book I

could say no more than I mean to suggest to you in these few lines. All that I leave unsaid, I leave to your generous understanding.'

The Howitts were keenly interested in the gradual awakening of the long-dormant, artistic instincts of the nation, the first signs of which became faintly visible about the end of the forties. 'Down to that time,' observes Mary, 'the taste of the English people had been for what appealed to the mind rather than to the eye, and the general public were almost wholly uneducated in art. By 1849 the improvement due to the exertions of the Prince Consort, the Society of Arts, and other powers began to be felt; while a wonderful impulse to human taste and ingenuity was being given in the preparation of exhibits for the World's Fair.' The gentle Quakeress who, in her youth, had modelled Wedgwood figures in paper pulp, and clapped her clear-starching to the rhythm of _Lalla Rookh_, was, in middle life, one of the staunchest supporters of the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, and that at a time when the President of the Royal Academy had announced his intention of hanging no more of their 'outrageous productions.' Through their friend, Edward La Trobe Bateman, the Howitts had been introduced into the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and familiarised with the then new and startling idea that artistic principles might be carried out in furniture and house-decoration. Less than three-quarters of a century before, Mary's father had been sternly rebuked by her grandfather for painting a series of lines in black and grey above the parlour fireplace to represent a cornice. This primitive attempt at decoration was regarded as a sinful indulgence of the lust of the eye! With the simple charity that was characteristic of them, William and Mary saw only the best side of their new friends, the shadows of Bohemian life being entirely hidden from them. 'Earnest and severe in their principles of art,' observes Mrs. Howitt naively, 'the young reformers indulged in much jocundity when the day's work was done. They were wont to meet at ten, cut jokes, talk slang, smoke, read poetry, and discuss art till three A.M.'

The couple had by this time renounced their membership of the Society of Friends, but they had not joined any other religious sect, though they seem to have been attracted by Unitarian doctrines. 'Mere creeds,' wrote Mary to her sister, 'matter nothing to me. I could go one Sunday to the Church of England, another to a Catholic chapel, a third to the Unitarian, and so on; and in each of them find my heart warmed with Christian love to my fellow-creatures, and lifted up with gratitude and praise to God.' For many years the house in Avenue Road was, we are told, a meeting-place for all that was best and brightest in the world of modern thought and art. William Howitt was always ready to lend an attentive and unbiassed ear to the newest theory, or even the newest fad, while Mary possessed in the fullest degree the gift of companionableness, and her inexhaustible sympathy drew from others an instant confidence. Her arduous literary labours never impaired her vigorous powers of mind or body, and she often wrote till late into the night without appearing to suffer in either health or spirits. She is described as a careful and energetic housewife; indeed, her husband was accustomed to say that he would challenge any woman who never wrote a line, to match his own good woman in the management of a large household.

In 1851 came the first tidings of the discovery of gold in Australia, and nothing was talked of but this new Eldorado and the wonderful inducements held out to emigrants. William Howitt, who felt that he needed a change from brain-work, suddenly resolved on a trip with his two sons to this new world, where he would see his youngest brother, Dr. Godfrey Howitt, who had settled at Melbourne. He was also anxious to ascertain what openings in the country there might be for his boys, both of whom had active, outdoor tastes, which there seemed little chance of their being able to gratify in England. In June, 1852, the three male members of the family, accompanied by La Trobe Bateman, sailed for Australia, while Mary and her two daughters, the elder of whom had just returned from a year in Kaulbach's studio at Munich, moved into a cottage called the Hermitage, at Highgate, which belonged to Mr. Bateman, and had formerly been occupied by Rossetti. Here they lived quietly for upwards of two years, working at their literary or artistic occupations, and seeing a few intimate friends. Mary kept her husband posted up in the events that were taking place in England, and we learn from her letters what were the chief topics of town talk in the early fifties.

