“The wedding of the farmer’s daughter has taken place. We had hoped it
would have been in the little chapel of our house, but it seems some
special permission was necessary, and they applied for it too late. They
all said, “This is the Constitution. There would have been no difficulty
before!” the lower classes making the poor Constitution the scapegoat for
everything they don’t like. So as it was impossible for us to climb up
to the church where the wedding was to be, we contented ourselves with
seeing the procession pass. It was not a very large one, for, it
requiring some activity to go up, all the old people remained at home.
It is not etiquette for the bride’s mother to go, and no unmarried woman
can go to a wedding—I suppose for fear of its making her discontented
with her own position. The procession stopped at our door, for the bride
to receive our congratulations. She was dressed in a shot silk, with a
yellow handkerchief, and rows of a large gold chain. In the afternoon
they sent to request us to go there. On our arrival we found them
dancing out of doors, and a most melancholy affair it was. All the
bride’s sisters were not to be recognised, they had cried so. The mother
sat in the house, and could not appear. And the bride was sobbing so,
she could hardly stand! The most melancholy spectacle of all to my mind
was, that the bridegroom was decidedly tipsy. He seemed rather affronted
at all the distress. We danced a Monferrino; I with the bridegroom; and
the bride crying the whole time. The company did their utmost to enliven
her by firing pistols, but without success, and at last they began a
series of yells, which reminded me of a set of savages. But even this
delicate method of consolation failed, and the wishing good-bye began.
It was altogether so melancholy an affair that Madame B. dropped a few
tears, and I was very near it, particularly when the poor mother came out
to see the last of her daughter, who was finally dragged off between her
brother and uncle, with a last explosion of pistols. As she lives quite
near, makes an excellent match, and is one of nine children, it really
was a most desirable marriage, in spite of all the show of distress.
Albert was so discomfited by it, that he forgot to kiss the bride as he
had intended to do, and therefore went to call upon her yesterday, and
found her very smiling in her new house, and supplied the omission. The
cook came home from the wedding, declaring she was cured of any wish to
marry—but I would not recommend any man to act upon that threat and make
her an offer. In a couple of days we had some rolls of the bride’s first
baking, which they call Madonnas. The musicians, it seems, were in the
same state as the bridegroom, for, in escorting her home, they all fell
down in the mud. My wrath against the bridegroom is somewhat calmed by
finding that it is considered bad luck if he does not get tipsy at his
wedding.”
* * * * *
Those readers of Miss Procter’s poems who should suppose from their tone
that her mind was of a gloomy or despondent cast, would be curiously
mistaken. She was exceedingly humorous, and had a great delight in
humour. Cheerfulness was habitual with her, she was very ready at a
sally or a reply, and in her laugh (as I remember well) there was an
unusual vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery. She was perfectly
unconstrained and unaffected: as modestly silent about her productions,
as she was generous with their pecuniary results. She was a friend who
inspired the strongest attachments; she was a finely sympathetic woman,
with a great accordant heart and a sterling noble nature. No claim can
be set up for her, thank God, to the possession of any of the
conventional poetical qualities. She never by any means held the opinion
that she was among the greatest of human beings; she never suspected the
existence of a conspiracy on the part of mankind against her; she never
recognised in her best friends, her worst enemies; she never cultivated
the luxury of being misunderstood and unappreciated; she would far rather
have died without seeing a line of her composition in print, than that I
should have maundered about her, here, as “the Poet”, or “the Poetess”.
With the recollection of Miss Procter as a mere child and as a woman,
fresh upon me, it is natural that I should linger on my way to the close
of this brief record, avoiding its end. But, even as the close came upon
her, so must it come here.
Always impelled by an intense conviction that her life must not be
dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her favourite pursuits must be
balanced by action in the real world around her, she was indefatigable in
her endeavours to do some good. Naturally enthusiastic, and
conscientiously impressed with a deep sense of her Christian duty to her
neighbour, she devoted herself to a variety of benevolent objects. Now,
it was the visitation of the sick, that had possession of her; now, it
was the sheltering of the houseless; now, it was the elementary teaching
of the densely ignorant; now, it was the raising up of those who had
wandered and got trodden under foot; now, it was the wider employment of
her own sex in the general business of life; now, it was all these things
at once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathise and eager to relieve,
she wrought at such designs with a flushed earnestness that disregarded
season, weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under such a hurry of
the spirits, and such incessant occupation, the strongest constitution
will commonly go down. Hers, neither of the strongest nor the weakest,
yielded to the burden, and began to sink.
