'Everybody here asks, "Pray, is Dr. Dodd really to be executed?" as if
we knew the more for having been at Warrington.'
Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld's brother, the father of little Charles and of
Lucy Aikin, whose name is well known in literature, was himself a man of
great parts, industry, and ability, working hard to support his family.
He alternated between medicine and literature all his life. When his
health failed he gave up medicine, and settled at Stoke Newington, and
busied himself with periodic literature; meanwhile, whatever his own
pursuits may have been, he never ceased to take an interest in his
sister's work and to encourage her in every way.
It is noteworthy that few of Mrs. Barbauld's earlier productions
equalled what she wrote at the very end of her life. She seems to have
been one of those who ripen with age, growing wider in spirit with
increasing years. Perhaps, too, she may have been influenced by the
change of manners, the reaction against formalism, which was growing up
as her own days were ending. Prim she may have been in manner, but she
was not a formalist by nature; and even at eighty was ready to learn to
submit to accept the new gospel that Wordsworth and his disciples had
given to the world, and to shake off the stiffness of early training.
It is idle to speculate on what might have been if things had happened
otherwise; if the daily stress of anxiety and perplexity which haunted
her home had been removed--difficulties and anxieties which may well
have absorbed all the spare energy and interest that under happier
circumstances might have added to the treasury of English literature.
But if it were only for one ode written when the distracting cares of
over seventy years were ending, when nothing remained to her but the
essence of a long past, and the inspirations of a still glowing, still
hopeful, and most tender spirit, if it were only for the ode called
'Life,' which has brought a sense of ease and comfort to so many, Mrs.
Barbauld has indeed deserved well of her country-people and should be
held in remembrance by them.
Her literary works are, after all, not very voluminous. She is best
known by her hymns for children and her early lessons, than which
nothing more childlike has ever been devised; and we can agree with her
brother, Dr. Aikin, when he says that it requires true genius to enter
so completely into a child's mind.
After their first volume of verse, the brother and sister had published
a second in prose, called 'Miscellaneous Pieces,' about which there is
an amusing little anecdote in Rogers's 'Memoirs.' Fox met Dr. Aikin at
dinner.
'"I am greatly pleased with your 'Miscellaneous Pieces,'" said Fox.
Aikin bowed. "I particularly admire," continued Fox, "your essay
'Against Inconsistency in our Expectations.'"
'"That," replied Aikin, "is my sister's."
'"I like much," returned Fox, "your essay 'On Monastic Institutions.'"
'"That," answered Aikin, "is also my sister's."
'Fox thought it best to say no more about the book.'
These essays were followed by various of the visions and Eastern pieces
then so much in vogue; also by political verses and pamphlets, which
seemed to have made a great sensation at the time. But Mrs. Barbauld's
turn was on the whole more for domestic than for literary life, although
literary people always seem to have had a great interest for her.
During one Christmas which they spent in London, the worthy couple go
to see Mrs. Siddons; and Mrs. Chapone introduces Mrs. Barbauld to Miss
Burney. 'A very unaffected, modest, sweet, and pleasing young lady,'
says Mrs. Barbauld, who is always kind in her descriptions. Mrs.
Barbauld's one complaint in London is of the fatigue from hairdressers,
and the bewildering hurry of the great city, where she had, notwithstanding
her quiet country life, many ties, and friendships, and acquaintances.
Her poem on 'Corsica' had brought her into some relations with Boswell;
she also knew Goldsmith and Dr. Johnson. Here is her description of the
'Great Bear:'--
'I do not mean that one which shines in the sky over your head; but the
Bear that shines in London--a great rough, surly animal. His Christian
name is Dr. Johnson. 'Tis a singular creature; but if you stroke him he
will not bite, and though he growls sometimes he is not ill-humoured.'
Johnson describes Mrs. Barbauld as suckling fools and chronicling small
beer. There was not much sympathy between the two. Characters such as
Johnson's harmonise best with the enthusiastic and easily influenced.
Mrs. Barbauld did not belong to this class; she trusted to her own
judgment, rarely tried to influence others, and took a matter-of-fact
rather than a passionate view of life. She is as severe to him in her
criticism as he was in his judgment of her: they neither of them did the
other justice. 'A Christian and a man-about-town, a philosopher, and a
bigot acknowledging life to be miserable, and making it more miserable
through fear of death.' So she writes of him, and all this was true; but
how much more was also true of the great and hypochondriacal old man!
Some years afterwards, when she had been reading Boswell's long-expected
'Life of Johnson,' she wrote of the book:--'It is like going to Ranelagh;
you meet all your acquaintances; but it is a base and mean thing to
bring thus every idle word into judgment.' In our own day we too have
our Boswell and our Johnson to arouse discussion and indignation.
'Have you seen Boswell's "Life of Johnson?" He calls it a Flemish
portrait, and so it is--two quartos of a man's conversation and petty
habits. Then the treachery and meanness of watching a man for years
in order to set down every unguarded and idle word he uttered, is
inconceivable. Yet with all this one cannot help reading a good deal
of it.' This is addressed to the faithful Betsy, who was also keeping
school by that time, and assuming brevet rank in consequence.
Mrs. Barbauld might well complain of the fatigue from hairdressers in
London. In one of her letters to her friend she thus describes a lady's
dress of the period:--
'Do you know how to dress yourself in Dublin? If you do not, I will tell
you. Your waist must be the circumference of two oranges, no more. You
must erect a structure on your head gradually ascending to a foot high,
exclusive of feathers, and stretching to a penthouse of most horrible
projection behind, the breadth from wing to wing considerably broader
than your shoulder, and as many different things in your cap as in
Noah's ark. Verily, I never did see such monsters as the heads now in
vogue. I am a monster, too, but a moderate one.'
She must have been glad to get back to her home, to her daily work, to
Charles, climbing his trees and talking his nonsense.
In the winter of 1784 her mother died at Palgrave. It was Christmas
week; the old lady had come travelling four days through the snow in a
postchaise with her maid and her little grandchildren, while her son
rode on horseback. But the cold and the fatigue of the journey, and the
discomfort of the inns, proved too much for Mrs. Aikin, who reached her
daughter's house only to die. Just that time three years before Mrs.
Barbauld had lost her father, whom she dearly loved. There is a striking
letter from the widowed mother to her daughter recording the event. It
is almost Spartan in its calmness, but nevertheless deeply touching. Now
she, too, was at rest, and after Mrs. Aikin's death a cloud of sadness
and depression seems to have fallen upon the household. Mr. Barbauld was
ailing; he was suffering from a nervous irritability which occasionally
quite unfitted him for his work as a schoolmaster. Already his wife must
have had many things to bear, and very much to try her courage and
cheerfulness; and now her health was also failing. It was in 1775 that
they gave up the academy, which, on the whole, had greatly flourished.
It had been established eleven years; they were both of them in need of
rest and change. Nevertheless, it was not without reluctance that they
brought themselves to leave their home at Palgrave. A successor was
found only too quickly for Mrs. Barbauld's wishes; they handed over
their pupils to his care, and went abroad for a year's sunshine and
distraction.