I draw now to the closing years of my life at Newbridge, after I had published my first book and before my father died. They were happy and peaceful years, though gradually overshadowed by the sense that the long tenure of that beloved home must soon end. It is one of the many perversities of woman’s destiny that she is, not only by hereditary instinct a home-making animal, but is encouraged to the uttermost to centre all her interests in her home; every pursuit which would give her anchorage elsewhere, (always excepting marriage) being more or less under general disapproval. Yet when the young woman takes thoroughly to this natural home-making, when she has, like a plant, sent her roots down into the cellars and her tendrils up into the garrets and every room bears the impress of her personality, when she glories in every good picture on the walls or bit of choice china on the tables and blushes for every stain on the carpets, when, in short, her home is, as it should be, her outer garment, her nest, her shell, fitted to her like that of a murex, then, almost invariably comes to her the order to leave it all, tear herself out of it,—and go to make (if she can) some other home elsewhere. Supposing her to have married early, and that she is spared the late uprooting from her father’s house at his death, she has usually to bear a similar transition when she survives her husband; and in this case often with the failing health and spirits of old age. I do not know how these heartbreaks are to be spared to women of the class of the daughters and wives of country gentlemen or clergymen; but they are hard to bear. Perhaps the most fortunate daughters (harsh as it seems to say so) are those whose fathers die while they are themselves still in full vigour and able to begin a new existence with spirit and make new friends; as was my case. Some of my contemporaries, whose fathers lived till they were fifty, or even older, had a bitterer trial in quitting their homes and were never able to start afresh.

In my last few years at Newbridge my father and I were both cheered by the frequent presence of my dear little niece, Helen, on whom he doted, and towards whom flowed out the tenderness which had scarcely been allowed its free course with his own children. L’Art d’être Grandpère is surely the most beautiful of arts! When all personal pleasures have pretty well died away then begins the reflected pleasure in the fresh, innocent delights of the child; a moonlight of happiness perhaps more sweet and tender than the garish joys of the noontide of life. To me, who had never lived in a house with little children, it brought a whole world of revelations to have this babe and afterwards her little sister, in a nursery under my supervision during their mother’s long illnesses. I understood for the first time all that a child may be in a woman’s life, and how their little hands may pull our heart-strings. My nieces were dear, good, little babes then; they are dear and good women now; the comfort of my age, as they were the darlings of my middle life.

Having received sufficient encouragement from the succès d’estime of my Theory of Intuitive Morals, I proceeded now to write the first of the three books on Practical Morals, with which I designed to complete the work. My volume of Religious Duty, then written, has proved, however, the only one of the series ever published. At a later time I wrote some chapters on Personal and on Social Duty, but was dissatisfied with them, and destroyed the MSS.

As Religious Duty (3rd edition) is still to be had (included by Mr. Fisher Unwin in his late re-issue of my principal works), I need not trouble the reader by any such analysis of it as I have given of the former volume. In writing concerning Religious Duty at the time, I find in a letter of mine to Harriet St. Leger (returned to me when she grew blind), that I spoke of it thus:—

“You see I have, after all, inserted a little preface. I thought it necessary to explain the object of the book, lest it might seem superfluous where it coincides with orthodox teaching, and offensively daring where it diverges from it. Your cousin’s doubt about my Christianity lasting till she reached the end of Intuitive Morals, made me resolve to forestall in this case any such danger of seeming to fight without showing my colours. You see I have now nailed them mast-high. But though I have done this, I cannot say that it has been in any way to make converts to my own creed that I have written this book. I wanted to show those who are already Theists, actually or approximately, that Theism is something far more than they seem commonly to understand. I wanted, too, to show to those who have had their historical faith shaken, but who still cling to it from the belief that without it no real religion is possible, that they may find all which their hearts can need in a faith purely intuitive. Perhaps I ought rather to say that these objects have been before me in working at my book. I suppose in reality the impulse to such an undertaking comes more simply. We think we have found some truths, and we long to develop and communicate them. We do not sit down and say ‘Such and such sort of people want such and such a book. I will try and write it.’”

The plan of this book is simple. After discussing in the first chapter the Canon of Religious Duty, which I define to be “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and soul and strength,”—I discuss, in the next chapter, Religious Offences against that Law,—Blasphemy, Hypocrisy, Perjury, &c. The third chapter deals with Religious Faults (failures of duty) such as Thanklessness, Irreverence, Worldliness, &c. The fourth, which constitutes the main bulk of the book, consists of what are practically six Sermons on Thanksgiving, Adoration, Prayer, Repentance, Faith, and Self-Consecration.

