent reader would, I think, recognise to be cleverly done. But none save the very few in this country, who know and can understand the Tuscan poet's works in the original, can at all conceive the difficulty of translating him into tolerable English verse. And I have no hesitation in asserting, that any competent judge, who is such by virtue of understanding the original, would pronounce her translations of Giusti to be a masterpiece, which very few indeed of contemporary men or women could have produced. I have more than once surprised her in tears occasioned by her obstinate struggles with some passage of the intensely idiomatic satirist, which she found it almost—but eventually not quite—impossible to render to her satisfaction.
She published a translation of Niccolini'sArnaldo da Brescia, which won the cordial admiration and friendship of that great poet. And neither Niccolini's admiration nor his friendship were easily won. He was, when we knew him at Florence in his old age, a somewhat crabbed old man, not at all disposed to make new acquaintances, and, I think, somewhat soured and disappointed, not certainly with the meed of admiration he had won from his countrymen as a poet, but with the amount of effect which his writings had availed to produce in the political sentiments and then apparent destinies of the Italians. But he was conquered by the young Englishwoman's translation of his favourite, and, I think, his finest work. It is a thoroughly trustworthy and excellent translation; but the execution of it was child's play in comparison with the translations from Giusti.
She translated a number of the curiously characteristicstornelliof Tuscany, and especially of the Pistoja mountains. And here again it is impossible to make any one, who has never been familiar with thesestornelliunderstand the especial difficulty of translating them. Of course the task was a slighter and less significant one than that of translating Giusti, nor was the same degree of critical accuracy and nicety in rendering shades of meaning called for. But there were not—are not—many persons who could cope with the especial difficulties of the attempt as successfully as she did. She produced also a number of pen-and-ink drawings illustrating thesestornelli, which I still possess, and in which the spirited, graphic, and accurately truthful characterisation of the figures could only have been achieved by an artist very intimately acquaintedintus et in cutewith the subjects of her pencil.
She published a volume on the Tuscan revolution, which was very favourably received. TheExaminer, among other critics—all of them, to the best of my remembrance, more or less favourable—said of theseLetters(for that was the form in which the work was published, all of them, I think, having been previously printed in theAthenaeum), "Better political information than this book gives may be had in plenty; but it has a special value which we might almost represent by comparing it to the report of a very watchful nurse, who, without the physician's scientific knowledge, uses her own womanly instinct in observing every change of countenance and every movement indicating the return of health and strength to the patient … She has written a very vivid and truthful account." The critic has very accurately, and, it may be said, graphically, assigned its true value and character to the book.
I have found it necessary in a former chapter, where I have given a number of interesting and characteristic letters from Landor to my wife's father, to insert a deprecatorycaveatagainst the exuberant enthusiasm of admiration which led him to talk of the probability of her eclipsing the names and fame of other poets, including in this estimate Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The preposterousness of this no human being would have felt more strongly than Theodosia Garrow, except Theodosia Trollope, when such an estimate had become yet more preposterous. But Landor, whose unstinted admiration of Mrs. Browning's poetry is vigorously enough expressed in his own strong language, as may be seen in Mr. Forster's pages, would not have dreamed of instituting any such comparison at a later day. But that his critical acumen and judgment were not altogether destroyed by the enthusiasm of his friendship, is, I think, shown by the following little poem by Theodosia Trollope, written a few years after the birth of her child. I don't think I need apologise for printing it.
The original MS. of it before me gives no title; nor do I remember that the authoress ever assigned one to the verses.
"In the noon-day's golden pleasance,Little Bice, baby fair,With a fresh and flowery presence,Dances round her nurse's chair,In the old grey loggia dances, haloed by her shining hair.
"Pretty pearl in sober setting,Where the arches garner shade!Cones of maize like golden netting,Fringe the sturdy colonnade,And the lizards pertly pausing glance across the balustrade.
"Brown cicala drily proses,Creaking the hot air to sleep,Bounteous orange flowers and roses,Yield the wealth of love they keep,To the sun's imperious ardour in a dream of fragrance deep.
"And a cypress, mystic hearted,Cleaves the quiet dome of lightWith its black green masses partedBut by gaps of blacker night,Which the giddy moth and beetle circle round in dubious flight.
"Here the well chain's pleasant clanging,Sings of coolness deep below;There the vine leaves breathless hanging,Shine transfigured in the glow,And the pillars stare in silence at the shadows which they throw.
"Portly nurse, black-browed, red-vested,Knits and dozes, drowsed with heat;Bice, like a wren gold-crested,Chirps and teases round her seat,Hides the needles, plucks the stocking, rolls the cotton o'er her feet.
"Nurse must fetch a draught of water,In the glass with painted wings,[1]Nurse must show her little daughterAll her tale of silver rings,Dear sweet nurse must sing a couplet—solemn nurse, whoneversings!
"Blest Madonna! what a clamour!Now the little torment tries,Perched on tiptoe, all the glamourOf her coaxing hands and eyes!May she hold the glass she drinks from—just one moment, Bice cries.
"Nurse lifts high the Venice beaker,Bossed with masks, and flecked with gold,Scarce in time to 'scape the quickerLittle fingers over-bold,Craving tendril-like to grasp it, with the will of four years old.
"Pretty wood bird, pecking, flitting,Round the cherries on the tree.Ware the scarecrow, grimly sitting,Crouched for silly things, like thee!Nurse hath plenty such in ambush. 'Touch not, for it burns,'[2] quothshe.
"And thine eyes' blue mirror widensWith an awestroke of belief;Meekly following that blind guidance,On thy finger's rosy sheaf,Blow'st thou softly, fancy wounded, soothing down a painless grief.
"Nurse and nursling, learner, teacher,Thus foreshadow things to come,When the girl shall grow the creatureOf false terrors vain and dumb,And entrust their baleful fetish with her being's scope and sum.
