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EMMA DARWIN
A CENTURY OF FAMILY LETTERS
1792-1896
VOLUME I
CHAPTER XVIII
1832—1834
Josiah Wedgwood elected for Stoke-upon-Trent—Bessy's serious illness—The Langtons at Onibury—Miss Martineau and Mrs Marsh—Hensleigh Wedgwood's scruples as to administering oaths—William Clifford abroad—A tour in Switzerland and visit to Queen Hortense at Constance.
AT the end of 1832 Josiah Wedgwood was elected in the first reformed Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent.
Emma Wedgwood to Madame Sismondi.
16 Dec. 1832.
MY DEAREST AUNT JESSIE,
Mamma has been saying she meant to write to you every day since the election, but I think our news will be quite flat if we leave it any longer, and now I am afraid we shall not be the first to tell you that Papa was elected by a handsome majority. The numbers were Wedgwood 822, Davenport 625, Heathcote 588, Mason 240. Mr Mason is a thorough-going Radical, so we were all very glad at his being so low on the poll. Papa and all of us were very much pleased at his coming in so grandly, especially as he is become too Tory for these Radical times. We were very secure after the first day's poll. Jessie [Wedgwood] and I went to Hanley to see the candidates going to Stoke to be nominated. Papa went first with his sons and some more gentlemen, his proposer and seconder, in the carriage open with 4 horses; a few carriages followed, and then the tag-rag and bobtail in gigs, carts and phaetons. Then came Davenport, who looked much more numerous, which made us rather low: I suppose we should have been still lower if we had gone to the nomination, for Papa was received with silence, Mr Davenport with hisses and hootings, Mr Heathcote with some applause, and Mr Mason with rapture, which shews how little a nomination shews one of how matters will turn out. Papa's speech looks well in the newspapers. He was listened to without applause, as he says, tho" the newspaper is more obliging and gives him a good many cheers. The next two days the voting took place, and what a pleasant short affair it is now to what it used to be. There was some rioting and some who voted for Davenport had all their windows broke....
Charles Langton and Charlotte are still with us. He has offered himself for a visit at Lord Craven's and Charlotte will stay here the while. It is very nice of him not getting impatient to be at home again. We are all very fond of him. His manners to Mamma are quite charming, so playful and attentive. He has not a spark of the natural enmity that most people have for their mothers-in-law. Mamma enjoyed her little trip to see their living very much. The country about Onibury1 is very pretty, and the poor people well off and a very small parish.
As to her husband's going into Parliament Bessy wrote to Jessie Sismondi (22 Dec. 1832), that she is not only gratified at seeing his character rated as it deserves, but that she cannot help thinking it will give their children a lift in point of station, "a worldly feeling I must confess, but one I find myself not able to contend with." In the same letter she speaks of her listlessness and languor making it painful for her to write; and it is evident now that her health had seriously failed. In March, 1833, she promises Jessie not to be so long again without writing, and speaks of lying awake a prey to sorrowful musings. But she mentions her enjoyment of her first grandchild, Godfrey (the son of Frank), and how she is continually finding new beauties in his "little snub face." The letter ends: "You are par excellence the best beloved of all the sisterhood, and what is more you are not envied on that account."
1 Charles Langton's living to which he had just been appointed, between Church Stretton and Ludlow.
About this time my mother received four o five proposals of marriage, after a girlhood passed entirely without any love affair. She said to me once "we got quite weary of it," and then described how one of the rejected, a neighbouring curate, walked Elizabeth round and round the Pool, half crying, and asking what Emma found to object to in him.
In the spring Bessy and her daughters paid long visits to her married children, Charlotte still at Ripley, and Hensleigh at Clapham. Seeing both her children so happy seems to have soothed her anxious mind. She also visited other relations settled in or near London. Whilst staying at Lady Gifford's, she had a fall, followed by a serious illness. This must have been a seizure of an epileptic nature, for, from now onwards until her death in 1846, she suffered from attacks of this malady. In this fall she broke some bone, and was never able to walk again. These thirteen long years of helplessness are sad to think of, but the anxieties which had weighed on her quite left her, and the brightness and wonderful sweetness of her nature made it a pleasure to be with her, especially to Elizabeth. My mother felt more and more, as time went on, the sadness of her increasingly impaired mind.