The book has been very much liked by some readers, especially the chapter on Thanksgiving, which I reprinted later in a tiny volume. It is strange in these days of pessimism to read it again. I am glad I wrote it when my heart was unchilled, my sight undimmed, by the frozen fog which has been hanging over us for the last two decades. An incident connected with this chapter touched me deeply. My father in his last illness permitted it to be read to him. Having never before listened to anything I had written, and having, even then, no idea who wrote the book, he expressed pleasure and sympathy with it, especially with a passage in which I speak of the hope of being, in the future life, “young again in all that makes childhood beautiful and holy.” It was a pledge to me of how near our hearts truly were, under apparently the world-wide differences.

My father was now sinking slowly beneath the weight of years and of frequent returns of the malarial fever of India,—in those days called “Ague,”—which he had caught half a century before in the Mahratta wars. I have said something already of his powerful character, his upright, honourable, fearless nature; his strong sense of Duty. Of the lower sort of faults and vices he was absolutely incapable. No one who knew him could imagine him as saying a false or prevaricating word; of driving a hard bargain; of eating or drinking beyond the strictest rules of temperance; least of all, of faithlessness in thought or deed to his wife or her memory. His mistakes and errors, such as they were, arose solely from a fiery temper and a despotic will, nourished rather than checked by his ideas concerning the rights of parents, and husbands, masters and employers; and from his narrow religious creed. Such as he was, every one honoured, some feared, and many loved him.

Before I pass on to detail more of the incidents of my own life, I shall here narrate all that I can recall of his descriptions of the most important occurrence in his career—the battle of Assaye.

In Mr. George Hooper’s delightful Life of Wellington (English Men of Action Series) there is a spirited account of that battle, whereby British supremacy in India was practically secured. Mr. Hooper speaks enthusiastically of the behaviour, in that memorable fight, of the 19th Light Dragoons, and of its “splendid charge,” which, with the “irresistible sweep” of the 78th, proved the “decisive stroke” of the great day. He describes this charge thus:—

... “The piquets, or leading troops on the right were by mistake led off towards Assaye, uncovering the second line, and falling themselves into a deadly converging fire. The Seventy-Fourth followed the piquets into the cannonade, and a great gap was thus made in the array. The enemy’s horse rode up to charge, and so serious was the peril on the right that the Nineteenth Light Dragoons and a native cavalry regiment were obliged to charge at once. Eager for the fray, they galloped up, cheering as they went, and cheered by the wounded; and, riding home, even to the batteries, saved the remnants of the piquets and of the Seventy-Fourth.” (P. 76.)

My father, then a cornet in the regiment, carried the regimental flag of the Nineteenth through that charge, and for the rest of the day; the non-commissioned officer whose duty it was to bear it having been struck dead at the first onset, and my father saving the flag from falling into the hands of the Mahrattas.

The Nineteenth Light Dragoons of that epoch wore a grey uniform, and heavy steel helmets with large red plumes, which caused the Mahrattas to nickname them “The Red Headed Rascals.” On their shoulders were simple epaulettes made of chains of some common white metal, one of which I retrieved from a heap of rubbish fifty years after Assaye, and still wear as a bracelet. The men could scarcely have deserved the name of Light if many of them weighed, as did my father at 18, no less than 18 stone, inclusive of his saddle and accoutrements! The fashion of long hair, tied in “pig tails,” still prevailed; and my father often laughingly boasted that the mass of his fair hair, duly tied with black ribbon, had descended far enough to reach his saddle and to form an efficient protection from sabre cuts on his back and shoulders. Mr. Hooper estimates the total number of the British army at Assaye at 5,000; my father used to speak of it as about 4,500; while the cavalry alone, of the enemy were some 30,000. The infantry were seemingly innumerable, and altogether covered the plain. There was also a considerable force of artillery on Scindias’ side, and, commanding them, was a French officer whose name my father repeatedly mentioned, but which I have unfortunately forgotten.^[12] The handful of English troops had done a full day’s march under an Indian sun before the battle began. When the Nineteenth received orders to charge they had been sitting long on their horses in a position which left them exposed to the ricochet of the shot of the enemy, and the strain on the discipline of the men, as one after another was picked off, had been enormous; not to prevent them from retreating—they had no such idea,—but to stop them from charging without orders. At last the word of command to charge came from Wellesley, and the whole regiment responded with a roar! Then came the fire of death and men and officers fell all around, as it seemed almost every second man. Among the rest, as I have said, the colour-sergeant was struck down, and my father, as was his duty, seized the flag from the poor fellow’s hands as he fell and carried it, waving in front of the regiment up to the guns of the enemy.

