In the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as conductor of the weekly
journal Household Words, a short poem among the proffered contributions,
very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses perpetually
setting through the office of such a periodical, and possessing much more
merit. Its authoress was quite unknown to me. She was one Miss Mary
Berwick, whom I had never heard of; and she was to be addressed by
letter, if addressed at all, at a circulating library in the western
district of London. Through this channel, Miss Berwick was informed that
her poem was accepted, and was invited to send another. She complied,
and became a regular and frequent contributor. Many letters passed
between the journal and Miss Berwick, but Miss Berwick herself was never
seen.
How we came gradually to establish, at the office of Household Words,
that we knew all about Miss Berwick, I have never discovered. But we
settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that she was governess in
a family; that she went to Italy in that capacity, and returned; and that
she had long been in the same family. We really knew nothing whatever of
her, except that she was remarkably business-like, punctual,
self-reliant, and reliable: so I suppose we insensibly invented the rest.
For myself, my mother was not a more real personage to me, than Miss
Berwick the governess became.
This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number, entitled
The Seven Poor Travellers, was sent to press. Happening to be going to
dine that day with an old and dear friend, distinguished in literature as
Barry Cornwall, I took with me an early proof of that number, and
remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table, that it contained a
very pretty poem, written by a certain Miss Berwick. Next day brought me
the disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the mother of its
writer, in its writer's presence; that I had no such correspondent in
existence as Miss Berwick; and that the name had been assumed by Barry
Cornwall's eldest daughter, Miss Adelaide Anne Procter.
The anecdote I have here noted down, besides serving to explain why the
parents of the late Miss Procter have looked to me for these poor words
of remembrance of their lamented child, strikingly illustrates the
honesty, independence, and quiet dignity, of the lady's character. I had
known her when she was very young; I had been honoured with her father's
friendship when I was myself a young aspirant; and she had said at home,
"If I send him, in my own name, verses that he does not honestly like,
either it will be very painful to him to return them, or he will print
them for papa's sake, and not for their own. So I have made up my mind
to take my chance fairly with the unknown volunteers."
Perhaps it requires an editor's experience of the profoundly unreasonable
grounds on which he is often urged to accept unsuitable articles--such as
having been to school with the writer's husband's brother-in-law, or
having lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the writer's wife's nephew,
when that interesting stranger had broken his own--fully to appreciate
the delicacy and the self-respect of this resolution.
Some verses by Miss Procter had been published in the Book of Beauty, ten
years before she became Miss Berwick. With the exception of two poems in
the Cornhill Magazine, two in Good Words, and others in a little book
called A Chaplet of Verses (issued in 1862 for the benefit of a Night
Refuge), her published writings first appeared in Household Words, or All
the Year Round. The present edition contains the whole of her Legends
and Lyrics, and originates in the great favour with which they have been
received by the public.
Miss Procter was born in Bedford Square, London, on the 30th of October,
1825. Her love of poetry was conspicuous at so early an age, that I have
before me a tiny album made of small note-paper, into which her favourite
passages were copied for her by her mother's hand before she herself
could write. It looks as if she had carried it about, as another little
girl might have carried a doll. She soon displayed a remarkable memory,
and great quickness of apprehension. When she was quite a young child,
she learned with facility several of the problems of Euclid. As she grew
older, she acquired the French, Italian, and German languages; became a
clever pianoforte player; and showed a true taste and sentiment in
drawing. But, as soon as she had completely vanquished the difficulties
of any one branch of study, it was her way to lose interest in it, and
pass to another. While her mental resources were being trained, it was
not at all suspected in her family that she had any gift of authorship,
or any ambition to become a writer. Her father had no idea of her having
ever attempted to turn a rhyme, until her first little poem saw the light
in print.
When she attained to womanhood, she had read an extraordinary number of
books, and throughout her life she was always largely adding to the
number. In 1853 she went to Turin and its neighbourhood, on a visit to
her aunt, a Roman Catholic lady. As Miss Procter had herself professed
the Roman Catholic Faith two years before, she entered with the greater
ardour on the study of the Piedmontese dialect, and the observation of
the habits and manners of the peasantry. In the former, she soon became
a proficient. On the latter head, I extract from her familiar letters
written home to England at the time, two pleasant pieces of description.