Emma Wedgwood to her aunt Madame Sismondi.
Aug. 5, 1833.
It is such a pleasure to send you such a good account, for I am sure nobody will feel more (or so much) joy than you at my dear Mamma's recovery. We feel impatient to be able to see the time when we can return home, but we must not think of it yet, and it is very lucky Mamma does not feel at all impatient to move. Fanny and Hensleigh have been coming constantly, and she is the nicest nurse possible, and endeared herself very much to us by her affectionate feelings for Mamma and joy at her recovery. Papa is not able to come as often as he wishes, as he is on a Liverpool Committee and the Slavery Bill in the evenings; so he is only able to come on Saturdays and stay till Monday.
Harriet [Gifford] and I went to the Ventilator to hear O'Connell's quarrel with the Reporters, whom he accuses of reporting his speeches falsely, whereupon they say now they will not report a word more of his; so now he declares they shall not report at all, and he had the gallery cleared of all the strangers and the reporters amongst them yesterday. It was a most foolish passionate thing to do as the Reporters are sure to gain the day in the end.
Aunt Emma is in much better heart about Isabella now than she was at the beginning of the holidays, but she is entirely dissatisfied with the school. It is a pity Aunt Emma is so easily cast down about her, as girls are sure to turn out well, and high spirits and troublesomeness seems to be I.'s faults, which are sure to mend.
Emma Wedgwood to her aunt Madame Sismondi.
MAER, Thursday [10 Oct. 1833].
MY DEAREST AUNT JESSIE,
... Papa and Eliz. came home on Tuesday after spending a week at Onibury. They took a walk every morning though they had very middling weather to see the pretty country in. Mr Langton used to be rather afraid of Papa, but I think he has quite got over that, and they talked away together very well, Eliz. says. I think he is never quite at his ease when any of our men are there, at least he is not near so merry as when there is nobody by but Mamma, or one of us. Papa has persuaded them to come here for all the winter months, as though this is not a very warm house, it is much warmer than theirs. He was going to have a curate any how for the winter, so he may just as well come here, and it will be very pleasant for us having them for so long a visit. I was there the week before with aunt Sarah, and saw a good many of their neighbours. Charlotte was rather unhappy at the outside of her house being so untidy when some smart people called, but Charles takes everything easy and Charlotte has a decided turn against scrattling, so that their tidying goes on at a very slow pace, and as they are to leave the place, they have no inclination to do much. Susan Darwin says they had much better have her for a week to set them to rights, and I am sure she would do more than C. in a month.
The other day Miss Martineau1 dined at Clapham with Mrs Marsh, and she made Fanny feel very awkward by saying, "I was much distressed to hear from several quarters that you were disgusted at my conversation some time ago." I don't know what answer Fanny made, but it was true that we were all rather shocked at some of her opinions on matrimony, and we had been talking about it to Mrs Marsh, and I have no doubt that was the way it came round to her in some of their arguments on that subject. Miss M. took such a fancy to Fanny that I am sorry she found out she had not pleased her, and it showed great good nature her mentioning it in that open way to her. We were all rather contrite at having said anything about her opinions to Mrs Marsh and Dr Holland; and it was partly our fault, as we drove her on to say that she thought marriage ought to be dissoluble for any cause however slight. It is a pity her being so open, as it will excite a great prejudice against her and make people consider her, though very unjustly, as if she was not a moral person. She is so happy, good-humoured and conceited that she will not much mind what people say of her. I scorn to spin out a letter, so I will wish you good-bye, my dearest.
The following letter relates to the proposed resignation by Hensleigh of his Police Magistracy, on account of his scruples with regard to administering oaths. He put off the final step till 1837.
1 Harriet Martineau (at this time thirty-one years old), was becoming a literary lion through the great success of her Political Economical stories.
Josiah Wedgwood to Monsieur and Madame Sismondi.
MAER, Dec. 21, 1833.
