Chapter II: Fox How

The gray-stone house stands now, as it stood then, on a "how" or rising ground in the beautiful Westmorland valley leading from Ambleside to Rydal. The "Doctor" built it as a holiday paradise for himself and his children, in the year 1833. It is a modest building, with ten bedrooms and three sitting-rooms. Its windows look straight into the heart of Fairfield, the beautiful semicircular mountain which rears its hollowed front and buttressing scaurs against the north, far above the green floor of the valley. That the house looked north never troubled my grandfather or his children. What they cared for was the perfect outline of the mountain wall, the "pensive glooms," hovering in that deep breast of Fairfield, the magic never-ending chase of sunlight and cloud across it on fine days, and the beauty of the soft woodland clothing its base. The garden was his children's joy as it became mine. Its little beck with its mimic bridges, its encircling river, its rocky knolls, its wild strawberries and wild raspberries, its queen of birch-trees rearing a stately head against the distant mountain, its rhododendrons growing like weeds on its mossy banks, its velvet turf, and long silky grass in the parts left wild--all these things have made the joy of three generations.

Inside, Fox How was comfortably spacious, and I remember what a palace it appeared to my childish eyes, fresh from the tiny cabin of a 400-ton sailing-ship, and the rough life of a colony. My grandmother, its mistress, was then sixty-one. Her beautiful hair was scarcely touched with gray, her complexion was still delicately clear, and her soft brown eyes had the eager, sympathetic look of her Cornish race. Charlotte Bronte, who saw her a few years earlier, while on a visit to Miss Martineau, speaks of her as having been a "very pretty woman," and credits her and her daughters with "the possession of qualities the most estimable and endearing." In another letter, however, written to a less familiar correspondent, to whom Miss Bronte, as the literary lady with a critical reputation to keep up, expresses herself in a different and more artificial tone, she again describes my grandmother as good and charming, but doubts her claim to "power and completeness of character." The phrase occurs in a letter describing a call at Fox How, and its slight pomposity makes the contrast with the passage in which Matthew Arnold describes the same visit the more amusing.

At seven came Miss Martineau, and Miss Bronte (Jane Eyre); talked to
Miss Martineau (who blasphemes frightfully) about the prospects of the
Church of England, and, wretched man that I am, promised to go and see
her cow-keeping miracles to-morrow, I who hardly know a cow from a
sheep. I talked to Miss Bronte (past thirty and plain, with expressive
gray eyes, though) of her curates, of French novels, and her education
in a school at Brussels, and sent the lions roaring to their dens at
half-past nine.

No one, indeed, would have applied the word "power" to my grandmother, unless he had known her very well. The general impression was always one of gentle sweetness and soft dignity. But the phrase, "completeness of character," happens to sum up very well the impression left by her life both on kindred and friends. What Miss Bronte exactly meant by it it is difficult to say. But the widowed mother of nine children, five of them sons, and all of them possessed of strong wills and quick intelligence, who was able so to guide their young lives that to her last hour, thirty years after her husband's death had left her alone with her task, she possessed their passionate reverence and affection, and that each and all of them would have acknowledged her as among the dearest and noblest influences in their lives, can hardly be denied "completeness of character." Many of her letters lie before me. Each son and daughter, as he or she went out into the world, received them with the utmost regularity. They knew that every incident in their lives interested their mother; and they in their turn were eager to report to her everything that came to them, happy or unhappy, serious or amusing. And this relation of the family to their mother only grew and strengthened with years. As the daughters married, their husbands became so many new and devoted sons to this gentle, sympathetic, and yet firm-natured woman. Nor were the daughters-in-law less attached to her, and the grandchildren who in due time began to haunt Fox How. In my own life I trace her letters from my earliest childhood, through my life at school, to my engagement and marriage; and I have never ceased to feel a pang of disappointment that she died before my children were born. Matthew Arnold adored her, and wrote to her every week of his life. So did her other children. William Forster, throughout his busy life in Parliament, vied with her sons in tender consideration and unfailing loyalty. And every grandchild thought of a visit to Fox How as not only a joy, but an honor. Indeed, nothing could have been more "complete," more rounded, than my grandmother's character and life as they developed through her eighty-three years. She made no conspicuous intellectual claim, though her quick intelligence, her wide sympathies, and clear judgment, combined with something ardent and responsive in her temperament, attracted and held able men; but her personality was none the less strong because it was so gently, delicately served by looks and manner.

Perhaps the "completeness" of my grandmother's character will be best illustrated by one of her family letters, a letter which may recall to some readers Stevenson's delightful poem on the mother who sits at home, watching the fledglings depart from the nest.

So from the hearth the children flee,
By that almighty hand
Austerely led; so one by sea
Goes forth, and one by land;
Nor aught of all-man's sons escapes from that command.

