“Your letter is very cheering. We were right to make the experiment. We were right to test the man and the law: Cross, and his administration of it. Both have failed us, and we are bound in duty, I think, to leap over all limitations, and go in for the total abolition of this vile and cruel form of Idolatry; for idolatry it is, and, like all idolatry, brutal, degrading, and deceptive....

“May God prosper us! These ill-used and tortured animals are as much His Creatures as we are, and to say the truth, I had, in some instances, rather be the animal tortured than the man who tortured it. I should believe myself to have higher hopes, and a happier future.

“I have sent your letter to Judas of X——. I find no fault in it, but that of too much courtesy to one so lost to every consideration of feeling and truth.

“Did you know him, as I know him, you would find it difficult to restrain your pen and your tongue.”...

“Some good will come out of the discussion.

“I have unmistakable evidence that many were deeply impressed, but adhesion to political leaders is a higher law with most Politicians than obedience to the law of truth.

“What do you think now of the Doctrine of ‘Apostolic Succession’?

“Would St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John have made such a speech as that of my Lord of P——?

“You do that Bishop too much honour. He is not worth notice.

“It is frightful to see that the open champions of Vivisection are not Bradlaugh and Mrs. B. but Bishops, ‘Fathers in God,’ and ‘Pastors’ of the People!

“We shall soon have Bradlaugh and his company claiming the Apostolical Succession; and if that succession be founded on truth, mercy, and love, with as good a right as Dr. G., Dr. M. or D.D. anything else.

“Your letter has crushed (if such a hard substance can be crushed) his Lordship of C....

The next letter is in acknowledgment of the following verses which I had sent to him on his Eightieth Birthday. They were repeated by the late Chamberlain of the City of London, Sir Benjamin Scott, in his oration on the presentation of the Freedom of the City to Lord Shaftesbury. I print the letter, (though all too kind in its expression about my poor verses,) on account of the deeply interesting review of his own life which it contains:—

“Had I not known your handwriting, I should never have guessed, either that you were the writer of the verses, or that I was the subject of them.

“Had I judged them simply by their ability and force, I might have ascribed them to the true Author; but it required the envelope, and the ominous word ‘eighty,’ to justify me in applying them to myself.

“They both touched and gratified me, but I will tell you the origin of my public career, which you have been so kind as to commend. It arose while I was a boy at Harrow School, about, I should think, fourteen years of age—an event occurred (the details of which I may give you some other day), which brought painfully before me the scorn and neglect manifested towards the Poor and helpless. I was deeply affected; but, for many years afterwards, I acted only on feeling and sentiment. As I advanced in life, all this grew up to a sense of duty; and I was convinced that God had called me to devote whatever advantages He might have bestowed upon me, to the cause of the weak, the helpless, both man and beast, and those who had none to help them.

“I entered Parliament in 1826, and I commenced operations in 1828, with an effort to ameliorate the conditions of lunatics, and then I passed on in a succession of attempts to grapple with other evils, and such has been my trade for more than half a century.

“Do not think for a moment that I claim any merit. If there be any doctrine that I dislike and fear more than another, it is the ‘Doctrine of Works.’ Whatever I have done has been given to me; what I have done I was enabled to do; and all happy results (if any there be) must be credited, not to the servant, but to the great Master, who led and sustained him.

“My course, however, has raised up for me many enemies, and very few friends, but among those friends I hope that you may be numbered.

I sent him another little souvenir two years later:—

The next letter refers to my Lectures on the Duties of Women which I had just delivered.

“... I admire your Lectures. But do you not try to make, ‘the sex’ a little too pugnacious? And why do you give ‘truth’ to the men, and deny it to the women?

“If you mean by ‘truth’ abstinence from fibs, I think that the females are as good as the males. But if you mean steadiness of friendship, adherence to principles, conscientiously not superficially entertained, and sincerity in a good cause, why, the women are far superior.

“... Your lecture on Vivisection was admirable—we must be ‘mealy mouthed’ no longer.

“Shall you and I have a conversation on your lectures and the ‘Duties of Women’? We shall not, I believe, have much difference of opinion; perhaps none. I approve them heartily, but there are one or two expressions which, though intelligible to myself, would be greatly misconstrued by a certain portion of Englishmen.

“I could give you instances by the hundred of the wonderful success that, by a merciful Providence, has followed with our Ragged children, male and female.^[27] In fact, though after long intervals we have lost sight of a good many, we have very few cases, indeed, of the failure of our hopes and efforts.

“In thirty years we took off the streets of London, and sent to service, or provided with means of honest livelihood more than two hundred and twenty thousand ‘waifs and strays.’

“I have had a very friendly letter from Gladstone; but on reference to him for permission to publish it, he seems unwilling to assent.

“Our testimony, thank God, is cumulative for good. We may hope, and we must pray, for better things.

“I send you Gladstone’s letter. Pray return it to me, and take care that it does not appear in print.^[28]

“I am glad that you liked the ‘Dinner.’ It was, I think, a success in showing civility to foreign friends.

