A Lady of England 29
TO MRS. HAMILTON.
‘1866.
‘I send you on the other page a few lines which came into my
mind yesterday in regard to my sweet Letitia:--
‘A THOUGHT.
‘She travelled to the glorious East; she met the rising sun,--
And even so her day of heavenly bliss was soon begun;
I knew ’twas sunrise with my child, while night was o’er me weeping,
E’er closed my weary day, my darling was serenely sleeping.
And so Thou didst ordain, O Lord, as Thou didst deem it best,--
That hers should be the earlier dawn, and hers the earlier rest.’
TO MISS B. F. TUCKER.
‘_May 22, 1866._
‘I have been learning a new art, and am thankful to find that
I have sufficient energy left in me to do so. I sent for some
reading in embossed letters for a blind man here, and amused
myself by puzzling it out myself. I have succeeded in reading
right through the fourteenth of St. John in two sittings of
about an hour and twenty minutes each. It was an effort of
memory as well as attention, as some of the letters are utterly
unlike those to which we have been accustomed. The poor blind
man promises well to acquire the art, I think.’
TO THE SAME.
‘_July 16, 1866._
‘Have you seen the mysterious sky-visitor? On Friday evening
our maids saw something like three stars, one red,--but they
disappeared. On the following night Cousins[12] called me to
look on what I would not have missed seeing for a good deal.
About thirty degrees above the horizon, I should think, shone
what was like a star, but more splendid than any that I had
ever beheld, of a brilliant magenta colour. It was no falling
star passing rapidly through the sky, but appeared quite fixed
in the heavens for--perhaps ten minutes. As I gazed with
something like awe on its wondrous beauty, suddenly its colour
utterly changed; the magenta became white, with a greenish
tinge; and then--as suddenly--the star disappeared; not as if
hidden by a cloud, but as if _put out_.
‘I watched for the mysterious light last night, but could not
see it; the evening had been so strangely dark that we had
lighted candles an hour before sunset, though our window looks
to the west. No star was visible to me; but our maids had a
short glimpse of a strange light. I am sitting by the window
now to watch for the visitor in the north-west.... I searched
_The Times_ to-day to see if there were any mention of it, but
could find none.’
Evidently Charlotte Tucker had been fortunate enough to see a very fine
meteor; though probably the supposed duration of ten minutes was in
reality a good deal shorter. The idea of watching for the same meteor
next night is somewhat amusing. The maids doubtless saw what they
expected to see; but Charlotte Tucker, though non-scientific, was far too
practical so to indulge her powers of imagination.
In another letter written during this same July to Mrs. Hamilton occurs
one little sentence well worth quoting, for it is a sentence which might
serve as a motto for many a seemingly empty and even purposeless life--
‘IT IS SWEET TO BE SOMEBODY’S SUNSHINE.’
In June Mrs. Tucker had written to a friend,--‘Charlotte walked twice to
church, and thinks she is stronger.’ And in a letter to Mrs. Hamilton, on
the 23rd of July, Charlotte said of herself,--‘I am quite well now, and
up to work’;--yet the following to a niece, on September 1st, does not
speak of fully restored energies:--
‘I have so much to be grateful for, I wish that I were of a
more thankful spirit. It seems as if this year had aged me.
When I saw a bright creature like ----, I mentally contrasted
her with myself, and thought,--“She has not the gee out of her.
Cheerfully and hopefully she enters on her untried sphere of
work. In her place I should be taking cares!”--very wrong of
me. I often take myself to task.
‘I feel putting off my dark dress for _one day_ on Wednesday....
My darling was to me what she was not to her other Aunts.’
To some people, or in certain states of body and mind, the afternoon is
apt to be a more tired time than the evening. At this stage in Charlotte
Tucker’s Afternoon of life she passed through a somewhat weary spell,
though never really ill; but her energies were to revive for the work of
her Eventide.
On October 6th she could say,--
‘I am not poorly, though I look thin; I think that I am
stronger in health and firmer in spirit now than I have been
almost all this trying year; and for this I am thankful.’
TO MISS ‘LEILA’ HAMILTON.
‘_Nov. 2, 1866._
‘Your sweet Mother will wonder at not receiving the little book
which I promised to send her; but our bookseller, from whom I
ordered the copy, has been unable to get it yet. I will tell
you something that may cause delay. Of course I looked with
some interest at the illustrations which my Publisher sent me;
but I was not a little surprised in the last one to find one
whom I considered to be a man represented as a _bear_! He was
bearish in character certainly, but still--certainly not a bear
in shape.
‘Of course I wrote to Mr. Inglis about it; who replied that
he had been annoyed himself at the resemblance to a bear, and
had sent the picture more than once to be altered, and had
been at last so much provoked that he had paid off the artist
altogether. Now, though I may be a little sorry for the poor
man,--I never proposed his dismissal,--I confess I am rather
glad that he is not to illustrate my books any more. There is
no saying what creature he might turn my characters into next.
Mr. Inglis is going to have the picture altered; so this may
occasion delay.’
CHAPTER XI
A.D. 1867-1868
GIVING COMFORT TO OTHERS
Three more years only remained to Charlotte of life in the dear old home
of her infancy. Those three years passed quietly, marked by no stirring
events. On the 11th of December 1867, Otho St. George Hamilton, son of
her sister Laura, died at the age of thirteen, after a long illness;
and during these years Fanny continued steadily to fail. The delicacy
developed into a case of decided consumption, but of a slow and lingering
description. A few sentences are culled from the many letters which
remain, belonging to this period.
TO MISS ‘LEILA’ HAMILTON.
‘_Feb. 1867._
‘I wish my sweet Leila to receive a few lines on her birthday....
_Tempus fugit_, indeed. When you open this you will be thirteen
years old. It seems to me as if each year now were growing
more and more important; the stream is widening; the mind is
opening; and ... may the heart be opening too to that Love which
is beyond all earthly love.
‘I had a pleasant childhood. My mind was very active, as well
as my bodily frame; and at your age I dare say that life lay
before me, a bright, hope-inspiring thing. It is well that it
should be so; it is a kind arrangement of Providence that the
young should be usually full of energy and hope. I like to
recall how I felt, that I may enter into the feelings of others.
‘Now of course I have not exactly the same kind of landscape
before me as I had at thirteen. I am in my forty-sixth year,
have known care and sorrow, and have at present but feeble
health. And yet, dear, I don’t want to exchange my landscape;
I have no wish to go back. I have found that middle age has
its deep joys, as well as early youth its sparkling ones.
Sometimes I ask myself,--“Now, in my present position, if I had
no pleasure in religion, if everything connected with that were
cut off, what would be left me?--what would life be to me?” O
Leila, what a tasteless, what a bitter thing! We want delights
that will not grow old, that will never pall, that will be just
as fresh and lovely at eighty as at eighteen. Religion is not
merely, as some seem to fancy, to prepare us for death, but to
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기