MY DEAR JESSIE AND SISMONDI,
I received your affectionate and most gratifying letter only last night, and I must not lose a day to send you my cordial thanks for it. You will have heard that Hensleigh did not send in his resignation and that, for the present at least, he does not intend to do it. The resolution was most hasty and rash, and I don't pretend either to justify or account for it, but I conceive that the overwhelming interest that he has in retaining his office had the effect which would be natural with some minds, that it alarmed him and made him distrust all the suggestions of his understanding in favour of retaining his post, that he was, in short, fascinated, and ended the struggle like the little bird who jumps into the open mouth of the glaring snake. Having now got over the first impression, I am in hopes that the arguments for retaining his office will have their due weight with him, and especially as his mind is now turned to exertion for the removal of unnecessary oaths, in which he must see that his situation as an acting magistrate will give him a weight which would be lost by giving up his office. If after taking sufficient time to restore the equilibrium of his mind, after giving the subject ample and deliberate consideration, taking all means of informing himself and profiting by the learning and judgment of others, he should form a solid conviction that administration of oaths by a Magistrate is forbidden by the gospel, there can be no doubt that it will be his duty to resign; and however great may be one's concern one cannot blame him, though even then he cannot expect to be supported by much of the sympathy, respect, and admiration, which are given to great sacrifices for objects which all men feel to interest human nature.
Your kind solicitude induces me to say of myself that I am quite well, and I suppose even my looks are better than on the occasion when they created Jessie's compassion. I was rather surprised at Jessie's pity for my lot in life, having always thought myself a fortunate man. It is true I have suffered some losses in which my affections were much concerned, and some misfortunes; the chief of which, my dear Bessy's state, is lightened and almost removed by the gentleness, sweetness, and cheerfulness with which she bears her lot, and with which her delightful nature shines out to the last.... Our whole family are now assembled, except Hensleigh, all well; and I often think that if they have all taken the quiet path of life, they have none of them made us ashamed or sorry. Of some of them I might say much more without your dissent.
Believe me, my dear brother and sister,
Affectionately yours,
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.
William Clifford, of Perristone in Herefordshire, will no doubt be remembered in the letters of 1815, and also of 1818, when the Wedgwood family were in Paris. Two orphan nieces now lived with him, and the following letters were written whilst he was on the Continent, where, as he wrote to Mrs Wedgwood, "it is thought proper that I should go to complete my young ladies. I suppose Paris is the place, and once in motion, my inertness is not likely soon to stop. I hate the thoughts of it, and shall contrast it all bitterly with our merry days there. My first look out shall be for Aglaë1 who I dare say after your excellent lecture has turned out incomparable. You talk of growing old, but you will never know anything about the matter—for myself, I feel older than anybody ever was before, and the everlasting hills themselves are quite as fit to move."
1 Mrs Wedgwood's naughty maid, when they were in Paris in 1818.
From William Clifford to Madame Sismondi.
[PARIS, July, 1833].
MY DEAR MADAM,
I have just this moment got the most cordial letter ever written, even from the Principality. But it was not very logical, for I do love you very much yet I won't drive straight to your most hospitable house with my tribe, but I will give you every moment of my time at the risk of making poor M. Sismondi ill, to see how I spend my day, but you shall hide it from him as much as you can, or persuade him I am doing something all the while. I know he will do his best to like me for your sake, and I will like him for his own very sincerely, though he was in a cruel hurry to part us all when we were once together again. You know I love the longest letter and read it over and over again. I began two or three to you about Christmas time, wishing you a merry Christmas. Then I thought spring might draw you to Paris. Thank you for all you say of my dear nephew. I can promise he is the better liked, the more he is known, and my nieces too are very well in their way, but I am pretty well worn out and very much tired of it all—and it is all very much tired of me.
Still very faithfully yours, WILLIAM CLIFFORD.
Now I have had one letter from you, I long for another. Do.
William Clifford to Madame Sismondi.
GENOA, October, 1833.