* * * * *

And as the fervent smith of yore
Beat out the glowing blade,
Nor wielded in the front of war
The weapons that he made,
But in the tower at home still plied his ringing trade;

So like a sword the son shall roam
On nobler missions sent;
And as the smith remained at home
In peaceful turret pent,
So sits the while at home the mother well content.

The letter was written to my father in New Zealand in the year 1848, as a family chronicle. The brothers and sisters named in it are Walter, the youngest of the family, a middy of fourteen, on board ship, and not very happy in the Navy, which he was ultimately to leave for Durham University and business; Willy, in the Indian Army, afterward the author of _Oakfield_, a novel attacking the abuses of Anglo-Indian life, and the first Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab--commemorated by his poet brother in "A Southern Night"; Edward, at Oxford; Mary, the second daughter, who at the age of twenty-two had been left a widow after a year of married life; and Fan, the youngest daughter of the flock, who now, in 1917, alone represents them in the gray house under the fells. The little Westmorland farm described is still exactly as it was; and has still a Richardson for master, though of a younger generation. And Rydal Chapel, freed now from the pink cement which clothed it in those days, and from the high pews familiar to the children of Fox How, still sends the cheerful voice of its bells through the valley on Sunday mornings.

The reader will remember, as he reads it, that he is in the troubled year of 1848, with Chartism at home and revolution abroad. The "painful interest" with which the writer has read Clough's "Bothie" refers, I think, to the fact that she has recognized her second son, my father, as to some extent the hero of the poem.

Fox How, _Nov. 19, 1848._

My Dearest Tom,--... I am always intending to send you something
like a regular journal, but twenty days of the month have now passed
away, and it is not done. Dear Matt, who was with us at the
beginning, and who I think bore a part in our last letters to you,
has returned to his post in London, and I am not without hope of
hearing by to-morrow's post that he has run down to Portsmouth to
see Walter before he sails on a cruise with the Squadron, which I
believe he was to do to-day. But I should think they would hardly
leave Port in such dirty weather, when the wind howls and the rain
pours, and the whole atmosphere is thick and lowering as I suppose
you rarely or never see it in New Zealand. I wish the more that
Matt may get down to Spithead, because the poor little man has been
in a great ferment about leaving his Ship and going into a smaller
one. By the same post I had a letter from him, and from Captain
Daws, who had been astonished and grieved by Walter's coming to him
and telling him he wished to leave the ship. It was evident that
Captain D. was quite distressed about it.

She then discusses, very shrewdly and quietly, the reasons for her boy's restlessness, and how best to meet it. The letter goes on:

Certainly there is great comfort in having him with so true and good
a friend as Captain D. and I could not feel justified in acting
against his counsel. But as he gets to know Walter better, I think
it very likely that he will himself think it better for him to be in
some ship not so likely to stay about in harbor as the _St. Vincent_;
and will judge that with a character like his it might be better for
him to be on some more distant stations.

I write about all this as coolly as if he were not my own dear
youngest born, the little dear son whom I have so cherished, and who
was almost a nursling still, when the bond which kept us all together
was broken. But I believe I do truly feel that if my beloved sons are
good and worthy of the name they bear, are in fact true, earnest,
Christian men, I have no wish left for them--no selfish longings
after their companionship, which can for a moment be put in
comparison with such joy. Thus it almost seemed strange to me when,
in a letter the other day from Willy to Edward, in reference to
his--E's--future destination--Willy rather urged upon him a home,
domestic life, on _my_ account, as my sons were already so scattered.
As I say, those loving words seemed strange to me; because I have
such an overpowering feeling that the all-in-all to me is that my
sons should be in just that vocation in life most suited to them,
and most bringing out what is highest and best in them; whether it
might be in England, or at the furthest extremity of the world.

* * * * *

_November 24, 1848._--I have been unwell for some days, dearest Tom,
and this makes me less active in all my usual employments, but it
shall not, if I can help it, prevent my making some progress in this
letter, which in less than a week may perhaps be on its way to New
Zealand. I have just sent Fan down-stairs, for she nurses her Mother
till I begin to think some change good for her. She has been reading
aloud to me, and now, as the evening advances I have asked some of
them to read to me a long poem by Clough--(the "Bothie") which I
have no doubt will reach you. It does not _look_ attractive to me,
for it is in English Hexameters, which are to me very cumbrous and
uninviting; but probably that may be for some want of knowledge in
my own ear and taste. The poem is addressed to his pupils of last
summer, and in scenery, etc., will have, I suppose, many touches
from his Highland residence; but, in a brief Preface, he says that
the tale itself is altogether fiction.

* * * * *

To turn from things domestic to things at large, what a state of
things is this at Berlin! a state of siege declared, and the King at
open issue with his representatives!--from the country districts,
people flocking to give him aid, while the great towns are almost in
revolt. "Always too late" might, I suppose, have been his motto; and
when things have been given with one hand, he has seemed too ready
to withdraw them with the other. But, after all, I must and do
believe that he has noble qualities, so to have won Bunsen's love
and respect.

