Thumbkin, of fairy celebrity, used to mark his way by flinging crumbs of
bread and scattering stones as he went along; and in like manner authors
trace the course of their life's peregrinations by the pamphlets and
articles they cast down as they go. Sometimes they throw stones,
sometimes they throw bread. In '92 and '93 Mrs. Barbauld must have been
occupied with party polemics and with the political miseries of the
time. A pamphlet on Gilbert Wakefield's views, and another on 'Sins
of the Government and Sins of the People,' show in what direction her
thoughts were bent. Then came a period of comparative calm again and of
literary work and interest. She seems to have turned to Akenside and
Collins, and each had an essay to himself. These were followed by
certain selections from the _Spectator_, _Tatler_, &c., preceded by one
of those admirable essays for which she is really remarkable. She also
published a memoir of Richardson prefixed to his correspondence. Sir
James Mackintosh, writing at a later and sadder time of her life, says
of her observations on the moral of Clarissa that they are as fine a
piece of mitigated and rational stoicism as our language can boast of.
In 1802 another congregation seems to have made signs from Stoke
Newington, and Mrs. Barbauld persuaded her husband to leave his flock at
Hampstead and to buy a house near her brother's at Stoke Newington. This
was her last migration, and here she remained until her death in 1825.
One of her letters to Mrs. Kenrick gives a description of what might
have been a happy home:--'We have a pretty little back parlour that
looks into our little spot of a garden,' she says, 'and catches every
gleam of sunshine. We have pulled down the ivy, except what covers the
coach-house We have planted a vine and a passion-flower, with abundance
of jessamine against the window, and we have scattered roses and
honeysuckle all over the garden. You may smile at me for parading so
over my house and domains.' In May she writes a pleasant letter, in good
spirits, comparing her correspondence with her friend to the flower of
an aloe, which sleeps for a hundred years, and on a sudden pushes out
when least expected. 'But take notice, the life is in the aloe all the
while, and sorry should I be if the life were not in our friendship all
the while, though it so rarely diffuses itself over a sheet of paper.'
She seems to have been no less sociable and friendly at Stoke Newington
than at Hampstead. People used to come up to see her from London. Her
letters, quiet and intimate as they are, give glimpses of most of the
literary people of the day, not in memoirs then, but alive and drinking
tea at one another's houses, or walking all the way to Stoke Newington
to pay their respects to the old lady.
Charles Lamb used to talk of his two _bald_ authoresses, Mrs. Barbauld
being one and Mrs. Inchbald being the other. Crabb Robinson and Rogers
were two faithful links with the outer world. 'Crabb Robinson corresponds
with Madame de Staël, is quite intimate,' she writes, 'has received
I don't know how many letters,' she adds, not without some slight
amusement. Miss Lucy Aikin tells a pretty story of Scott meeting Mrs.
Barbauld at dinner, and telling her that it was to her that he owed his
poetic gift. Some translations of Bürger by Mr. Taylor, of Norwich,
which she had read out at Edinburgh, had struck him so much that they
had determined him to try his own powers in that line.
She often had inmates under her roof. One of them was a beautiful and
charming young girl, the daughter of Mrs. Fletcher, of Edinburgh, whose
early death is recorded in her mother's life. Besides company at home,
Mrs. Barbauld went to visit her friends from time to time--the Estlins
at Bristol, the Edgeworths, whose acquaintance Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld
made about this time, and who seem to have been invaluable friends,
bringing as they did a bright new element of interest and cheerful
friendship into her sad and dimming life. A man must have extraordinarily
good spirits to embark upon four matrimonial ventures as Mr. Edgeworth
did; and as for Miss Edgeworth, appreciative, effusive, and warm-hearted,
she seems to have more than returned Mrs. Barbauld's sympathy.
Miss Lucy Aikin, Dr. Aikin's daughter, was now also making her own mark
in the literary world, and had inherited the bright intelligence and
interest for which her family was so remarkable. Much of Miss Aikin's
work is more sustained than her aunt's desultory productions, but it
lacks that touch of nature which has preserved Mrs. Barbauld's memory
where more important people are forgotten.