Lord Shaftesbury made the following remarks about the Future State of Animals, in a very sympathizing reply to a letter I had written to him in which I mentioned to him that my dog had died:—

“I have ever believed in a happy future for animals; I cannot say or conjecture how or where; but sure I am that the love, so manifested, by dogs especially, is an emanation from the Divine essence, and, as such, it can, or rather it will never be extinguished.”^[29]

“You must not suppose that because I did not answer your letter, at the moment, I am indifferent to you or your correspondence.

“Far from it, but when I have little to do, being almost confined to the house, I have much to write, and to get through my work, I must frequently be relieved by a recumbent posture.

“Nevertheless, by God’s mercy, I am certainly better; and I think that were we blessed with some warm, genial, weather, I should recover more rapidly.

“Bryan^[30] is a good man, he is able, diligent, zealous and has an excellent judgment. I have not been able to attend his Committee, but his reports to me show attention and good sense.

“I have left, as perhaps you have seen, the Lunacy Commission. It was at the close of 56 years of service that I did so. I dare say that you have had time to read my letter of resignation in the Times of the 8th.

“I am very glad that Miss Lloyd is determined to print those lines. They are very beautiful; and you must be sure to send a copy to Miss Marsh. She admires them as much as I do.

“The thought of Calvary^[31] is the strength that has governed all the sentiments and actions of my manhood and later life; and you can well believe that I greatly rejoice to find that one, whom I prize so highly, has kindred sympathies....

“May God prosper you.

The most remarkable woman I have known, not excepting Mrs. Somerville (described in my chapter on Italy), Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Mrs. Beecher Stowe, was, beyond any doubt or question, my dear friend, Fanny Kemble. I have told of the droll circumstances of our first meeting at Newbridge in the early Fifties. From that time till her death in 1892, her brilliant, iridescent genius, her wit, her spirit, her tenderness, the immense “go” and momentum of her whole nature, were sources of endless pleasure to me. When I was lame, I used to feel that for days after talking with her I could almost dispense with my crutches, so much did she, literally, lift me up!

Mrs. Kemble paid us several visits here in Wales, and was perhaps even more delightful in our quiet country quarters than in London. She would sit out for many hours at a time in our beautiful old garden, which she said was to her “an idyll;” and talk of all things in heaven and earth; touching in turn every note in the gamut of emotion from sorrowful to joyous. One summer she came to us early, and thus sat daily under a great cherry tree “in the midst of the garden,” which was at the time a mass of odorous and snowy blossoms. Alas! the blossoms have returned and are blooming as I write;—but the friend sleeps under the sod in Kensal Green.

Mr. Henry James’ obituary article and Mr. Bentley’s generous-hearted letter concerning her in the Times—in rebuke of the mean and grudging notice of her which that paper had published,—seem to me to have been by far the most truthful sketches which appeared of the “grand old lioness;” as Thackeray called her. Everybody could admire, and most people a little feared her; but it needed to come very close to her and brush past her formidable thorns of irony and sarcasm, to know and love her, as she most truly deserved to be loved.

There is always something startling and perhaps the reverse of attractive to those of us who have been brought up in the usual English way to repress our emotions, in women who have been trained reversely by histrionic life, to give all possible outwardness and vividness of expression to those same emotions. It is only when we get below both the extreme demonstrativeness on one hand, and the conventional reserve and self-restraint on the other, and meet on common ground of deep sympathies, that real friendship is established; a friendship which in my case was at once an honour and a delight.

Mrs. Kemble in her generous affection made a present to me of the MSS. of her Memoirs, which subsequently I induced her to take back, and publish herself, as her “Old Woman’s Gossip,” her Records of a Girlhood and Records of Later Life. Beside these, which, as I have said, I returned to her one after another, she gave me, and I still possess, an immense packet of her own old letters to her beloved H. S. (Harriet St. Leger) and others; and the materials of five large and thick volumes of autograph letters addressed to her, extending over more than 50 years. They include whole correspondences with W. Donne, Edward Fitzgerald, Henry Greville, Mrs. Jameson, John Mitchell Kemble, George Combe, and several others; and besides these there are either one or half-a-dozen letters from almost every man and woman of eminence in England in her time. Mr. Bentley has very liberally purchased from me for publication about 100 letters from Edward Fitzgerald to Mrs. Kemble. The rest of the Mrs. Kemble’s correspondence I have, as I have mentioned, bound together in five volumes, and I do not intend to publish them. Had any of Mrs. Kemble’s “Records” remained inedited at the time of her death I should have undertaken, (as she no doubt intended me to do) the task of writing her biography. The work was, however, so fully done by herself in her long series of volumes that there was neither need nor room for more. I am happy to add, in conclusion, that in the arrangements I have made regarding my dear old friend’s literary remains, I have the consent and approval of her daughters.