"Then her heart shall shrink and wither,Custom-straitened like her waist,All her thought to cower together,Huddling sheep-like with the rest,With the flock of soulless bodies on a pattern schooled and laced.
"Till the stream of years encrust herWith a numbing mail of stone,Till her laugh lose half its lustre,And her truth forswear its tone,And she see God's might and mercy darkly through a glass alone!
"While our childhood fair and sacred.Sapless doctrines doth rehearse,And the milk of falsehoods acrid,Burns our babe-lips like a curse,Cling we must to godless prophets, as the suckling to the nurse.
"As the seed time, so the reaping,Shame on us who overreach,While our eyes yet smart with weeping,Hearts so all our own to teach,Better they and we lay sleeping where the darkness hath no speech!"
[Footnote 1: Those unacquainted with the forms of the old decorated Venetian glass will hardly understand the phrase in the text. Those who know them will feel the accuracy of the picture.]
[Footnote 2: "Non toccare che brucia," Tuscan proverb.]
It is impossible for any but those who know—not Florence, but—rural Tuscany well, to appreciate the really wonderful accuracy and picturesque perfection of the above scene from a Tuscan afternoon. But I think many others will feel the lines to be good. In the concluding stanzas, in which the writer draws her moral, there are weak lines. But in the first eleven, which paint her picture, there is not one. Every touch tells, and tells with admirable truth and vividness of presentation. In one copy of the lines which I have, the name is changed from Bice to "Flavia," and this, I take it, because of the entire non-applicability of the latter stanzas to the child, whose rearing was in her own hands. But the picture of child and nurse—how life-like none can tell, but I—was the picture of her "baby Beatrice," and the description simply the reproduction of things seen.
I think I may venture to print also the following lines. They are, in my opinion, far from being equal in merit to the little poem printed above, but they are pretty, and I think sufficiently good to do no discredit to her memory. Like the preceding, they have no title.
"I built me a temple, and said it should beA shrine, and a home where the past meets me,And the most evanescent and fleeting of things,Should be lured to my temple, and shorn of their wings,To adorn my palace of memories.
"The pearl of the morning, the glow of the noon,The play of the clouds as they float past the moon,The most magical tint on the snowiest peak,They are gone while I gaze, fade before you can speak,Yet they stay in my palace of memories.
"I stood in the midst of the forest trees,And heard the sweet sigh of the wandering breeze,And this with the tinkle of heifer bells,As they trill on the ear from the dewy dells,Are the sounds in my palace of memories.
"I looked in the face of a little child,With its fugitive dimples and eyes so wild,It springs off with a bound like a wild gazelle,It is off and away, but I've caught my[1]And here's mirth for my palace of memories.
"In the morning we meet on a mountain height,And we walk and converse till the fall of night,We hold hands for a moment, then pass on our way,But that which I've got from the friend of a day,I'll keep in my palace of memories."
[Footnote 1: Word here illegible.]
The verses which Landor praised with enthusiasm so excessive were most, or I think all of them, published in the annual edited by his friend Lady Blessington, and were all written before our marriage. I have many long letters addressed to her by that lady, and several by her niece Miss Power, respecting them. They always in every instance ask for "more."
Many of her verses she set to music, especially one little poemlet, which I remember to this day the tune of, which she called theSong of the Blackbird, and which was, if I remember rightly, made to consist wholly of the notes uttered by the bird.
Another instance of her "multiform faculty" was her learning landscape sketching. I have spoken of her figure drawing. And this, I take it, was the real bent of her talent in that line. But unable to compass the likeness of a haystack myself, I was desirous of possessing some record of the many journeys which I designed to take, and eventually did take with her. And wholly to please me she forthwith made the attempt, and though her landscape was never equal to her figure drawing, I possess some couple of hundred of water-colour sketches done by her from nature on the spot.
I used to say that if I wanted a Sanscrit dictionary, I had only to put her head straight at it, and let her feel the spur, and it would have been done!
We lived together seventeen happy years. During the five first, I think I may say that she lived wholly and solely in, by, and for me. That she should live for somebody other than herself was an absolute indefeasible necessity of her nature. During the last twelve years I shared her heart with her daughter. Her intense worship for her "Baby Beatrice" was equalled only by—that of all the silliest and all the wisest women, who have true womanly hearts in their bosoms, for their children. The worship was, of course, all the more absorbing that the object of it was unique. I take it that, after the birth of her child, I came second in her heart. But I was not jealous of little Bice.
I do not think that she would have quite subscribed to the opinion of Garibaldi on the subject of the priesthood, which I mentioned in a former chapter—that they ought all to be forthwith put to death. But all her feelings and opinions were bitterly antagonistic to them. She was so deeply convinced of the magnitude of the evil inflicted by them and their Church on the character of the Italians, for whom she ever felt a great affection, that she was bitter on the subject. And it is the only subject on which I ever knew her to feel in any degree bitterly. Many of her verses written during her latter years are fiercely denunciatory or humorously satirical of the Italian priesthood, and especially of the Pontifical Government. I wish that my space permitted me to give further specimens of them here. But I must content myself with giving one line, which haunts my memory, and appears to me excessively happy In the accurate truthfulness of its simile. She is writing of the journey which Pius the Ninth made, and describing his equipment, says that he started "with strings of cheap blessings, like glass beads for savages."
With the exception of this strong sentiment my wife was one of the most tolerant people I ever knew. What she most avoided in those with whom she associated was, not so much ignorance, or even vulgarity of manner, as pure native stupidity. But even of that, when the need arose, she was tolerant. I never knew her in the selection of an acquaintance, or even of a friend, to be influenced to the extent of even a hair's-breadth, by station, rank, wealth, fashion, or any consideration whatever, save personal liking and sympathy, which was, in her case, perfectly compatible with the widest divergence of views and opinions on nearly any of the great subjects which most divide mankind, and even with divergence of rules of conduct. Her own opinions were the honest results of original thinking, and her conduct the outcome of the dictates of her own heart—of her heart rather than of her reasoning powers, or of any code of law—a condition of mind which might be dangerous to individuals with less native purity of heart than hers.
