Soon after the marriage, there had been some thought of a college for
young ladies, of which Mrs. Barbauld was to be the principal; but she
shrank from the idea, and in a letter to Mrs. Montagu she objects to
the scheme of higher education for women away from their natural homes.
'I should have little hope of cultivating a love of knowledge in a young
lady of fifteen who came to me ignorant and uncultivated. It is too late
then to begin to learn. The empire of the passions is coming on. Those
attachments begin to be formed which influence the happiness of future
life. The care of a mother alone can give suitable attention to this
important period.' It is true that the rigidness of her own home had not
prevented her from making a hasty and unsuitable marriage. But it is not
this which is weighing on her mind. 'Perhaps you may think,' she says,
'that having myself stepped out of the bounds of female reserve in
becoming an author, it is with an ill grace that I offer these
statements.'
Her arguments seem to have been thought conclusive in those days, and
the young ladies' college was finally transmuted into a school for
little boys at Palgrave, in Norfolk, and thither the worthy couple
transported themselves.
One of the letters to Miss Belsham is thus dated:--'_The 14th of July,
in the village of Palgrave (the pleasantest village in all England), at
ten o'clock, all alone in my great parlour, Mr. Barbauld being studying
a sermon, do I begin a letter to my dear Betsy._'
When she first married, and travelled into Norfolk to keep school at
Palgrave, nothing could have seemed more tranquil, more contented, more
matter-of-fact than her life as it appears from her letters. Dreams, and
fancies, and gay illusions and excitements have made way for the
somewhat disappointing realisation of Mr. Barbauld with his neatly
turned and friendly postscripts--a husband, polite, devoted, it is
true, but somewhat disappointing all the same. The next few years
seem like years in a hive--storing honey for the future, and putting
away--industrious, punctual, monotonous. There are children's lessons to
be heard, and school-treats to be devised. She sets them to act plays
and cuts out paper collars for Henry IV.; she always takes a class of
babies entirely her own. (One of these babies, who always loved her,
became Lord Chancellor Denman; most of the others took less brilliant,
but equally respectable places, in after life.) She has also household
matters and correspondence not to be neglected. In the holidays, they
make excursions to Norwich, to London, and revisit their old haunts at
Warrington. In one of her early letters, soon after her marriage, she
describes her return to Warrington.
'Dr. Enfield's face,' she declares, 'is grown half a foot longer since I
saw him, with studying mathematics, and for want of a game of romps; for
there are positively none now at Warrington but grave matrons. I who
have but half assumed the character, was ashamed of the levity of my
behaviour.'
It says well indeed for the natural brightness of the lady's disposition
that with sixteen boarders and a satisfactory usher to look after, she
should be prepared for a game of romps with Dr. Enfield.
On another occasion, in 1777, she takes little Charles away with her.
'He has indeed been an excellent traveller,' she says; 'and though, like
his great ancestor, some natural tears he shed, like him, too, he wiped
them soon. He had a long sound sleep last night, and has been very busy
to-day hunting the puss and the chickens. And now, my dear brother and
sister, let me again thank you for this precious gift, the value of which
we are both more and more sensible of as we become better acquainted with
his sweet disposition and winning manners.'