In one or other of the repeated charges which the Nineteenth continued to make even after their commanding officer, Colonel Maxwell, had been killed, my father found himself in hand to hand conflict with the French General who was in command of the Mahratta artillery. He wore an ordinary uniform and my father, having struck him with his sabre at the back of his neck, expected to see terrible results from the blow of a hand notorious all his life for its extraordinary strength. But fortunately the General had prudently included a coat of armour under his uniform; and the blow only resulted in a considerable dent in the blade of my father’s sabre; a dent which (in Biblical language) “may be seen unto this day,” where the weapon hangs in the study at Newbridge.

At another period of this awful battle the young Cornet dismounted beside a stream to drink, and to allow his horse to do the same. While so occupied, Colonel Wellesley came up to follow his example, and they conversed for a few minutes while dipping their hands and faces in the brook (or river). As they did so, there slowly oozed down upon them, trickling through the water, a streamlet of blood. Of course they both turned away in horror and remounted to return to the battle.

At last the tremendous struggle was over. An army of 4,500 or 5,000 tired English troops, had routed five times as many horsemen and perhaps twenty times as many infantry of the warlike Mahrattas. The field was clear and the English flag waved over the English Marathon.

After this the poor, wearied soldiers were compelled to ride back ten miles to camp for the night; and when they reached their ground and dismounted, many of them—my father among the rest—fell on the earth and slept where they lay. Next morning they marched back to the field of Assaye and the scene which met their eyes was one which no lapse of years could efface from memory. The pomp and glory and joy of victory were past; the horror of it was before them in mangled corpses of men and horses, over which hung clouds of flies and vultures. Fourteen officers of his own regiment, whose last meal on earth he had shared in convivial merriment, my father saw buried together in one grave. Then the band of the regiment played “The Rose Tree” and the men marched away with set faces. Long years afterwards I happened to play that old air on the piano, but my father stopped me, “Do not play that tune, pray! I cannot bear the memories it brings to me.”

After Assaye my father fought at Argaon (or Argaum), a battle which Mr. Turner describes as “even more decisive than the last”; and on December 14th he joined in the terrific storming of the great fortress of Gawiljarh, with which the war in the Deccan terminated. He received medals for Assaye and Argaum, just fifty years after those battles were fought!

After his return from India, my father remained at his mother’s house in Bath till 1809, when he married my dear mother, then living with her guardians close by, at 29, Royal Crescent; and brought her to Newbridge, where they both lived, as I have described, with few and short interruptions till she died in October, 1847, and he in November, 1857. For all that half century he acted nobly the part to which he was called, of landlord, magistrate and head of a family. There was nothing in him of the ideal Irish, fox-hunting, happy-go-lucky, much indebted Squire. There never was a year in his life in which every one of his bills was not settled. His books, piled on his study table, showed the regular payment, week by week, of all his labourers for fifty years. No quarter day passed without every servant in the house receiving his, or her wages. So far was Newbridge from a Castle Rackrent that though much in it of the furniture and decorations belonged to the previous century, everything was kept in perfect order and repair in the house and in the stables, coach-houses and beautiful old garden. Punctuality reigned under the old soldier’s régime; clocks and bells and gongs sounded regularly for prayers and meals; and dinner was served sharply to the moment. I should indeed be at a loss to say in what respect my father betrayed his Anglo-Irish race, if it were not his high spirit.

At last, and very soon after the photograph which I am inserting in this book was taken, the long, good life drew to its end in peace. I have found a letter which I wrote to Harriet St. Leger a day or two after his death, and I will here transcribe part of it, rather than narrate the event afresh.