To have saved her life, then, by taking action on the warning that shone
in her eyes and sounded in her voice, would have been impossible, without
changing her nature. As long as the power of moving about in the old way
was left to her, she must exercise it, or be killed by the restraint.
And so the time came when she could move about no longer, and took to her
bed.
All the restlessness gone then, and all the sweet patience of her natural
disposition purified by the resignation of her soul, she lay upon her bed
through the whole round of changes of the seasons. She lay upon her bed
through fifteen months. In all that time, her old cheerfulness never
quitted her. In all that time, not an impatient or a querulous minute
can be remembered.
At length, at midnight on the second of February, 1864, she turned down a
leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it up.
The ministering hand that had copied the verses into the tiny album was
soon around her neck, and she quietly asked, as the clock was on the
stroke of one:
“Do you think I am dying, mamma?”
“I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear!”
“Send for my sister. My feet are so cold. Lift me up?”
Her sister entering as they raised her, she said: “It has come at last!”
And with a bright and happy smile, looked upward, and departed.
Well had she written:
Why shouldst thou fear the beautiful angel, Death,
Who waits thee at the portals of the skies,
Ready to kiss away thy struggling breath,
Ready with gentle hand to close thine eyes?
Oh what were life, if life were all? Thine eyes
Are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see
Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies,
And Death, thy friend, will give them all to thee.
CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND
EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION TO “RELIGIOUS OPINIONS” BY THE LATE REVEREND
CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND
MR. CHAUNCEY HARE TOWNSHEND died in London, on the 25th of February 1868.
His will contained the following passage:—
“I appoint my friend Charles Dickens, of Gad’s Hill Place, in the
County of Kent, Esquire, my literary executor; and beg of him to
publish without alteration as much of my notes and reflections as may
make known my opinions on religious matters, they being such as I
verily believe would be conducive to the happiness of mankind.”
In pursuance of the foregoing injunction, the Literary Executor so
appointed (not previously aware that the publication of any Religious
Opinions would be enjoined upon him), applied himself to the examination
of the numerous papers left by his deceased friend. Some of these were
in Lausanne, and some were in London. Considerable delay occurred before
they could be got together, arising out of certain claims preferred, and
formalities insisted on by the authorities of the Canton de Vaud. When
at length the whole of his late friend’s papers passed into the Literary
Executor’s hands, it was found that _Religious Opinions_ were scattered
up and down through a variety of memoranda and note-books, the gradual
accumulation of years and years. Many of the following pages were
carefully transcribed, numbered, connected, and prepared for the press;
but many more were dispersed fragments, originally written in pencil,
afterwards inked over, the intended sequence of which in the writer’s
mind, it was extremely difficult to follow. These again were intermixed
with journals of travel, fragments of poems, critical essays, voluminous
correspondence, and old school-exercises and college themes, having no
kind of connection with them.
To publish such materials “without alteration”, was simply impossible.
But finding everywhere internal evidence that Mr. Townshend’s _Religious
Opinions_ had been constantly meditated and reconsidered with great pains
and sincerity throughout his life, the Literary Executor carefully
compiled them (always in the writer’s exact words), and endeavoured in
piecing them together to avoid needless repetition. He does not doubt
that Mr. Townshend held the clue to a precise plan, which could have
greatly simplified the presentation of these views; and he has devoted
the first section of this volume to Mr. Townshend’s own notes of his
comprehensive intentions. Proofs of the devout spirit in which they were
conceived, and of the sense of responsibility with which he worked at
them, abound through the whole mass of papers. Mr. Townshend’s varied
attainments, delicate tastes, and amiable and gentle nature, caused him
to be beloved through life by the variously distinguished men who were
his compeers at Cambridge long ago. To his Literary Executor he was
always a warmly-attached and sympathetic friend. To the public, he has
been a most generous benefactor, both in his munificent bequest of his
collection of precious stones in the South Kensington Museum, and in the
devotion of the bulk of his property to the education of poor children.