As a wife, as a daughter, as a daughter-in-law, as a mother, she was absolutely irreproachable. In the first relationship she was all in all to me for seventeen years. She brought sweetness and light into my life and into my dwelling. She was the angel in the house, if ever human being was.
Her father became an inmate of our house after the death of his wife at a great age at Torquay, whither they had returned after the death of my wife's half-sister, Harriet Fisher. He was a jealously affectionate, but very exacting father; and few daughters, I think, could have been more admirable in her affection for him, her attention to him, her care of him. And I may very safely say that very few mothers of sons have the fortune of finding such a daughter-in-law. My mother had been very fond of her before our marriage, and became afterwards as devotedly attached to her as she was to me, of whom she knew her to be an indivisible part, while she was to my mother simply perfect. Her own mother she had always been in the habit of calling by that name. She always spoke to and of my mother as "mammy." What she was to her own daughter I have already said. There was somewhat of the tendency towards "spoiling," which is mostly inseparable from the adoration which a young mother, of the right sort, feels for her firstborn child, but she never made any attempt to avert or counteract my endeavours to prevent such spoiling. When little Bice had to be punished by solitary confinement for half an hour, she only watched anxiously for the expiration of the sentence.[1]
[Footnote 1: I do not remember that little Bice ever consoled herself under the disgrace of such captivity as my present wife has confessed to me that she did when suffering under the same condemnation.Hermethod of combining the maintenance of personal dignity with revenge on the oppressor, was to say to the first person who came to take her out of prison: "No! you can't come intomyparlour!"]
But that her worth, her talent, her social qualities, were recognised by a wider world than that of her own family, or her own circle of friends, is testified by the recording stone, which the Municipality placed on my house at the corner of the Piazza dell' Independenza, where it may still be seen. Indeed the honour was not undeserved. For during the whole of her residence in Italy, which nearly synchronised with the struggle of Italy for her independence and unity, she had adopted the Italian cause heart and soul, and done what was in her to do, for its advancement. The honour was rendered the more signal, and the more acceptable, from the fact that the same had recently been rendered by the same body to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
The house in the Piazza dell' Independenza, which was known in the city as "Villino Trollope," and of which I have spoken at the close of the last chapter, was my property, and I had lived in it nearly the whole of my married life. During that time four deaths had occurred among its inmates.
The first to happen was that of the old and highly valued servant of whom I had occasion to speak when upon the subject of Mr. Hume's spiritualistic experiences at my house. She had been for many years a much trusted and beloved servant in the family of Mr. Garrow at Torquay, and had accompanied them abroad. Her name was Elizabeth Shinner. Her death was felt by all of us as that of a member of our family, and she lies in the Protestant cemetery at Florence by the side of her former master, and of the young mistress whom she had loved as a child of her own.
The next to go was Mr. Garrow. His death was a very sudden and unexpected one. He was a robust and apparently perfectly healthy man. I was absent from home when he died. I had gone with a Cornishman, a Mr. Trewhella, who was desirous of visiting Mr. Sloane's copper mine, in the neighbourhood of Volterra, of which I have before spoken. We had accomplished our visit, and were returning over the Apennine about six o'clock in the morning in a littlebagherino, as the country cart-gigs are called, when we were hailed by a man in a similar carriage meeting us, whom I recognised as the foreman of a carpenter we employed. He had been sent to find me, and bring me home with all speed, in consequence of the sudden illness of Mr. Garrow. As far as I could learn from him there was little probability of finding my father-in-law alive. I made the best of my way to Florence. But he had been dead several hours when I arrived. He had waked with a paralytic attack on him, which deprived him of the power of moving on the left side, and drawing his face awry, made speech almost impossible to him. He assured his servant—who was almost immediately with him—speaking with much difficulty, that it was nothing of any importance, and that he should soon get over it. But these were the last words he ever spoke, and in two or three hours afterwards he breathed his last.
Then in a few years more thecrescendowave of trouble took my mother from me at the age of eighty-three. For the last two or three years she had entirely lost her memory, and for the last few months the use of her mental faculties. And she did not suffer much. The last words she uttered were "Poor Cecilia!"—her mind reverting in her latest moments to the child whose loss had been the most recent. She had for years entertained a great horror and dread of the possibility of being buried alive, in consequence of the very short time allowed by the law for a body to remain unburied after death; and she had exacted from me a promise that I would in any case cause a vein to be opened in her arm after death. In her case there could be no possible room for the shadow of doubt as to the certainty of death; but I was bound by my promise, and found some difficulty in the performance of it. The medical man in attendance, declaring the absolute absurdity of any doubt on the subject, refused to perform an operation which, he said, was wholly uncalled for, and argued that my promise could only be understood to apply to a case of possible doubt. I had none; but was none the less determined to be faithful to my promise. But it was not till I declared that I would myself sever a vein, in however butcher-like a manner, that I induced him to accompany me to the death-chamber and perform under my eyes the necessary operation.
My mother, the inseparable companion of so many wanderings in so many lands, the indefatigable labourer of so many years, found her rest near to the two who had gone from my house before, in the beautiful little cemetery on which the Apennine looks down.
But it was not long before this sorrow was followed by a very much sorer one—by the worst of all that could have happened to me! After what I have written in the last chapter it is needless to say anything of the blank despair that fell upon me when my wife died, on the 13th of April, 1865. She also lies near the others.
My house was indeed left unto me desolate, and I thought that life and all its sweetness was over for me!