I knew Mrs. Gaskell a little, but not enough to harmonize in my mind the woman I saw in the flesh with the books I liked so well as Mary Barton and Libbie Marsh’s Three Eras. Of Mrs. Stowe’s delightful conversation on the terrace of our villa on Bellosguardo, I have written my recollections, and recorded the glimpses I had of Mrs. Browning. I have also described Harriet Hosmer and Rosa Bonheur; our sculptor and painter friends, from the latter of whom I have just (1898) received the kindest letters and her impressive photograph; and Mary Carpenter, my leader and fellow-worker at Bristol. I must not speak here of the affection and admiration I entertain for my dear, living friend Anna Swanwick, the translator of Æschylus and Faust; and for Louisa Lee Schuyler, one of the leaders in the organization of relief in the great Civil War of America and who founded and carried to its present marvellous extent of power and usefulness the State Charities Aid Association of New York. Again, I have known in England Mdme. Bodichon (who furnished Girton with its first thousand pounds); Mrs. Josephine Butler; Mrs. Webster the classic poetess; and Mrs. Emily Pfeiffer, another poetess and very beautiful woman at whose house I once witnessed an interesting scene,—a large party of ladies and gentlemen dressed in the attire of Athenians of the Periclean age. Miss Swanwick and I, who were alone permitted to attend in English costume, were immensely impressed by the ennobling effect of the classic dress, not only on young and graceful people, but on those who were quite the reverse.

I never saw Harriet Martineau; but was so desirous of doing it that I intended to make a journey to Ambleside for the purpose, and with that view begged our mutual friend, the late Mrs. Hensleigh Wedgwood, to ask leave to introduce me to her. It was an unfortunate moment, and I only received the following kind message:—

“I need not say how happy I should have been to become acquainted with Miss Cobbe; but the time is past and I am only fit for old friends who can excuse my shortcomings. I have lost ground so much of late that the case is clear. I must give up all hopes of so great a pleasure. Will you say this to her and ask her to receive my kind and thankful regards, I venture to send on the grounds of our common friendships?”

Of my living, beloved and honoured friends, Mrs. William Grey, Lady Mount-Temple, Miss Shirreff, Mrs. Fawcett, Miss Caroline Stephen, Miss Julia Wedgwood, Lady Battersea, and Miss Florence Davenport Hill, I must not here speak. I have had the pleasure also of meeting that very fine woman-worker Miss Octavia Hill.

George Eliot I did not know, nor, as I have just said, did I ever meet Harriet Martineau. But with those two great exceptions I think I may boast of having come into contact with nearly all the more gifted Englishwomen of the Victorian era; and thus when I speak, as I shall do in the next chapter, of my efforts to put the claims of my sex fairly before the world, I may boast of writing with practical personal knowledge of what women are and can be, both as to character and ability.

The decade which began in 1880 brought me many sorrows. The first was the death of my second brother, Thomas Cobbe, of Easton Lyss. I loved him much for his own sweet and affectionate nature; and much, too, for the love of our mother which he shared especially with me. I was also warmly attached to his beautiful and good Scotch wife, who survived him only a few years; and to his dear children, who were my pets in infancy and have been almost like my own daughters ever since. My brother ought to have been a very successful and brilliant barrister, but his life was broken by the faults of others, and when in advanced years he wrote, with immense patience and research, a really valuable History of the Norman Kings (thought to be so by such competent judges as Mr. William Longman, and the Historical Society of Normandy, which asked leave to translate it), the book was practically killed by a cruel and most unfair review which attributed to him mistakes which he had not made, and refused to publish his refutation of the charge. If this review were written (as we could not but surmise) by an eminent historian, now dead, whose own book my brother had, very unwisely, ignored, I can only say it was a malicious and spiteful deed. My brother’s ambition was not strong enough to carry him over such a disappointment, and he never attempted to write again for the press, but spent his later years in the solitary study of his favourite old chronicles and his Shakespeare. A little later my eldest brother also died, leaving no children. I must be thankful at my age that the youngest, the Rector of Maulden, though five years older than I, still survives in health and vigour, rejoicing in his happy home and family of affectionate daughters. I trust yet to welcome him into the brotherhood of the pen when his great monograph on Luton Church, Historical and Descriptive, sees the light this year.

I lost also in this same decade, my earliest friend Harriet St. Leger; and a younger, very dear one, Emily Shaen. Mrs. Shaen and her admirable husband had been much drawn to me by religious sympathies; and I regarded her with more heartfelt respect, I might say reverence, than I can well express. She endured twenty years of seclusion and suffering, with the spirit at once of a saint and of a philosopher. Had her health enabled her to take her natural place in the world, I have always felt assured she would have been recognised as one of the ablest as well as one of the best women of the day, and more than the equal of her two gifted sisters; Catharine and Susanna Winkworth. The friendship between us was of the closest kind. I often said that I went to church to her sick-room. In her last days, when utterly crushed by incessant suffering and by the death of her beloved husband and her favourite son, she bore in whispers, to me, (she could scarcely speak for mortal weakness,) this testimony to our common faith: “I sent for you,—to tell you,—I am more sure than ever that God is Good.”

All these deaths and the heart-wearing Anti-vivisection work combined with my own increasing years to make my life in London less and less a source of enjoyment and more of strain than I could bear. In 1884 Miss Lloyd, with my entire concurrence, let our dear little house in Hereford Square to our friend, Mrs. Kemble, and we left London altogether and came to live in Wales.