... A letter from my dear Miss Fanny [Allen] got here at last, and she is on the whole reconciled to Mrs Wedgwood's state as better than she expected—particularly in the main point—"her memory quite good, the same truth of observation, the same gentleness and kindness of character," and "a cheerfulness that so peculiarly belonged to her about her still. She suffers little or no pain." All this you know already, and is great comfort, but they seem to have little hope of her getting better than she is. It is happy for Mrs Langton that she is married.
Thank you for all you say of my girls, but you do not know much about them. All fine you say of me is likely to be true, for you have known me off and on 36 years, but there is no reason I should triumph over M. Sismondi. On the contrary, tell him, I am his obliged and faithful servant, W. CLIFFORD.
In the journal Baroness Bunsen wrote for her mother, Mrs Waddington, there is the following mention of Mr Clifford during his stay in Rome, where he spent the winter 1833-4:
Dec. 4, 1833. In the evening, if we are at home and have not too many visitors, I finish up my sketches. For this I had a bit of praise from Mr Clifford which greatly pleased me. The day after he had seen me thus employed he said, "How I like that making the most of odd times! it is what everybody ought to do, and what I never do! and thus I have done nothing, and learnt nothing in my life." Mr Clifford's being here is a great pleasure to us: he is really a delightful person, entering into everything and enjoying everything like a child.1
1 Life and Letters of Frances, Baroness Bunsen, vol. i., p. 404.
William Clifford to Madame Sismondi.
[ROME], May 4th [1834].
... My two nieces have had anything but a pleasant winter. Emily had not been three days in Rome before she caught small-pox. The effects of it lasted till we were about departure, and then by way of finale she caught scarlet fever, but now she is got pretty well and ready to catch something else. This threw us sadly out of the great occupation of society. You may suppose we were not very popular, having nothing to give people but contagion. But we did not much care for them, not having M. Sis. to fight for us. Ld. and Ly. James Hay were very civil and we fancied them much, but they were very much occupied so we did not often meet. The girl is just what you say, so sunny and cheerful, and certainly made after the old receipt of making your hay when the sun shines. They are gone and everybody else also. We are always the survivors. Ly. Davy is on the brink of departure. I have never yet told her of your kindness to cows and keeping a neighbour by way of company to your own, which I hope will atone for your cruelty to horses. Miss Mackenzie to say the truth is uncommonly agreeable, and makes me waste a great deal of time in scolding her horrid uncomfortable ways. Your family are good for nothing about writing, so I know none of their adventures. I was at a wedding yesterday (Palazzo Cafferalli), which brought many a tear to my eye, foolish enough in this world of chance and change. Meanwhile let those that remain in it try to like and cherish one another, and write soon. Direct to Perristone near Ross, where we mean to return, slowly, slowly. I have given all my hurry to my nephew, which he calls dispatch, and will run as unmercifully as you would have done poor Lady Davy's pair of horses. And do tell me a great deal of news—I won't begin again, so good-bye.
Madame Sismondi to her niece Emma Wedgwood.
CHÊNE, July 29, 1834.
... We found all well on our return last Wednesday, and I thank Heaven no ill news from England in the many letters that lay waiting for me on the tables, and which I opened with a beating heart. I so enjoyed the first part of our tour; all the little circumstances and incidents were always so much in our favour that I superstitiously began to fear some ill luck at the end. At Vevay I met poor Mrs Marcet for the first time since her loss.1 She was overcome almost to fainting at first, but attributed it to heat and fatigue, said she would lie down and return to us in half-an-hour, which she did, talking on indifferent subjects and no allusion was made on either side to what, it was but too visible, both our hearts were full of. She intended to return with us in the steamboat the next day, but when the morning came she had not courage. I am nearly sure it was because we were in the boat—she would suffer less with strangers.