I immediately took measures for disposing of the house in the Piazza dell' Independenza, and before long found a purchaser for it. I had bought it when the speculator, who had become the owner of the ground at the corner of the space which was beginning to assume the semblance of a "square" or "piazza," had put in the foundations but had not proceeded much further with his work. I completed it, improving largely, as I thought, on his plan; adapted it for a single residence, instead of its division into sundry dwellings; obtained possession of additional ground between the house and the city wall, sufficient for a large garden; built around it, looking to the south, the largest and handsomest "stanzone"[1] for orange and lemon plants in Florence, and gathered together a collection of very fine trees, the profits from which (much smaller in my hands than would have been the case in those of a Florentine to the manner born) nevertheless abundantly sufficed to defray the expenses of the garden and gardeners. In a word, I made the place a very complete and comfortable residence. Nearly the whole of my first married life was spent in it. And much of the literary work of my life has been done in it.
[Footnote 1: "Stanzone" is the term used in Tuscany to signify the buildings destined to shelter the "Agrumi," as the orange and lemon plants are called generically, in the winter; which in Florence is too severe to permit of their being left in the open air.]
I used in those days, and for very many years afterwards, to do all my writing standing; and I strongly recommend the practice to brother quill-drivers. Pauses, often considerable intervals, occur for thought while the pen is in the hand. And if one is seated at a table, one remains sitting during these intervals. But if one is standing, it becomes natural to one, during even a small pause, to take a turn up and down the room, or even, as I often used to do, in the garden. And such change and movement I consider eminently salutary both for mind and body.
I had specially contrived a little window immediately above the desk at which I stood, fixed to the wall. The room looking on the "loggia," which was the scene of the little poem transcribed in the preceding chapter, was abundantly lighted, but I liked some extra light close to my desk.
In that room my Bice was born. For it was subsequently to her birth that the destination of it was changed from a bedroom to a study.
Few men have passed years of more unchequered happiness than I did in that house. And I was very fond of it.
But, as may be readily imagined, it became all the more odious and intolerable to me when the "angel in the house" had been taken from me.
Assuredly it seemed to me that all was over; and the future a dead blank. And for a time I was as a man stunned.
But in truth it was very far otherwise! I was fifty-five; but I was in good health, young for my years, strong and vigorous in constitution, and before a year had passed it began to seem to me that a future, and life and its prospects, might open to me afresh; that the curtain might be dropped on the drama that was passed, and a new phase of life begun.
I had had, and vividly enjoyed an entire life, according to the measure that is meted out to many, perhaps I may say to most men. But I felt myself ready for another! And—thanks this time also to a woman—I havehadanother,in no wiseless happy, in some respects, as less chequered by sorrows—more happy than the first! I am in better health too, having outgrown apparently several of the maladies which young people are subject to!
Of this second life I am not now going to tell my readers anything. "What I remember" of my first life may be, and I hope has been, told frankly without giving offence or annoyance to any human being. I don't know that the telling of the story of my second life would necessarily lead me to say anything which could hurt anybody. But mixed up as its incidents and interests and associations have been with a great multitude of men and women still living and moving and talking and writing round about me, I should not feel myself so comfortably at liberty to write whatever offered itself to my memory.
Ten years hence, perhaps ("Please God, the public lives!" as a speculative showman said), I may tell the reader, if he cares to hear it, the story of my second life. For the present we will break off here.
But not without some words of parting kindness—and shall we say, wisdom!—from an old man to readers, most of whom probably might be his sons, and many doubtless his grandsons.
Especially, my young friends, don't pay overmuch attention to what the Psalmist says about "the years of man." I knewdans le tempsa fine old octo-and-nearly-nonogenarian, one Graberg de Hemsö, a Swede (a man with a singular history, who passed ten years of his early life in the British navy, and was, when I knew him, librarian at the Pitti Palace in Florence), who used to complain of the Florentine doctors that "Dey doosen't know what de nordern constitooshions is!" and I take it the same may be said of the Psalmist. The years beyond three score and ten need not be all sorrow and trouble. Depend upon it kindly nature—prudens, as that jolly fellow, fine gentleman, and true philosopher, Horace, says in a similar connection—kindly nature knows how to make the closing decade of life every whit as delightful as any of the preceding, if only you don't baulk her purposes. Don't weigh down your souls, and pin your particles of divine essence to earth by your yesterday's vices; be sure that when you cannot jump over the chairs so featly as you can now, you will not want to do so; tell the girls with genial old Anacreon, when the time comes, that whether the hairs on your forehead be many or few, you know not, but do know well that it behoves an old man to be cheery in proportion to the propinquity of his exit, and go on your way rejoicing through this beautiful world, which not even the Radicals have quite spoilt yet.
And soà rivederci—au revoir—auf Wiedersehn—why have we noEnglish equivalent better than "Here's to our next pleasant meeting!"