Our authoress seems to have had a natural affection for sister
authoresses. Hannah More and Mrs. Montague were both her friends, so
were Madame d'Arblay and Mrs. Chapone in a different degree; she must
have known Mrs. Opie; she loved Joanna Baillie. The latter is described
by her as the young lady at Hampstead who came to Mr. Barbauld's meeting
with as demure a face as if she had never written a line. And Miss Aikin,
in her memoirs, describes in Johnsonian language how the two Miss
Baillies came to call one morning upon Mrs. Barbauld:--'My aunt
immediately introduced the topic of the anonymous tragedies, and
gave utterance to her admiration with the generous delight in the
manifestation of kindred genius which distinguished her.' But it seems
that Miss Baillie sat, nothing moved, and did not betray herself. Mrs.
Barbauld herself gives a pretty description of the sisters in their
home, in that old house on Windmill Hill, which stands untouched, with
its green windows looking out upon so much of sky and heath and sun,
with the wainscoted parlours where Walter Scott used to come, and the
low wooden staircase leading to the old rooms above. It is in one of her
letters to Mrs. Kenrick that Mrs. Barbauld gives a pleasant glimpse of
the poetess Walter Scott admired. 'I have not been abroad since I was at
Norwich, except a day or two at Hampstead with the Miss Baillies. One
should be, as I was, beneath their roof to know all their merit. Their
house is one of the best ordered I know. They have all manner of
attentions for their friends, and not only Miss B., but Joanna, is as
clever in furnishing a room or in arranging a party as in writing plays,
of which, by the way, she has a volume ready for the press, but she will
not give it to the public till next winter. The subject is to be the
passion of fear. I do not know what sort of a hero that passion can
afford!' Fear was, indeed, a passion alien to her nature, and she did
not know the meaning of the word.
Mrs. Barbauld's description of Hannah More and her sisters living on
their special hill-top was written after Mr. Barbauld's death, and
thirty years after Miss More's verses which are quoted by Mrs. Ellis in
her excellent memoir of Mrs. Barbauld:--
Nor, Barbauld, shall my glowing heart refuse
A tribute to thy virtues or thy muse;
This humble merit shall at least be mine,
The poet's chaplet for thy brows to twine;
My verse thy talents to the world shall teach,
And praise the graces it despairs to reach.
Then, after philosophically questioning the power of genius to confer
true happiness, she concludes:--
Can all the boasted powers of wit and song
Of life one pang remove, one hour prolong?
Fallacious hope which daily truths deride--
For you, alas! have wept and Garrick died.
Meanwhile, whatever genius might not be able to achieve, the five Miss
Mores had been living on peacefully together in the very comfortable
cottage which had been raised and thatched by the poetess's earnings.
'Barley Wood is equally the seat of taste and hospitality,' says Mrs.
Barbauld to a friend.
'Nothing could be more friendly than their reception,' she writes to her
brother, 'and nothing more charming than their situation. An extensive
view over the Mendip Hills is in front of their house, with a pretty
view of Wrington. Their home--cottage, because it is thatched--stands on
the declivity of a rising ground, which they have planted and made quite
a little paradise. The five sisters, all good old maids, have lived
together these fifty years. Hannah More is a good deal broken, but
possesses fully her powers of conversation, and her vivacity. We
exchanged riddles like the wise men of old; I was given to understand
she was writing something.'
There is another allusion to Mrs. Hannah More in a sensible letter from
Mrs. Barbauld, written to Miss Edgeworth about this time, declining to
join in an alarming enterprise suggested by the vivacious Mr. Edgeworth,
'a _Feminiad_, a literary paper to be entirely contributed to by ladies,
and where all articles are to be accepted.' 'There is no bond of union,'
Mrs. Barbauld says, 'among literary women any more than among literary
men; different sentiments and connections separate them much more than
the joint interest of their sex would unite them. Mrs. Hannah More would
not write along with you or me, and we should possibly hesitate at
joining Miss Hays or--if she were living--Mrs. Godwin.' Then she
suggests the names of Miss Baillie, Mrs. Opie, her own niece Miss Lucy
Aikin, and Mr. S. Rogers, who would not, she thinks, be averse to
joining the scheme.