_November 25._--Mary is preparing a long letter, and it will
therefore matter the less if mine is not so long as I intended. I
have not yet quite made up the way I have lost in my late
indisposition, and we have such volumes of letters from dear Willy
to answer, that I believe this folio will be all I can send to you,
my own darling; but you do not dwell in my heart or my thoughts
less fondly. I long inexpressibly to have some definite ideas of
what you are now--after some eight months of residence--doing,
thinking, feeling; what are your occupations in the present, what
your aims and designs for the future. The assurance that it is
your first and heartful desire to please God, my dear son; that
you have struggled to do this and not allowed yourself to shrink
from whatever you felt to be involved in it, this is, and will be
my deepest and dearest comfort, and I pray to Him to guide you
into all truth. But though supported by this assurance, I do not
pretend to say that often and often I do not yearn over you in
my thoughts, and long to bestow upon you in act and word, as
well as in thought, some of that overflowing love which is
cherished for you in your home.

And here follows a tender mother-word in reference to an early and unrequited attachment of my father's, the fate of which may possibly have contributed to the restlessness which sent him beyond the seas.

But, dear Tom, I believe that though the hoped for flower and fruit
have faded, yet that the plant has been strengthened and
purified.... It would be a grief to me not to believe that you
will yet be most happy in married life; and when you can make to
yourself a home I shall perhaps lose some of my restless longing
to be near you and ministering to your comfort, and sharing in
your life--if I can think of you as cheered and helped by one
who loved you as I did your own beloved father.

_Sunday, November 26._--Just a year, my son, since you left England!
But I really must not allow myself to dwell on this, and all the
thoughts it brings with it; for I found last night that the contrast
between the fulness of thought and feeling, and my own powerlessness
to express it weighed on me heavily; and not having yet quite
recovered my usual tone, I could not well bear it. So I will just
try to collect for you a few more home Memoranda, and then have
done.... Our new tenant, James Richardson, is now fairly established
at his farm, and when I went up there and saw the cradle and the
happy childish faces around the table, and the rows of oatmeal cake
hanging up, and the cheerful, active Mother going hither and
thither--now to her Dairy--now guiding the steps of the little one
that followed her about--and all the time preparing things for her
husband's return from his work at night, I could not but feel that
it was a very happy picture of English life. Alas! that there are
not larger districts where it exists! But I hope there is still much
of it; and I feel that while there is an awful undercurrent of
misery and sin--the latter both caused by the first and causing
it--and while, on the surface, there is carelessness, and often
recklessness and hardness and trifling, yet that still, in our
English society, there is, between these two extremes, a strength
of good mixed with baser elements, which must and will, I fully
believe, support us nationally in the troublous times which are
at hand--on which we are actually entered.

But again I am wandering, and now the others have gone off to the
Rydal Chapel without me this lovely Sunday morning. There are the
bells sounding invitingly across the valley, and the evergreens
are white and sparkling in the sun.

I have a note from Clough.... His poem is as remarkable, I think,
as you would expect, coming from him. Its _power_ quite overcame
my dislike to the measure--so far at least as to make me read it
with great interest--often, though, a painful one. And now I
must end.

As to Miss Bronte's impressions of Matthew Arnold in that same afternoon call of 1850, they were by no means flattering. She understands that he was already the author of "a volume of poems" (_The Poems by A,_ 1849), remarks that his manner "displeases from its seeming foppery," but recognizes, nevertheless, in conversation with him, "some genuine intellectual aspirations"! It was but a few years later that my uncle paid his poet's homage to the genius of the two sisters--to Charlotte of the "expressive gray eyes"--to Emily of the "chainless soul." I often try to picture their meeting in the Fox How drawing-room: Matthew Arnold, tall, handsome, in the rich opening of his life, his first poetic honors thick upon him, looking with a half-critical, half-humorous eye at the famous little lady whom Miss Martineau had brought to call upon his mother; and beside him that small, intrepid figure, on which the worst storms of life had already beaten, which was but five short years from its own last rest. I doubt whether, face to face, they would ever have made much of each other. But the sister who could write of a sister's death as Charlotte wrote, in the letter that every lover of great prose ought to have by heart--

Emily suffers no more from pain or weakness now, she never will
suffer more in this world. She is gone, after a hard, short
conflict.... We are very calm at present, why should we be
otherwise? The anguish of seeing her suffer is over; the
spectacle of the pains of death is gone; the funeral day is
past. We feel she is at peace. No need now to tremble for the
hard frost and the keen wind. _Emily does not feel them_.--

must have stretched out spiritual hands to Matthew Arnold, had she lived to read "A Southern Night"--that loveliest, surely, of all laments of brother for brother.