Abbey, Reading, Mary Mitford's project concerningAberdeen, Lord, and Lord CowleyAbrams, the MissesAbsolute, Sir A., my representation ofAckland, CaptainAdam, Sir FrederickAdam the forger, Dante'sAdams, John Quincy, Grattan onAffinities ElectiveAge not counted by yearsAladdin's lamp, G. Eliot wishes forAlbani, MargheritaAlbèri, SignorAlbertazzi in 1840Alinari, photographer at FlorenceAll the Year Round, contributions toAmerican lady at TuileriesAmericans at the Pitti Palaceanecdote ofmeeting Lewes at anAmerica, my brother's book oncriticised by LewesIrish in, Grattan onAmiens, excursion toAmpère, his éloge at the Academy by AragoAmphytrion, Venice asAnacreon on old ageAntagonism with G. Eliot, subject ofAntagonist, G. Eliot as anAntiboini, theAntiques, modern, inOur VillageAntonelli, CardinalApennines, Grand Duke crossing thefigure representing the, by Michael Angeloscenery among theApoplexy, man dying of, anecdote ofAppony, Comte d', his receptions in ParisApril fool, Grattan anArago, M., at the AcademyArchduchesses, sweetness ofArchduchess SophieArezzo, marshes nearPulszky atG. Eliot wishes to seeAristotle's Natural ScienceArmy, Tuscan attitude of at the RevolutionArnaldo da Brescia, Niccolini'sArno river in floodtheArticulation, George Eliot'sAshley, Lord, letter fromAspirates, Landor used to drop themAspirations, earlyAthenaeum, my wife's letters in theAtlantic Monthlyon LandorAubrey, MissAumale, Duke ofAunt, Dante'sAural circulation, Lewes onAurora Leigh, Mrs. Browning'sAusten, Miss, Mary Mitford's idolAustin, AlfredAustrian troops in Florenceofficers, anecdote ofAustria, Mary Mitford onNapoleon III.'s negotiations withAutobiography, G. Eliot onAutograph collectorsAutolycus, his songAuvergne, pedestrianising indialect ofAylmer, AdmiralLordAzeglio d'Massimo, anecdote of
Baby BeatriceBackwoodsman, Young, Mary Mitford asks aboutBaden in SwitzerlandBagni Caldi at Lucca BathsBaiae, excursion to, G. Eliot'sBalzac's suppressed playBamberg, Baroness Zandt atBanagher, my brother atBancroft, the Historian, Grattan onhis anti-Whig politicsBandi, the family at FlorenceBarbaras, HermolausBargello, at Florence, Dante's portrait inBaritone of our way, LewesBarrett, Elizabeth, at TorquayTheodosia Garrow's appreciation ofher affection for Isa BlagdenLandor onMary Mitford's admiration forBartley, Mrs., and Mary MitfordBartolomei, MarcheseBath, and W.S. LandorBavaria, ramble inBay tree, Wordsworth'sBeacon Terrace, Torquay, Mrs. Browning atBeata, La, my novel, Lewes and G. Eliot onMrs. Carlyle onBeatrice, my daughter, George Eliot onBeaufort, Duke ofBelial, Bishop, Landor calls Philpotts aBellosguardo, at FlorenceBenjamin, my mother'sBen Jonson's superstition, Mary Mitford onBereavements, differentBerkeley, Grantley, and LandorBerington'sMiddle AgesBerti Palazzo, in Florence,Bezzi, Signor A. and LandorBible, persecution for reading theBier, open, used in FlorenceBiglow Papers, Lowell'sBiographies, G. Eliot onBirmingham, my return fromBlackbird, Song of theBlack Down, Tennyson's house atBlack Forest, Leweses in theBlackwood's Magazine, Mary Mitford onBlagden, Isa, Missher poemsher deathnote fromLewes inquires afterand George EliotBlandford Square, Leweses atBlaze de Bury, MadameBlessington, LadyBob Acres, my representation ofBoboli Gardens, the, at Florenceanecdote of Lady Bulwer inBohemia, Grand Duke's estates inBologna, Grand Duke on way toAustrians atBologna, "la Grassa"Boodh, Landor onBook of Beauty, Lady Blessington'sBooksellers, Landor eschews allBordeaux, Conversations atBorgo, San Sepolcro, Pulszky atBoston Consulate, Grattan on leave fromSociety of, Grattan on the"Boto," Florentine for "Voto"Bourbonnais, travels inBoutourlin familyBraddons, the, at TorquayBrahman Princess, my wife's grandmotherBrestBretons, changes in character ofBrightness, my mother's value forBrittany, book oncostume inBroons in Brittany, costume ofinnkeeper's daughter, atBrougham CastleBrowning, OscarBrowning, Robertat Florencehis care for Landor in FlorenceBrowning, Elizabeth Barrett, specialties of her characterletters fromher absolute truthfulnesson Napoleon IIIand Theodosia Garrowher handwritingher death, Lewes onon Theodosia Trollope's facultyBull, Rev. Mr., of BradfordBullock, ReubenBully, an IrishBulwer, Lord, Landor onBulwer, Henry, at ParisBulwer, Lady, at Florenceher characteranecdote ofin Boboli gardensletters from herBurial, manner of, in FlorenceBurial, premature fear ofBurridge, Landor's landlady at TorquayButcher's wife, anecdote of theButter, not used by TuscansByron
Cadogan, Lady HonoriaCalais, crossing to, Lewes onCamaldoli, with George Eliot toPadre forestieraioatCambridge, near Boston, notable men thereCanadaCancellieri, Francesco, his mode of writingCanigiani family at FlorenceCanino, Princeis marched off to the frontierhis sale of his titlehis personal appearanceCapstone Hill, at IlfracombeCaravan,summum bonumCarlo, San, theatre at Naples, G. Eliot atCarlsruheCarlton Hill at PenrithCarlyle, Thomas, his description of Dickens's personLandor onand Anthony TrollopeCarlyle, Mrs., her description of Dickens's personal appearanceon my novelLa BeataCarnival at Romeat FlorenceCarey, translator of Dante, with Miss Mitford"Casa Colonica," TuscanCasentino, theCasino dei Nobili at FlorenceCathedral in Florence and Mr. Sloaneburial of priest in, anecdote ofCavour, my wife's account of his death, George Eliot onCemetery, Protestant, at FlorenceChampion, the, at the Pitti, anecdote ofCharming, Dr., of Boston, Grattan onChappell, Mr. Arthur, dinner withChateaubriandCheapness at the Baths of LuccaChelsea, tea atChiaja at Naples, G. Eliot on theChiana, draining marshes ofChianti wine, price ofChiusi, marshes nearChorley, Henry, and Mary Mitford,at HeckfieldChurch, the, Landor onChurch, English, Dickens on theCittà di Castello, Pulszky atClarke, Miss (Mme. Mohl)Clemow, Mr. and Mrs., of the