'Now, I must think over what news there is,' she writes in April, 1853. 'In the political world, the proposed new scheme of Property and Income Tax, which would make everybody pay something; and the proposal for paying off a portion of the National Debt with Australian gold. In the literary world, the International Copyright, which some expect will be in force in three months. In society in general, the strange circumstantial rumour of the Queen's death, which, being set afloat on Easter Monday, when no business was doing, was not the offspring of the money market. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean, who were here the other day, spoke of it, saying truly that for the moment it seemed to paralyse the very heart of England.... [May 4th.] The great talk now is Mrs. Beecher Stowe and spirit-rapping, both of which have arrived in England. The universality of the latter phenomena renders it a curious study. A feeling seems pervading all classes and all sects that the world stands on the brink of some great spiritual revelation. It meets one in books, in newspapers, on the lips of members of the Church of England, Unitarians, and even Freethinkers. Poor old Robert Owen, the philanthropist, has been converted, and made a confession of faith in public. One cannot but respect a man who, in his old age, has the boldness to declare himself as having been blinded and mistaken through life.'

In December, 1854, William Howitt returned from his travels without any gold in his pockets, but with the materials for his _History of Discovery in Australia and New Zealand._ Thanks to what he used to call his four great doctors, Temperance, Exercise, Good Air, and Good Hours, he had displayed wonderful powers of activity and endurance during his exploration of some almost untracked regions of the new world. At sixty years of age he had marched twenty miles a day under a blazing sun for weeks at a time, worked at digging gold for twelve hours a day, waded through rivers, slept under trees, baked his own bread, washed his own clothes, and now returned in the pink of condition, with his passion for wandering only intensified by his three years of an adventurous life. The family experiences were diversified thenceforward by frequent change of scene, for William was always ready and willing to start off at a moment's notice to the mountains, the seaside, or the Continent. But whether the Howitts were at home or abroad, they continued their making of many books, so that it becomes difficult for the biographer to keep pace with their literary output. Together or separately they produced a _History of Scandinavian Literature, The Homes and Haunts of the Poets, a Popular History of England_, which was published in weekly parts, a _Year-Book of the Country_, a _Popular History of the United States_, a _History of the Supernatural_, the _Northern Heights of London_, and an abridged edition of _Sir Charles Grandison_, besides several tales for young people, and contributions to magazines and newspapers.

Even increasing age had no power to narrow their point of view, or to blunt their sympathy with every movement that seemed to make for the relief of the oppressed, the welfare of the nation, or the advancement of the human race. Just as in youth they had championed the cause of Catholic Emancipation and of political Reform, so in later years we find them advocating the Repeal of the Corn Laws, taking part in the Anti-Slavery agitation, working for improvement in the laws that affected women and children, and supporting the Bill for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. A more debatable subject--that of spiritualism--was investigated by them in a friendly but impartial spirit. 'In the spring of 1856, 'writes Mrs. Howitt, 'we had become acquainted with several most ardent and honest spirit mediums. It seemed right to my husband and myself to try and understand the nature of these phenomena in which our new acquaintance so firmly believed. In the month of April I was invited to attend a _séance_ at Professor de Morgan's, and was much astonished and affected by communications purporting to come to me from my dear son Claude. With constant prayer for enlightenment and guidance, we experimented at home. The teachings that seemed given us from the spirit-world were often akin to those of the gospel; at other times they were more obviously emanations of evil. I felt thankful for the assurance thus gained of an invisible world, but resolved to neglect none of my common duties for spiritualism.' Among the Hewitts' fellow-converts were Robert Chambers, Robert Owen, the Carter Halls and the Alaric Watts's; while Sir David Brewster and Lord Brougham were earnest inquirers into these forms of psychical phenomena.

