Read Ebook: Life of Frances Power Cobbe as told by herself with additions by the author and introduction by Blanche Atkinson by Cobbe Frances Power Atkinson Blanche Author Of Introduction Etc

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The last time I saw Canon Kingsley was one day late in the autumn some months before he died. Somebody who, I thought, he would like to meet was coming to dine with me at short notice, and I went to Westminster in the hope of catching him and persuading him to come without losing time by sending notes. The evening was closing, and it was growing very dark in the cloisters, where I was seeking his door, when I saw a tall man, strangely bent, coming towards me, evidently seeing neither me nor anything else, and absorbed in some most painful thought. His whole attitude and countenance expressed grief amounting to despair. So terrible was it that I felt it an intrusion on a sacred privacy to have seen it; and would fain have hidden myself, but this was impossible where we were standing at the moment. When he saw me he woke out of his reverie with a start, pulled himself together, shook hands, and begged me to come into his house; which of course I did not do. He had an engagement which prevented him from meeting my guest , and I took myself off as quickly as possible. I have often wondered what dreadful thought was occupying his mind when I caught sight of him that day in the gloomy old cloisters of Westminster in the autumn twilight.

"Avignon, Feb. 23rd, 1869.

"Dear Miss Cobbe,

"I have lately received communication from the American publisher Putnam, requesting me to write for their Magazine, and I understand that they would be very glad if you would write anything for them, more especially on the Women question, on which the Magazine has shown liberal tendencies from the first. The communications I have received have been through Mrs. Hooker, sister of Mrs. Stowe and Dr. Ward Beecher, and herself the author of two excellent articles in the Magazine on the suffrage question, by which we had been much struck before we knew the authorship. I enclose Mrs. Hooker's last letter to me, and I send by post copies of Mrs. Hooker's articles and some old numbers of the Magazine, the only ones we have here; and I shall be very happy if I should be the medium of inducing you to write on this question for the American public.

"My daughter desires to be kindly remembered, and I am,

"Dear Miss Cobbe, "Very truly yours, "J. S. MILL.

"P.S.--May I ask you to be so kind as to forward Mrs. Hooker's letter to Mrs. P. A. Taylor, as she will see by it that Mrs. Hooker has no objection to put her name to a reprint of her articles."

Here are extracts from letters concerning Mr. Mill, which I wrote to Miss Elliot in August, 1869. I believe I had been to Brighton and met Mr. Mill there.

A month or two earlier in the same year I wrote to the same friend:--

It has been a constant subject of regret to me that Mr. Mill's intention of spending the ensuing summer holiday in Wales, on purpose to be near us, was frustrated by his illness and death. How much pleasure and instruction I should have derived from his near neighbourhood there is no need to say.

Another man, much of the character and calibre of Prof. Cairnes, whom I likewise had the privilege to know well, was Prof. Sheldon Amos. He also, alas! died in the prime of life; to the loss and grief of the friends of every generous movement.

The following is a memorandum of the first occasion on which I met Mr. John Bright:--

"I ventured to ask him why he laboured so hard to get votes for working carpenters and bricklayers, and never stirred a finger to ask them for women, who possessed already the property qualification? He said: 'Much was to be said for women,' but then went on maundering about our proper sphere, and 'would they go into Parliament?'"

Bright's voice broke when he came to the end of this story, and we said very little more to each other during that dinner.

Beside my cousin Mrs. Locke and her good and able husband, I had the pleasure for many years of constantly seeing in London her two younger sisters, Sophia and Eliza Cobbe, who were my father's favourite wards and have been from their childhood, when they were always under my charge in their holidays, till now in our old age, almost like younger sisters to me. They were of course rarely absent from the Eaton Place festivities.

I am led to these reflections by remembering among my cousin's guests that admirable man--Mr. Fawcett. He was always, not merely fairly cheerful, but more gay and apparently light-hearted than those around him who were possessed of their eyesight. The last time I met him was at the house of Madame Bodichon in Blandford Square, and we three were all the company. One would have thought a blind statesman alone with two elderly women, would not have been much exhilarated; but he seemed actually bursting with boyish spirits; pouring out fun, and laughing with all his heart. Certainly his devoted wife , succeeded in cheering his darkened lot quite perfectly.

Many of us, in those days of the Sixties, were deeply interested in the efforts of women to enter the medical profession in spite of the bitter opposition which they encountered. Miss Elizabeth Garrett, Mrs. Fawcett's sister, occupied a particularly prominent place in our eyes, succeeding as she did in obtaining her medical degree in Paris, and afterwards a seat on the London School Board, which last was quite a new kind of elevation for women. While still occupying the foreground of our ambition for our sex, Miss Garrett resolved to make a happy and well assorted marriage, which put an end, necessarily, to her further projects of public work. I sent her, with my cordial good wishes, the following verses:--

The Woman's cause was rising fast When to the Surgeons' College past A maid who bore in fingers nice A banner with the new device Excelsior!