Royal Hotel, IlfracombeClergy, French, in 1840Guizot on theClericalism at FlorenceClifden, Turbot atCobler, Northern, The, read by TennysonCoins in use at FlorenceCoker, Mrs.Colburn, Mr.and Lady BulwerColico on Lake ComoCollins, Wilkie, story bydinner withColloquial use of a language must be learned youngCologneColonna VittoriaCommons, House of, Dickens onCommonwealth of Florence, my history of theComo, Lake ofGeorge Eliot at"Compagnatico." TuscanComposition, George Eliot's difficulty inComposition, literary, Grattan onConfessor's ManualCongress, member ofCongresses, Italian ScientificConservatism forced on meConsolation, child's, in confinementConsul, British, at Boston, GrattanMr. Grattan addressed asConsulship at Boston, Grattan on theConsultations and plans, my mother's and mine"Contadini," TuscanConvocation, Dickens onCopper mine near VolterraCoquerel, Athanase, his preachingCorinne, a newCornhill MagazineCornish jury, verdict ofCorreggio, book on, by Signor MignatyCorrespondence of London paperCountry Stories, Mary Mitford'sCourt Supreme, American judge, story of theCousin, his philosophy obsoleteCovent Garden Theatre, Mary Mitford's play atCowley, Lord, ambassador in ParisCowley, Lady, as ambassadressCowper's home at Olney, Mary Mitford onCramer, JohnCrazy Jane, authoress ofCrime almost unknown in Grandducal FlorenceCroce, Santa, church of, in Florence and Mr. SloaneCross, Mr., hisLife of George EliotCruikshank and Lady BulwerCurwen, Mr., flooding of his mine
Dalling, Lord, at Paris at Florence Dall' Ongaro, the Poet Dante, his portrait at Florence Deak, Pulszky's visits to Deans, cousins of Mary Mitford Death in the street at Florence, anecdote of Death of Lewes's son Deathbeds, taste for, George Eliot's Decade of Italian Women, my book on Decade, last of life how to enjoy the Decision, a momentous D'Henin Mdlle her letters to my mother,et seq.at Tuileries ball her death "Dehors Trompeurs, les;" Mdlle. Mars inDemocrat Le, French newspaper anecdote of Departure of the Duke from Florence Deputies, Chamber of, opening of in 1840 at the Desk, writing, standing at Devonshire farmer, a De Whelpdale, Lord of Manor Penrith Dexter, Arthur, of Boston Dialect, Florentine anecdote of lady speaking Dialect, provincial, as read by Tennyson Dialect, George Eliot on use of Dibden, Dr. his preaching Dickens, Charles, first meeting with personal appearance of in early youth subsequently was near-sighted his manner his so-called exaggerations his character his opinions on Italy on public schools letters from on conversation on Gibson the sculptor on Italian political situation on Louis Napoleon on Home the Medium introduces me to my first wife on the general elections on the House of Commons on the English Church on my brothers standing for Beverley last letter from Dinner, going with glee to Director of Museum, Pesth Disaffection in Tuscany, beginning of Doherty, John, Doney's coffee-house at Florence Don Giovanni, Protestant, Douarnenez, sardine fishing, etc Doubt of death Doyle, Sir F., his reminiscences Dramatic College, Royal, Dickens at Dresden as a residence Drinking-song, sung by Mr. Du Maurier Duel at Baths of Lucca, Du Maurier, Mrs. Du Maurier, Mr. and Mrs. Dupin, at the Chamber Dupin and Lady Bulwer Dyer, Lady Sir Thomas Dymock, Champion, at Florence
Easter devotionsEdenhall in CumberlandLuck ofElection in IrelandGeneral, Dickens onin Hungary, cost ofHungarianElm Court, Temple, Sergeant Talfourd's addressEnglish Government and TuscanyEnglish language, George Eliot on theEnunciation, George Eliot'sEotvös, Baron, and PulszkyEremo, Sagro at Camaldolirule thereride up toinmates ofError in post-mark, singularErysipelas, attack of, cured by HomoeopathyEsterhazy, his picture galleryEternal City, French hated inEverett, Ed, Grattan onExaminer, the, criticism of, on my first wife's lettersExchange of portraitsEx-governor, pompous, and Grattan
Factory legislation Lords, leaders of Faculty, multiform, my first wife's "Falkland" in theRivals, by Sir F. Vincent "Falstaff House," of Dickens Falterona, rivers rising in Mount the mountain Fanny Bent Fauche, Mrs. Fauriel, M. Fête, National, at Florence Field, Miss, a favourite with Landor returns his present of a scrap book Fiesole, Leader's villa at Filippo Strozzi, my book on Finance Committee, Pesth, Pulszky on Finden's tableaux Fine Arts Society at Pesth, Pulszky chairman of Finisterre, at anecdote ofFirenze la Gentileno longer such Firing on Florence, orders for Duke never gave such Fisher, Harriet, my wife's half sister her character her death Fisher, Harriet, her brother always a peacemaker her beneficent influence Flanders, French, rambles in Flavia, verses on, by my first wife Flint, Mrs. and Mary Mitford Flood in Florence Florence decided on as a residence departure from London for society of flood at coins in use at cheapness of life at police at revolution at number of English residing at singular social change at social changes in, causes of my History of Lewes criticises leading medical practitioner at Florentine nobles Municipality places a tablet to the memory of my first wife characteristics Flower garden, Mary Mitford's Fonblanque, Mr. Landor on Fontebranda fountain Fool, April, Grattan is made an Foreign Affairs Committee at Pesth, Pulszky on Forster, Mr., on Dickens his life of Landor portraits prefixed to Landor gives him all his works Fortezza da Basso at Florence, Grand Duke at in Florentine revolutionFortnightly ReviewFrance, Central, Journey through which portion most interesting Franchi, book by G.H. Lewes, reading Francis, St., and PulszkyFraser's Magazine, Mary Mitford on French hated at Rome Frescobaldi family, at Florence Friday receptions, my mother's in Florence my mother's whist parties Friends, my mother's, in youth and age Fun, my mother's love of
