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 book written for him and for the babies of babies
to come! There is a sweet instructive grace in it and appreciation of
childhood which cannot fail to strike those who have to do with children
and with Mrs. Barbauld's books for them: children themselves, those best
critics of all, delight in it.
'Where's Charles?' says a little scholar every morning to the writer of
these few notes.