In 1865 William Howitt was granted a pension by Government, and a year later the couple moved from Highgate to a cottage called the Orchard, near their former residence at Esher. Of their four surviving children, only Margaret, the youngest, was left at home. Anna, already the author of a very interesting book, _An Art Student at Munich_, had, as her mother observes, taken her place among the successful artists and writers of her day, 'when, in the spring of 1856, a severe private censure of one of her oil-paintings by a king among critics so crushed her sensitive nature, as to make her yield to her bias for the supernatural, and withdraw from the arena of the fine arts.' In 1857 Anna became the wife of Alfred Watts, the son of her parents' old friends, Alaric and Zillah Watts. The two boys, Alfred and Charlton, born explorers and naturalists, both settled in Australia. Alfred, early in the sixties, had explored the district of Lake Torrens, a land of parched deserts, dry-water-courses, and soda-springs, whose waters effervesced tartaric acid; and had opened up for the Victorian Government the mountainous district of Gippsland, with the famous gold-field of the Crooked River. In 1861 he had been employed to head the relief-party that went in search of the discoverer, Robert O'Hara Burke, and his companions, and a year later he brought back the remains of the ill-fated explorers to Melbourne for public burial. Later in life he was successfully employed in various Government enterprises, and published, in collaboration with a friend, a learned work on the aborigines of Australia.

Charlton Howitt, the younger son, after five years' uncongenial work in a London office, emigrated to Australia in 1860. His quality was quickly recognised by the Provincial Government, which, in 1862, appointed him to command an expedition to examine the rivers in the province of Canterbury, with a view to ascertaining whether they contained gold. So admirably was the work accomplished that, on his return to Christchurch, he was intrusted with the task of opening up communications between the Canterbury plains and the newly-discovered gold and coal district on the west coast. 'This duty was faithfully performed, under constant hardships and discouragement,' relates his mother. 'But a few miles of road remained to be cut, when, at the end of June, 1863, after personally rescuing other pioneers and wanderers from drowning and starvation in that watery, inhospitable forest region, Charlton, with two of his men, went down in the deep waters of Lake Brunner; a fatal accident which deprived the Government of a valued servant, and saddened the hearts of all who knew him.'

After four peaceful years at Esher, the _Wanderlust_, that gipsy spirit, which not even the burden of years could tame, took possession of William and Mary once more, and they suddenly decided that they must see Italy before they died. In May, 1870, they let the Orchard, and, aged seventy-seven and seventy-one respectively, set out on their last long flight into the world. The summer was spent on the Lake of Lucerne, where the old-world couple came across that modern of the moderns, Richard Wagner, and his family. By way of the Italian Lakes and Venice they travelled, in leisurely fashion, to Rome, where they celebrated their golden wedding in April, 1871. The Eternal City threw its glamour around these ancient pilgrims, who found both life and climate exactly suited to the needs of old age. 'I prized in Rome,' writes Mrs. Howitt, 'the many kind and sympathetic friends that were given to us, the ease of social existence, the poetry, the classic grace, the peculiar and deep pathos diffused around; above all, the stirring and affecting historic memories.... From the period of arrival in Rome, I may truly say that the promise in Scripture, "At evening time there shall be light," was, in our case, fulfilled.'

The simple, homely life of the aged couple continued unbroken amid their new surroundings. William interested himself in the planting of Eucalyptus in the Campagna, as a preventive against malaria, and had seeds of different varieties sent over from Australia, which he presented to the Trappist monks of the Tre Fontani. He helped to establish a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and struck up a friendship with the gardeners and custodians of the Pincio, to whom he gave expert advice on the subject of the creatures under their charge. The summer months were always spent in the Tyrol, where the Howitts had permanent quarters in an old mansion near Bruneck, called Mayr-am-Hof. Here William was able to indulge in his favourite occupation of gardening. He dug indefatigably in a field allotment with his English spade, a unique instrument in that land of clumsy husbandry, and was amazed at the growth of the New Zealand spinach, the widespread rhubarb, the exuberant tomatoes, and towering spikes of Indian corn. Thanks to the four great doctors before mentioned, he remained hale and hearty up to December, 1878, in which month he celebrated his eighty-seventh birthday. A few weeks later he was attacked by bronchitis, which, owing to an unsuspected weakness of the heart, he was unable to throw off. He died in his house on the Via Sistina, close to his favourite Pincio, on March 3, 1879.