Gabell, MissGabell, Dr., of WinchesterGalileo, new edition of work ofMilan edition ofGambling tables at Lucca BathsGarcia, P., in 1840Garibaldi and DickensCol. Peard's judgment ofmy remembrance of himvisits me at Ricorbolihis personal appearancedispute with him, aat PalermoGarrow, Mr. JosephLandor's letters tohis musical talenta very exacting fatherhis deathGarrow, Mrs.Garrow, JudgeGarrow, Theodosiaher position in her familyher fortune and prospectsher personal appearanceher ancestorsin Romeher Church opinionsas an inmateat the "Braddons,"her appreciation of Miss Barrettand LandorGenoa, fishing nearLa SuperbaGeorge Eliot.SeeLewes, Mrs.Germany, Lewes's inGhosts of memoryGianchetti and whitebaitGibson the sculptorDickens onGiglio, Via del, at FlorenceGilchrist, Dr., dinner given byGiotto's tower at Florenceanecdote concerningG.H. Lewes onGiusti, the poet, and Grand Duke of Tuscanymy first wife's translations fromGladstone, his age, G. Eliot onwhen a High Tory"Glass beads for savages,"Glee, going to dinner withGore HouseGothard, St. over the, Lewes's journeyGothic architecture, Mary Mitford onGrand Duke of Tuscanyanecdote ofexit of, from TuscanyGrand Duchess Florentini, burial ofGrant, GeneralGranville, Lordhis receptions in ParisGrattan, T.C., consul at Bostonletters fromhis message to meblank, no prize, Grattanprepares new edition ofHighways and Byewayswrites inNorth American Reviewendeavours to promote peace between England and Americaspeaks of his seared heartpessimism as often deceptive as optimismnot a fertile writerhis advice to my mother as a writervisits Washingtondoubts respecting his conduct as consulwrites on Irelandproposes various travelsresolves to give up punninghis reparteesGrattan, MrsGraves, Miss, at FlorenceGreen tea and laudanum, effects ofGregory XVI. a Camaldolesebeans annually sent toGrey goose quill work, Grattan onGreys, cousins of Mary MitfordGrisi in 1840Guidi Casa, visits toGuizot on the French clergy"Gush" and Mary MitfordGyöngyös in Hungary, election for
Haddon HallHaine, Notre Dame de laHahnemann's favourite pupilHalifaxHall, Mr. Horace, and Mr. SloaneHall, Alfred, and family at FlorenceHaller, Dr., of Berlinon Lewes's philosophic workHamilton, Mr., Minister at FlorenceHamilton, Captain, author ofCyril Thorntonhis boat on lakeHandwriting, Mary Mitford'sHare, Landor's friendHarrison, American PresidentHarrow days, oldHatred, Our Lady ofHebraist, learnedHeckfield, Mary Mitford atHeenan the pugilistHeidelbergHeights, WitleyHennell, Miss Sara, Mrs. Lewes toHeretics, persecution ofHermolaus, BarbarusHervieu, M., his portrait of my motherHigh Church opinions, my sister'sHighways and Byeways, Grattan'snew edition ofHill, Herbert, Southey's nephewHill, Theodosia, inOur VillageHill, Frances, inOur VillageHill, Joseph, Cowper's cousinHistory of Philosophy, G.H. Lewes'sHistory of Florence, my, G.H. Lewes's criticism ofHoche, General, his daughter, anecdote ofHobhouse, Edward, at FlorenceHofwyl, Lewes's atHolland, society of, Grattan onHolland, Lord, Minister at Florenceanecdote ofsaved my mother's lifeLadyHomoeopathic cure of erysipelasHousehold Words, my contributions toHügel, BaronHume, Mr., the "Medium," Dickens onHumour, that of George Eliotthat of Lewes, differentmy mother's sense ofHungarian politics, Pulszky onelectionsHungarians, Pulszky proud of theHuntingford, Bishop of Herefordhis handwritingHustings, fall of
Ilfracombe, visit toRoyal Clarence Hotel, atImpudence, Irish, notable case ofIndependenza, Piazza, dell', in FlorenceIndex, the Roman CatholicIndian hand, my first wife'sInfluenza and tragedy, Mary Mitford suffers fromInghirami MarcheseIntimates, my mother's, in youth and ageIon, Sergeant Talfourd'sIreland in 1841Grattan onIrish in America, Grattan on theItaly, my mother's book ontakes to political thinking
James, G.P.R., Lander's friendJealousy, professional, at FlorenceJoy, Mr., of BostonJoyce's Inn, dinner atJudge Story, Grattan on
Kenyon, Mr. and Landor his poems, Landor on Landor on and Miss Mitford Kenyon, Mr. Edward, and Miss Mitford his munificence Keppel Street days, old Killeries, excursion to Kingstown, landing at Kirkup, Seymour, and Signor Bezzi
La Beata, my novel, George Eliot on Lewes on Lablache in 1840 "Lady" for wife, used by Landor Laffarge, Madame Lake of Como, George Eliot at Lamartine, cited Landor, Walter Savage at Siena circumstances under which he left England his character personal appearance last days at Florence anecdote of his deafness dropped his aspirates threw his dinner service out of window his vivacity of manner his objection to scattering his photograph letters to Mr. Garrow offers to let his villa at Florence his extravagant exaggerations anger respecting Lieutenantcy of Monmouth abuses the Whigs at a breakfast at Milman's and Mary Mitford Land's End, the Landseer, Edwin Langdale, Little, Wordsworth's lines on Lanleff, Temple ofLascia Passareextraordinary Laudanum and green tea, effects of La Vernia ride toforestieria, &c, night-lodging at Layard, visit to Dickens and G.P. Marsh Leaf, turning over a new, Grattan on "Lenten Journey," my Leopoldine laws at Florence Le Roi, Madame, anecdote of Letters, my first wife's in theAthenaeumLewes, G.H., my first acquaintance with a delightful companion his incessant care for his wife his anxiety about Mrs. Lewes's fatigue his fourth visit to Italy as araconteurat the house of the American Minister his adieu to me about my novel happier than previously last adieu to him and Mrs. Lewes his saying of George Eliot's person and constitution his literary influence on George Eliot his faith in her powers his insistance on her superiority to him his delight in talking of her letters from him and George Eliot letter criticizing my novelLa Beatahis remarks on Mrs. Browning's death visits Malvern his criticism of myMariettahis ill healthFortnightly Review, his editing of at Tunbridge Wells hisHistory of