“My poor father’s sufferings are over. He died on Wednesday evening, without the least pain or struggle, having sunk gradually into an unconscious state since Sunday morning. At all events it proved a most merciful close to his long sufferings, for he never seemed even aware of the terrible state into which the poor limbs fell, but became weaker and weaker, and as the mortification advanced, died away as if in the gentlest sleep he had known for many a day. It is all very merciful, I can feel nothing else, though it is very sad to have had no parting words of blessing, such as I am sure he would have given me. All those he loved best were near him. He had Dotie till the last day of his consciousness, and the little thing continually asked afterwards to go to his study, and enquired, ‘Grandpa ‘seep?’ When he had ceased to speak at all comprehensibly, the morning before he died he pointed to her picture, and half smiled when I brought it to him. Poor old father! He is free now from all his miseries—gone home to God after his long, long life of good and honour! Fifty years he has lived as master here. Who but God knows all the kind and generous actions he has done in that half century! To the very last he completed everything, paying his labourers and settling his books on Saturday; and we find all his arrangements made in the most perfect and thoughtful way for everybody. There was a letter left for me. It only contained a £100 note and the words, ‘The last token of the love and affection of a father to his daughter.’... ‘He is now looking so noble and happy, I might say, so handsome; his features seem so glorified by death, that it does one good to go and sit beside him. I never saw Death look so little terrible. Would that the poor form could lie there, ever! The grief will be far worse after to-day, when we shall see it for the last time. Jessie has made an outline of the face as it is now, very like. How wonderful and blessed is this glorifying power of death; taking away the lines of age and weak distension of muscles, and leaving only, as it would seem, the true face of the man as he was beneath all surface weaknesses; the ‘garment by the soul laid by’ smoothed out and folded! My cousins and Jessie and I all feel very much how blessedly this face speaks to us; how it is not him, but a token of what he is now. I grieve that I was not more to him, that I did not better win his love and do more to deserve it; but even this sorrow has its comfort. Perhaps he knows now that with all my heart I did feel the deepest tenderness for his sufferings and respect for his great virtues. At all events the wall of creed has fallen down from between our souls for ever, and I believe that was the one great obstacle which I could never overthrow entirely. Forbearing as he proved himself, it was never forgotten. Now all that divided us is over.... It seems all very dream-like just now, long as we have thought of it, and I know the waking will be a terrible pang when all is over and I have left everything round which my heart roots have twined in five and thirty years. But I don’t fear—how can I, when my utmost hopes could not have pointed to an end so happy as God has given to my poor old father? Everything is merciful about it—even to the time when we were all together here, and when I am neither young enough to need protection, or old enough to feel diminished energies....”

I carried out my long formed resolution, of course, and started on my pilgrimage just three weeks after my father’s death. Leaving Newbridge was the worst wrench of my life. The home of my childhood and youth, of which I had been mistress for nineteen years, for every corner of which I had cared, and wherein there was not a room without its tender associations,—it seemed almost impossible to drag myself away. To strip my pretty bedroom of its pictures and books and ornaments, many of them my mother’s gifts, and my mother’s work; to send off my harp to be sold; and make over to my brother my private possessions of ponies and carriage,—(luckily my dear dog was dead,)—and take leave of all the dear old servants and village people, formed a whole series of pangs. I remember feeling a distinct regret and smiling at myself for doing so, when I locked for the last time the big, old-fashioned tea-chest out of which I had made the family breakfast for twenty years. Then came the last morning and as I drove out of the gates of Newbridge I felt I was leaving behind me all and everything in the world which I had loved and cherished.

I was going also, it must be said, not only from a family circle to entire solitude, but also from comparative wealth to poverty. Considering the interests of my eldest brother as paramount, and the seriousness of his charge of keeping up the house and estate, my father left me but a very small patrimony; amounting, at the rate of interest then obtainable, to a trifle over £200 a year. For a woman who had always had every possible service rendered to her by a regiment of well-trained servants, and had had £130 a year pocket-money since she left school, it must be confessed that this was a narrow provision. My father intended me to continue to live at Newbridge with my brother and sister-in-law; but such a plan was entirely contrary to my view of what my life should thenceforth become, and I accepted my poverty cheerfully enough, with the help of a little ready money wherewith to start on my travels. I cut off half my hair, being totally unable to grapple with the whole without a maid, and faced the future with the advantage of the great calm which follows any immediate concern with Death. While that Shadow hangs over our heads we perceive but dimly the thorns and pebbles on our road.

A week after leaving Ireland I spent one night with Harriet St. Leger in lodgings which she and her friend, Miss Dorothy Wilson, occupied on the Marina at St. Leonard’s.

When I had gone to my room rather late that evening, I opened my window and looked out for the last time before my exile, on an English scene. There was the line of friendly lamps close by, but beyond it the sea, dark as pitch on that December night, was only revealed by the sound of the slow waves breaking sullenly on the beach beneath. It was like a black wall before me; the sea and sky undistinguishable. I thought: “To-morrow I shall go out into that darkness! How like to death is this!”