1834-1843
"Sweete home, where meane estate
In safe assurance, without strife or hate,
Findes all things needfull for contentment meeke."--SPENSER.
"Is there not in the bosoms of the wisest and best some of the
child's heart left to respond to its earliest enchantments?"--C.
LAMB.
"I cannot paint to Memory's eye
The scene, the glance, I dearest love;
Unchanged themselves, in me they die,
Or faint, or false, their shadows prove."--KEBLE.
"Ce sont là les séjours, les sites, les rivages,
Dont mon âme attendrie évoque les images,
Et dont, pendant les nuits, mes songes les plus beaux
Pour enchanter mes yeux composent leurs tableaux."--LAMARTINE.
Maria Leycester had been married to my uncle Augustus Hare in June 1829.
In their every thought and feeling they were united, and all early
associations had combined to fit them more entirely for each other's
companionship. A descendant of one of the oldest families in Cheshire,
Miss Leycester's childhood and youth had been spent almost entirely in
country rectories, but in such rectories as are rarely to be found, and
which prove that the utmost intellectual refinement and an interest in
all that is remarkable and beautiful in this world are not incompatible
with the highest aspirations after a Christian and a heavenly life. Her
father, Oswald Leycester, Rector of Stoke-upon-Terne in Shropshire, was
a finished scholar, had travelled much, and was the most agreeable of
companions. Her only sister, seven years older than herself, was married
when very young to Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley, and afterwards
Bishop of Norwich, well known for the picturesqueness of his imaginative
powers, for his researches in Natural History, and for that sympathy
with all things bright and pleasant which preserved in him the spirit of
youth quite to the close of life. Her most intimate friend, and the
voluntary preceptor of her girlhood, had been the gifted Reginald Heber,
who, before his acceptance of the Bishopric of Calcutta, had lived as
Rector of Hodnet--the poet-rector--within two miles of her home.
One of the happy circle which constantly met at Hodnet Rectory, she had
known Augustus Hare (first-cousin of Mrs. Heber, who was a daughter of
Dean Shipley) since she was eighteen. Later interests and their common
sorrow in Heber's death had thrown them closely together, and it would
scarcely have been possible for two persons to have proved each other's
characters more thoroughly than they had done, before the time of their
marriage, which was not till Maria Leycester was in her thirty-first
year.
Four years of perfect happiness were permitted them--years spent almost
entirely in the quiet of their little rectory in the singularly small
parish of Alton Barnes amid the Wiltshire downs, where the inhabitants,
less than two hundred in number, living close at each other's doors,
around two or three small pastures, grew to regard Augustus Hare and his
wife with the affection of children for their parents. So close was the
tie which united them, that, when the rich family living of
Hurstmonceaux fell vacant on the death of our great-uncle Robert,
Augustus Hare could not bear to leave his little Alton, and implored my
father to persuade his brother Julius to give up his fellowship at
Trinity and to take it instead.
"Having lived but little in the country, and his attention having
been engrossed by other subjects, Augustus Hare was, from education
and habits of life, unacquainted with the character and wants of
the poor. The poverty of their minds, their inability to follow a
train of reasoning, their prejudices and superstitions, were quite
unknown to him. All the usual hindrances to dealing with them, that
are commonly ascribed to a college life, were his in full force.
But his want of experience and knowledge touching the minds and
habits of the poor were overcome by the love he felt towards all
his fellow-creatures, and his sympathy in all their concerns. In
earlier days this Christ-like mind had manifested itself towards
his friends, towards servants, towards all with whom he was brought
in contact. It now taught him to talk to his poor parishioners and
enter into their interests with the feeling of a father and a
friend.... He had the power of throwing himself out of himself into
the interests and feelings of others; nor did he less draw out
their sympathies into his own, and make them sharers in his
pleasures and his concerns. It was not only the condescension of a
superior to those over whom he was placed, it was far more the
mutual interchange of feeling of one who loved to forget the
difference of station to which each was called, and to bring
forward the brotherly union as members of one family in Christ,
children of the same Heavenly Father, in which blessed equality all
distinctions are done away. Often would he ask their counsel in
matters of which he was ignorant, and call upon their sympathy in
his thankful rejoicing. His garden, his hayfield, his house, were
as it were thrown open to them, as he made them partakers of his
enjoyment, or sought for their assistance in his need.... The one
pattern ever before his eyes was his Lord and Master Jesus Christ;
the first question he asked himself, 'What would Jesus Christ have
me to do? What would He have done in my place?'