Philosophyin the Black Forest at a pantomime on crossing to Calais on my corresponding with a London paper death of his son no biography of his special advantages in writing on philosophy photograph of him Lewes, Mrs. excursion to Camaldoli her cheerfulness under fatigue her sensitiveness to all matters of interest passes the night in the cow-house at La Vernia her fourth visit to Italy her intellectual power consideration for others as a companion her Catholic tolerance would have been an admirable confessor not happy subsequently more so her sense of humour my visit to her at Witley her growth optimism in her case her articulation her love for a drinking song her improved health last adieu to her and Lewes her personal appearance her likeness to Savonarola to Dante her voice and mode of speaking her opinion of Lewes's scientific attainments Bohemianism in Lewes pleasant to her letters from her and Lewes questions concerning Florentine history, letter on her remarks on my novelLa Beataspeaks of her interest in deathbeds her handwriting on letter-writing her Sunday musical evenings her poor state of health at Venice difficulties in composing in the Black Forest wishes to see Arezzo and Perugia at Naples as an antagonist and my second wife her affection for Lewes's son her wishes concerning her husband after her husband's death on her husband's photograph Lewes, Charles Liberalism, my mother'sLife and Mind, Problems of, G.H. Lewes's book on Lilies, scarlet, American Lima, river Lira, Tuscan Literature, English, biographies in "Loggia," Tuscan, picture of afternoon in a Lombard nobles Lombardy under the AustriansLondon Quarterlyon G.H. Lewes Longfellow and Sir G. Musgrave Lorraine, ramble in Lottery, Italian, scheme of Louis Philippe, history of reign of his hobby Louis Philippe opens French Chambers his grief at death of Duc d'Orleans anecdote of his wealth his debts his reign, character of Lowell, hisBiglow Papers, read by him L.S.D, origin of our Lucca, Scientific Congress at Lucca Baths journey thither from Florence English Church at tragedy atLa IndustriosaLucca, Duke of at the Baths his protestantizing tendencies his English chamberlains opposed to duelling by his chamberlain's dying bed Lucchesi, character of Lucerne, visit to the Garrows at "Luck of Edenhall" "Lung' Arno," at Florence Luscombe, Bishop, his preaching anecdote of Lydia Languish played by Madame di Parcieu
Macaulay, Landor onMacchiavelli, Life of, Villari's "Macchie" in Italian landscape Macleod, Col., at Penrith Macready and Mary Mitford and G.H. Lewes playsIonfor his benefit M'Queen, Col. Potter Madiai, the story of the Magazines, writing in, Mary Mitford on Mahomet, Landor on Malcontenti, Via dei, Florence Malvern, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes's visit Manelli, family at Florence Mannheim Manual for ConfessorsMarietta, my novel, criticized by Lewes Mario, Jessie White Mario, Alberto Marriage, my first, opposition to imprudence of performed in Florence Mars, Madame, inLes Dehors TrompeursMarsellaise, in 1840 Marsh, G.P., American Minister to Italy dean of the diplomatic body his work,Man in Natureletter from him difficulty with the Italian Ministry his death and G. Eliot Mrs. Marsh and G. Eliot at Rome Martineau, Miss, her American book "Mason, George," Mary Mitford inquires about Massy, Dawson Master of Foxhounds, Irish Mazzinists, Col. Peard on Medical practice, and whistMedici, Catherine de, Girlhood of, my book on Medici, General, his departure from Genoa Mediterranean, the Melanie, Princess Metternich letter from exchange of portraits Melbourne, Lord, his family, Landor on Member of Congress "Memories, Palace of," verses by my first wife Ménage and Ménagerie "Mercato in," Italian phrase Merimée, M. Messenger, King's Metternich, influence of, on my mother Princess, influence of Mezzeria system in Tuscany Michael Angelo, his figure representing the ApennineMichael Armstrong, novel by my mother Mignaty, Signora Mignaty, Signor Mignet, M. Milan, Scientific Congress at Milk not used by Tuscans Milman, Landor breakfasts with Lander's criticism on quits incumbency at Reading Minerva Hotel, Rome, Lewes's at Mitford, Mary her personal appearance letters from her handwriting an aristocratic Whig remarks on Owen, of Lanark and Captain Polhill her opera on writing in magazines her hopes for her tragedy her hatred of puffery anxious to go to London for the performance of Talfourd'sIonnecessity for travelling with a maid her father her cousins writes a novel for Saunders and Ottley her belief in sympathies opinions on Austria admiration for Gothic architecture purposes a novel on Reading Abbey herCountry Storiesher admiration for Miss Barrett her garden sends wild flowers to the Sedgwicks Carey, translator of Dante, visits her her "gush" Misericordia, the Florentine origin of dress of members of proceedings of anecdotes of Roman Modena, frontier line between it and Lucca political feeling at under the Este dukes "Modern Antiques" inOur VillageMohl, Jules, at Madame Récamier's anecdote told by his great work character of Madam, life of, by K. O'Meara note from Monasteries, sites of Monday Popular Concerts, at the Monmouth, Deputy Lieutenantcy of Montalembert, Dickens's remarks on Mont Cenis, crossing in February Moore, Thomas, Landor on Monthlies, writing in, Mary Mitford on Moses, Landor on Mountains, last look on the Movement of mind towards Conservatism Mowatt, Mrs. Mozzi family at Florence Mulgrave, Lady Municipality, Florentine, place a tablet to the memory of my first wife Municipalities, rivalry between Murder at Florence, anecdote of a Murder, singular method of Murray, John, of Albemarle Street Museum, National, at Pesth Museum, British, George Eliot reading at Musgraves of Edenhall Sir George and the Holy Well and Longfellow walks with Lady Mutton, no more good