1 The death of her husband.
We, that is Sismondi and I and our portmanteau, left Schinznach on the 9th of this month in a nice little onehorse cabriolet, that stole softly and quietly over the ground, and quick too, directing our course north-eastward. We saw the baths of Baden, Zurich, ... Constance, St Gall, the pretty Lake of Wallenstadt, where I read your name with your father's in the inn book which vividly brought back the time you so sweetly alluded to, my Emma, which can never return for either of us—but whatever returns as before? It is our wisdom to separate and treasure up only those remembrances that soothe.... We saw Glarus,... Lucerne, Berne, Fribourg, and Vevay—this took us exactly a fortnight, and the expense as nearly as possible to a Napoleon a day each, and travel as economically in Switzerland as you please you cannot spend less. At Constance we spent a day with the Queen Hortense,1 and it was the most interesting of our journey. She is become fat, and does not look as if she had ever been handsome, but she has a very pleasing expression of sweet temper and great kindness in manner. We arrived about 2 o'clock and did not leave till 8, and the whole six hours were passed in causerie, with the exception of a dinner of one course quickly despatched, and I found it much too short for all she had to tell and shew us. I felt much as if I was playing at Kings and Queens, in addressing her as "Majesty," but a better feeling than courtesy forbids us take away the title from the unprosperous unless they have themselves the good sense to drop it. She speaks of all her wrongs without the least resentment, with a philosophic calmness that would indicate a higher understanding than I suspect she possesses, but it is only suspicion, for she might be very clever for anything I know to the contrary. She talked very openly of her past life, regretted she had not been earlier aware of the importance and of the extraordinariness, please to let the word pass—of it, that she might have taken daily notes of it.
1 Ex-Queen of Holland, daughter of Beauharnais and the Empress Josephine and mother of Louis Napoleon (afterwards Emperor), now a youth of twenty-five. She was living apart from her husband.
It seemed to her at the time the natural course of life, and she passed through heedlessly. She read us part of her journal or memoir that had reference to her mother's divorce. It evinced the sternness of purpose that is always given to Buonaparte, but it shewed also tenderness and strength of affection in the bitter tears even to sobs which he sometimes gave way to in carrying it through. She shewed us in her cabinet a cast of Buonaparte taken after his death. It looked affecting from an expression of deep yet quiet suffering. Near this cast she had preserved the portrait of his second wife and child, on which his dying eyes were fixed, and which always hung at St Helena before his little camp bed. Over these was hung the Cashmere sash he wore at the battle of the Pyramids, blackened with gunpowder. He had given it to her to wrap round her head one day that she had taken cold. She shewed us also the scapulaire of Charlemagne; it was taken from his tomb at Aix-la-Chapelle and given by the town to her mother when she visited it as Empress. There was in it a bit of the true cross enchased in crystal as big as a turkey egg, set in jewels, and a bit of gold chain that fastened it round his neck. She had several interesting portraits, and is herself no contemptible artist. She takes strong likenesses and finishes them very prettily. Her Chateau of Ehrenberg is beautifully situated on the steep side of a mountain covered with the richest vegetation, the most magnificent oak and walnut trees, looking down directly into the Lake of Constance; it is furnished as the most elegant and most comfortable boudoir of Paris would be. It was delicious to take shelter in it from the scorching sun. She has two dames d'honneur, an Italian physician, and a French artist living with her besides her son the Prince Louis. She told us she believed she would come this winter to Geneva, for the sake of making her son live in a way more consonant to his age than with her at Constance. She gave us a book she has just published, and that I am sure would interest you very much—Memoirs of her son's escape from Italy after the last Revolution, and after her eldest son's death.
I have just received my dear Mackintosh's History of the Revolution, and your letter has lain by in consequence. I cannot read it with quiet nerves. The Memoir1 prefixed does not so sorely vex me as it does Fanny [Allen], tho" done by no friendly hand. There is no malignity, which I feared, and he has quoted so largely and so judiciously from Mackintosh's early writing and late speeches, that it must raise M. in the opinion of everyone who reads; and then when M. speaks so well of himself what signifies the opinion and judgment of the foolish writer? It can do him no harm. This should be a warning to Robert not to cut out anything but what is absolutely necessary of his father's writing, whether journal or letters. I am rather afraid of Robert's over-delicacy of home subjects; yet those will shew M. in the brightest light, and they are those after all that make known the true character....
1 A fragment of a History of the Revolution in 1688 was published after Mackintosh's death, with a memoir prefixed by a Mr Wallace.
