In the autumn of 1878, the desire to comfort and amuse one of my kindest
friends during hours of wearing pain and sickness induced me to begin
writing down some of the reminiscences of my life. As almost all those
who shared my earlier interests and affections had passed away, I
fancied at first that it would be impossible to rescue anything like a
connected story from "the great shipwreck of Time." But solitude helps
remembrance; and as I went on opening old letters and journals with the
view of retracing my past life, it seemed to unfold itself to memory,
and I found a wonderful interest in following once more the old track,
with its almost forgotten pleasures and sorrows, though often reminded
of the story of the old man who, when he heard for the first time the
well-known adage, "Hell is paved with good intentions," added promptly,
"Yes, and roofed with lost opportunities."
Many will think mine has been a sad life. But, as A. H. Mackonochie
said, "No doubt our walk through this little world is through much fog
and darkness and many alarms, but it is wonderful, when one looks back,
to see how little the evils of life have been allowed to leave real
marks upon our course, or upon our present state."
And besides this, Time is always apt to paint the long-ago in fresh
colours, making what was nothing less than anguish at the time quite
light and trivial in the retrospect; sweeping over and effacing the
greater number of griefs, joys, and friendships; though ever and anon
picking out some unexpected point as a fixed and lasting landmark. "Le
Temps, vieillard divin, honore et blanchit tout."
Many, doubtless, who read these pages, may themselves recollect, or may
remember having heard others give, a very different impression of the
persons described. But, as the old Italian proverb says, "Every bird
sings its own note," and I only give my own opinion. Pope reminds us
that--
"'Tis with our judgments as our watches--none
Go just alike--yet each believes his own."
And after all, "De mortuis omnia" is perhaps a wholesomer motto than
"Nil nisi bonum," and if people believed it would be acted upon, their
lives would often be different. While one is just, however, one ought to
remember that nothing can be more touching or pathetic than the
helplessness of the dead. "Speak of me as I am," says Othello, "nothing
extenuate, nor set down aught in malice."
Since I have latterly seen more of what is usually called "the
world"--the little world which considers the great world its
satellite--and of the different people who compose it, the later years I
have described will probably be the most interesting to such as care to
read what I have written. I have myself, I think, gradually learnt what
an "immense folio life is, requiring the utmost attention to be read and
understood as it ought to be."[1] But to me, my earlier years will
always seem far the most important, the years throughout which my
dearest mother had a share in every thought and was the object of every
act. To many, my up-bringing will probably appear very odd, and I often
feel myself how unsuited it was to my character, and how little that
character or my own tastes and possible powers were consulted in
considerations of my future. Still, when from middle life one overlooks
one's youth as one would a plain divided into different fields from a
hill-top, when "la vérité s'est fait jour," one can discern the faulty
lines and trace the mistakes which led to them, but one cannot even then
see the difficulties and perplexities which caused inevitable errors of
judgment in those who could not see the end when they were thinking
about the beginning. Therefore, though there is much in the earlier part
of my life which I should wish to rearrange if I could plan it over
again, I am sure that the little which may be good in me is due to the
loving influence which watched over my childhood, whilst my faults are
only my own. In the latter years of her life, my dear adopted mother and
I became constantly more closely united. The long period of sickness and
suffering, which others may have fancied to be trying, only endeared her
to me a thousandfold, and since the sweet eyes closed and the gentle
voice was hushed for ever in November 1870, each solitary year has only
seemed like another page in an unfinished appendix.
I once heard a lady say that "biographies are either lives or stuffed
animals," and there is always a danger of their being only the latter.
But, as Carlyle tells us, "a true delineation of the smallest man and
the scene of his pilgrimage through life is capable of interesting the
greatest man, and human portraits, faithfully drawn, are of all pictures
the welcomest on human walls." It is certainly in proportion as a
biography is human or individual that it can have any lasting interest.
Also, "Those relations are commonly of the most value in which the
writer tells his own story."[2]
I have allowed this story to tell itself when it was possible by means
of contemporary letters and journals, convinced that they at least
express the feeling of the moment to which they narrate, and that they
cannot possibly be biassed by the after-thoughts under the influence of
which most autobiographies are written, and in which "la mémoire se plie
aux fantasies de l'amour propre."
* * * * *
My story is a very long one, and though only, as Sir C. Bowen would have
called it, "a ponderous biography of nobody," is told in great--most
people will say in far too much--detail. But to me it seems as if it
were in the petty details, not in the great results, that the real
interest of every existence lies. I think, also, though it may be
considered a strange thing to say, that the true picture of a whole
life--at least an English life--has never yet been painted, and
certainly all the truth of such a picture must come from its delicate
touches. Then, though most readers of this story will only read parts of
it, they are sure to be different parts.
The book doubtless contains a great deal of _esprit des autres_, for I
have a helpless memory for sentences read or heard long ago, and put
away somewhere in my senses, but not of when or where they were read or
heard.
Many of the persons described were very important to those of their own
time who might have had a _serrement de cœur_ in reading about them.
Therefore, if their contemporaries had been living, much must have
remained unwritten; but, as Sydney Smith said, "We are all dead now."
Still, in looking over my MS., I have always carefully cut out
everything which could hurt the feelings of living persons: and I
believe very little remains which can even ruffle their sensibilities.