A Book of Sibyls: Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen. Anne Thackeray Ritchie
to Warrington, and 'obtained a private audience of her father and begged his consent to be allowed to make her his wife.' The father answered 'that his daughter was there walking in the garden, and he might go and ask her himself.' 'With what grace the farmer pleaded his cause I know not,' says her biographer and niece. 'Out of all patience at his unwelcome importunities, my aunt ran nimbly up a tree which grew by the garden wall, and let herself down into the lane beyond.'
The next few years must have been perhaps the happiest of Mrs. Barbauld's life. Once when it was nearly over she said to her niece, Mrs. Le Breton, from whose interesting account I have been quoting, that she had never been placed in a situation which really suited her. As one reads her sketches and poems, one is struck by some sense of this detracting influence of which she complains: there is a certain incompleteness and slightness which speaks of intermittent work, of interrupted trains of thought. At the same time there is a natural buoyant quality in much of her writing which seems like a pleasant landscape view seen through the bars of a window. There may be wider prospects, but her eyes are bright, and this peep of nature is undoubtedly delightful.
III.
The letters to Miss Belsham begin somewhere about 1768. The young lady has been paying a visit to Miss Aikin at Warrington, and is interested in everyone and everything belonging to the place. Miss Aikin is no less eager to describe than Miss Belsham to listen, and accordingly a whole stream of characters and details of gossip and descriptions in faded ink come flowing across their pages, together with many expressions of affection and interest. 'My dear Betsy, I love you for discarding the word Miss from your vocabulary,' so the packet begins, and it continues in the same strain of pleasant girlish chatter, alternating with the history of many bygone festivities, and stories of friends, neighbours, of beaux and partners; of the latter genus, and of Miss Aikin's efforts to make herself agreeable, here is a sample:—'I talked to him, smiled upon him, gave him my fan to play with,' says the lively young lady. 'Nothing would do; he was grave as a philosopher. I tried to raise a conversation: "'Twas fine weather for dancing." He agreed to my observation. "We had a tolerable set this time." Neither did he contradict that. Then we were both silent—stupid mortal thought I! but unreasonable as he appeared to the advances that I made him, there was one object in the room, a sparkling object which seemed to attract all his attention, on which he seemed to gaze with transport, and which indeed he hardly took his eyes off the whole time. … The object that I mean was his shoebuckle.'
One could imagine Miss Elizabeth Bennett writing in some such strain to her friend Miss Charlotte Lucas after one of the evenings at Bingley's hospitable mansion. And yet Miss Aikin is more impulsive, more romantic than Elizabeth. 'Wherever you are, fly letter on the wings of the wind,' she cries, 'and tell my dear Betsy what?—only that I love her dearly.'
Miss Nancy Aikin (she seems to have been Nancy in these letters, and to have assumed the more dignified Lætitia upon her marriage) pours out her lively heart, laughs, jokes, interests herself in the sentimental affairs of the whole neighbourhood as well as in her own. Perhaps few young ladies now-a-days would write to their confidantes with the announcement that for some time past a young sprig had been teasing them to have him. This, however, is among Miss Nancy's confidences. She also writes poems and jeux d'esprit, and receives poetry in return from Betsy, who calls herself Camilla, and pays her friend many compliments, for Miss Aikin in her reply quotes the well-known lines:—
| Who for another's brow entwines the bays, |
| And where she well might rival stoops to Praise. |
Miss Aikin by this time has attained to all the dignity of a full-blown authoress, and is publishing a successful book of poems in conjunction with her brother, which little book created much attention at the time. One day the Muse thus apostrophises Betsy: 'Shall we ever see her amongst us again?' says my sister (Mrs. Aikin). My brother (saucy fellow) says, 'I want to see this girl, I think (stroking his chin as he walks backwards and forwards in the room with great gravity). I think we should admire one another.'
'When you come among us,' continues the warm-hearted friend, 'we shall set the bells a-ringing, bid adieu to care and gravity, and sing "O be joyful."' And finally, after some apologies for her remiss correspondence, 'I left my brother writing to you instead of Patty, poor soul. Well, it is a clever thing too, to have a husband to write one's letters for one. If I had one I would be a much better correspondent to you. I would order him to write every week.'
And, indeed, Mrs. Barbauld was as good as her word, and did not forget the resolutions made by Miss Aikin in 1773. In 1774 comes some eventful news: 'I should have written to you sooner had it not been for the uncertainty and suspense in which for a long time I have been involved; and since my lot has been fixed for many busy engagements which have left me few moments of leisure. They hurry me out of my life. It is hardly a month that I have certainly known I should fix on Norfolk, and now next Thursday they say I am to be finally, irrevocably married. Pity me, dear Betsy; for on the day I fancy when you will read this letter, will the event take place which is to make so great an era in my life. I feel depressed, and my courage almost fails me. Yet upon the whole I have the greatest reason to think I shall be happy. I shall possess the entire affection of a worthy man, whom my father and mother now entirely and heartily approve. The people where we are going, though strangers, have behaved with the greatest zeal and affection; and I think we have a fair prospect of being useful and living comfortably in that state of middling life to which I have been accustomed, and which I love.'
And then comes a word which must interest all who have ever cared and felt grateful admiration for the works of one devoted human being and true Christian hero. Speaking of her father's friend, John Howard, she says with an almost audible sigh: 'It was too late, as you say, or I believe I should have been in love with Mr. Howard. Seriously, I looked upon him with that sort of reverence and love which one should have for a guardian angel. God bless him and preserve his health for the health's sake of thousands. And now farewell,' she writes in conclusion: 'I shall write to you no more under this name; but under any name, in every situation, at any distance of time or place, I shall love you equally and be always affectionately yours, tho' not always, A. Aikin.'
Poor lady! The future held, indeed, many a sad and unsuspected hour for her, many a cruel pang, many a dark and heavy season, that must have seemed intolerably weary to one of her sprightly and yet somewhat indolent nature, more easily accepting evil than devising escape from it. But it also held many blessings of constancy, friendship, kindly deeds, and useful doings. She had not devotion to give such as that of the good Howard whom she revered, but the equable help and sympathy for others of an open-minded and kindly woman was hers. Her marriage would seem to have been brought about by a romantic fancy rather than by a tender affection. Mr. Barbauld's mind had been once unhinged; his protestations were passionate and somewhat dramatic. We are told that when she was warned by a friend, she only said, 'But surely, if I throw him over, he will become crazy again;' and from a high-minded sense of pity, she was faithful, and married him against the wish of her brother and parents, and not without some misgivings herself. He was a man perfectly sincere and honourable; but, from his nervous want of equilibrium, subject all his life to frantic outbursts of ill-temper. Nobody ever knew what his wife had to endure in secret; her calm and restrained manner must have effectually hidden the constant anxiety of her life; nor had she children to warm her heart, and brighten up her monotonous existence. Little Charles, of the Reading-book, who is bid to come hither, who counted so nicely, who stroked the pussy cat, and who deserved to listen to the delightful stories he was told, was not her own son but her brother's child. When he was born, she wrote to entreat that he might be given over to her for her own, imploring her brother to spare him to her, in a pretty and pathetic letter. This was a mother yearning for a child, not a schoolmistress asking for a pupil, though perhaps in after times the two were somewhat combined in her. There is a pretty little description of Charles making great progress in 'climbing trees and talking nonsense:' 'I have the honour to tell you that our Charles is the sweetest boy in the world. He is perfectly naturalised in his new situation; and if I should make any blunders in my letter, I must beg you to impute it to his standing by me and chattering all the time.' And how pleasant a record exists of Charles's chatter in that most charming little