"Try not to pass"! the Dons exclaim, "M.D. shall grace no woman's name"-- "Bosh!" cried the maid, in accents free, "To France I'll go for my degree." Excelsior!

The School-Board seat came next in sight, "Beware the foes of woman's right!" "Beware the awful husting's fight!" Such was the moan of many a soul-- A voice replied from top of poll-- Excelsior!

In patients' homes she saw the light Of household fires beam warm and bright Lectures on Bones grew wondrous dry, But still she murmured with a sigh Excelsior!

At end of day, when all is done, And woman's battle fought and won, Honour will aye be paid to one Who erst called foremost in the van Excelsior!

But not for her that crown so bright, Which hers had been, of surest right, Had she still cried,--serene and blest-- "The Virgin throned by the West," Excelsior!

"... Not the course Of all the centuries to come, And not the infinite resource Of Nature, with her countless sum

"Of figures, with her fulness vast Of new creation evermore, Can ever quite repeat the past, Or just thy little self restore.

"Stern law of every mortal lot! Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear And builds himself, I know not what Of second life, I know not where."

"Teeming with plans, alert and glad In work or play, Like sunshine went and came, and bade Live out the day!"

Does not every one feel how true is the likeness of a happy loving dog to sunshine in a house?

"Cobham, Surrey, "January 8th, 1875.

"Dear Miss Cobbe,

"Sincerely yours, "MATTHEW ARNOLD."

I forget now what particular point we had been discussing when he wrote me the following curious bit of erudition:--

"Dear Miss Cobbe,

"Dixit Rabbi Simeon Ben Lakis,--Nomina angelorum et mensium ascenderunt in domum Israelis ex Babylone."

"The Mischna is said to have been completed in the 3rd century, under the auspices of Rabbi Judah the Holy, and his disciples.

"Socrates himself appears superstitiously apprehensive about the use of divine names in the Philebus 1, 2 and the Cratylus 400e. The suppression of it among the Jews, express the same feeling.

"We were talking of the original religion of Persia. You, of course, recollect the passage on this subject in the first book of Herodotus, Ch. 131, and Strabo 15, see 13, p. 732 Casaub. The practice of prohibiting selfish prayer mentioned in the next following chapter in Herodotus, is remarkable.

"I hope that in the above rigmarole a grain of useful matter may be found. Mrs. Mackay is, I am glad to say, better to-day.

"I remain, sincerely yours, "R. W. MACKAY.

"20th February, 1865, "41, Hamilton Terrace, N.W."

Another early acquaintance of mine in London was Lady Byron, the widow of the poet. I called on her one day, having received from her a kind note begging me to do so as she was unable to leave her house to come to me. She had been exceedingly kind in procuring for me valuable letters of introduction from Sir Moses Montefiore and others, which had been very useful to me in my long wanderings.

Lady Byron was short in stature and, when I saw her, deadly pale; but with a dignity which some of our friends called "royal," albeit without the smallest affectation or assumption. She talked to me eagerly about all manner of good works wherein she was interested; notably concerning Miss Carpenter's Reformatory, to which she had practically subscribed ?1,000 by buying Red Lodge and making it over for such use. During the larger part of the time of my visit she stood on the rug with her back to the fire and the power and will revealed in her attitude and conversation were very impressive. I bore in mind all the odious things Byron had said of her:

"There was Miss Mill-pond, smooth as summer sea That usual paragon, an only daughter, Who seemed the cream of equanimity Till skimmed, and then there was some milk and water."

Also the sneers at her humour:

"Her wit, for she had wit, was Attic-all Her favourite science was the mathematical" &c., &c.

Miss Carpenter, who was entirely captivated by her, received from her some charge amounting to literary executorship; but after one or two furtive delvings into the trunks full of papers , she gave up in despair. She told me that the papers were in the most extraordinary confusion; letters both of the most trivial and of the most serious and compromising kind, household accounts, poems, and tradesmen's bills, were all mixed together in hopeless disorder and dust. As is well known, Byron's famous verses:

"Fare thee well! and if for ever!"

Lady Byron was at one time greatly attracted by Fanny Kemble. Among Mrs. Kemble's papers in my possession are seven letters from Lady Byron to her. Here is one of them worth presenting:

"Dear Mrs. Kemble,

"I cannot believe that a relation so truthful as yours and mine will be merely casual. Time will show. I might not have an opportunity of saying this in a visit.

"Yours most truly, A. NOEL BYRON."

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