"Perfect contentedness with what was appointed for him, and deep
thankfulness for all the good things given him, marked his whole
being. In deciding what should be done, or where he should go, or
how he should act, the question of how far it might suit his own
convenience, or be agreeable to his own feelings, was kept entirely
in the background till all other claims were satisfied. It was not
apparently at the dictate of duty and reason that these thoughts
were suppressed and made secondary: it seemed to be the first, the
natural feeling in him, to seek first the things of others and to
do the will of God, and to look at his own interest in the matter
as having comparatively nothing to do with it. And so great a dread
had he of being led to any selfish or interested views, that he
would find consolation in having no family to include in the
consideration--'Had I had children I might have fancied it an
excuse for worldly-mindedness and covetousness.' His children truly
were his fellow-men, those who were partakers of the same flesh and
blood, redeemed by the same Saviour, heirs of the same heavenly
inheritance. For them he was willing to spend and be spent, for
them he was _covetous_ of all the good that might be obtained....
He was never weary in well-doing, never thought he had done enough,
never feared doing too much. Those small things, which by so many
are esteemed as unnecessary, as _not worth while_, these were the
very things he took care not to leave undone. It was not rendering
a service when it came _in_ his way, when it occurred in the
natural course of things that he should do it; it was going _out_
of the way to help others, taking every degree of trouble and
incurring personal inconvenience for the sake of doing good, of
giving pleasure even in slight things, that distinguished his
benevolent activity from the common form of it. The love that dwelt
in him was ready to be poured forth on whomsoever needed it, and
being a free-will offering, it looked for no return, and felt no
obligation conferred."
I have copied these fragments from the portrait which Augustus Hare's
widow drew of his ministerial life,[10] because they afford the best
clue to the way in which that life influenced hers, drawing her away
from earth and setting her affections in heavenly places. And yet,
though in one sense the life of Augustus Hare and his wife at Alton was
one of complete seclusion, in another sense there were few who lived
more for, or who had more real communion with, the scattered members of
their family. Mrs. Stanley and her children, with her brother Mr.
Penrhyn[11] and his wife, were sharers by letter in every trifling
incident which affected their sister's life; and with his favourite
brother Julius, Augustus Hare never slackened his intellectual
intercourse and companionship. But even more than these was Lucy Anne
Stanley,[12] the life-long friend of Maria Hare, till, in the summer of
1833, the tie of sisterhood, which had always existed in feeling, became
a reality, through her marriage with Marcus Hare, the youngest of the
four brothers.
A chill which Augustus Hare caught when he was in Cheshire for his
brother's marriage, was the first cause of his fatal illness. It was
soon after considered necessary that he should spend the winter abroad
with his wife, and it was decided that they should accompany Marcus and
Lucy Hare to Rome. At Genoa the illness of Augustus became alarming, but
he reached Rome, and there he expired on the 14th of February 1834, full
of faith and hope, and comforting those who surrounded him to the last.
My father felt his brother's loss deeply. They had little in common on
many points, yet the close tie of brotherhood, which had existed
between them from early days at Bologna, was such as no difference of
opinion could alter, no time or absence weaken. When Augustus was laid
to rest at the foot of the pyramid of Caius Cestius, my father's most
earnest wish was to comfort his widowed sister-in-law, and in the hope
of arousing an interest which might still give some semblance of an
earthly tie to one who seemed then upon the very borderland of heaven,
he entreated, when I was born in the following month, that she would
become my godmother, promising that she should be permitted to influence
my future in any way she pleased, and wishing that I should be called
Augustus after him she had lost.
I was baptized on the 1st of April in the Villa Strozzi, by Mr. Burgess.
The widow of Augustus held me in her arms, and I received the names of
"Augustus John Cuthbert," the two last from my godfathers (the old Sir
John Paul and Mr. Cuthbert Ellison), who never did anything for me, the
first from my godmother, to whom I owe everything in the world.
[Illustration: Augustus J. C. Hare.