Mrs. Howitt now finally gave up the idea of returning to end her days in England. Her husband and companion of more than fifty years was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Home, and when her time came, she desired to be laid by his side. The grant of a small pension added to the comfort of her last years, and was a source of much innocent pride and gratification, for, as she tells her daughter Anna, 'It was so readily given, so kindly, so graciously, for my literary merits, by Lord Beaconsfield, without the solicitation or interference of any friend or well-wisher.' In May, 1880, she writes to a friend from Meran about 'a project, which seems to have grown up in a wonderful way by itself, or as if invisible hands had been arranging it; that we should have a little home of our own _im heiligen Land Tirol_. This really is a very great mercy, seeing that the Tyrol is so beautiful, the climate so beneficial to health, and the people, taken as a whole, so very honest and devout. Our little nest of love, which we shall call "Marienruhe," will be perched on a hill with beautiful views, surrounded by a small garden.' On September 29, 1881, Mrs. Howitt and her daughter, Margaret, slept, for the first time, in their romantically-situated new home near Meran.

At Marienruhe, the greater portion of the last seven years of Mary Howitt's life was spent in peace and contentment. Here she amused herself with writing her 'Reminiscences' for _Good Words_, which were afterwards incorporated in her _Autobiography_. Age had no power to blunt her interest in the events of the day, political or literary, and at eighty-seven we find her reading with keen enjoyment Froude's _Oceana_ and Besant's _All Sorts and Conditions of Men_, books that dealt with questions which she and her husband had had at heart for the best part of a lifetime, and for which they had worked with untiring zeal. Of the first she writes to a friend: 'We much approve of his (Froude's) very strong desire that our colonies should, like good, faithful, well-trained children, be staunch in love and service to old Mother England. How deeply we feel on this subject I cannot tell you; and I hope and trust that you join strongly in this truly English sentiment.' Of the second she writes to Mrs. Leigh Smith: 'I am more interested than I can tell you in _All Sorts and Conditions of Men_. It affects me like the perfected fruit of some glorious tree which my dear husband and I had a dim dream of planting more than thirty years ago, and which we did, in our ignorance and incapacity, attempt to plant in soil not properly prepared, and far too early in the season. I cannot tell you how it has recalled the hopes and dreams of a time which, by the overruling Providence of God, was so disastrous to us. It is a beautiful essay on the dignity of labour.'

The last few years of Mary Howitt's life were saddened by the deaths of her beloved sister, Anna, and her elder daughter, Mrs. Watts, but such blows are softened for aged persons by the consciousness that their own race is nearly run. Mary had, moreover, one great spiritual consolation in her conversion, at the age of eighty-three, to the doctrines of Roman Catholicism In spite of her oft-repeated protestations against the likelihood of her 'going over,' in spite of her declaration, openly expressed as late as 1871, that she firmly believed in the anti-Christianity of the Papacy, and that she and her husband were watching with interest the progress of events which, they trusted, would bring about its downfall, Mrs. Howitt was baptized into the Roman Church in May, 1882. Her new faith was a source of intense happiness to the naturally religious woman, who had found no refuge in any sectarian fold since her renunciation of her childish creed. In 1888, the year of the Papal Jubilee, though her strength was already failing, she was well enough to join the deputation of English pilgrims, who, on January 10, were presented to the Pope by the Duke of Norfolk. In describing the scene, the last public ceremony in which she took part, she writes: 'A serene happiness, almost joy, filled my whole being as I found myself on my knees before the Vicar of Christ. My wish was to kiss his foot, but it was withdrawn, and his hand given to me. You may think with what fervour I kissed the ring. In the meantime he had been told my age and my late conversion. His hands were laid on my shoulders, and, again and again, his right hand in blessing on my head, whilst he spoke to me of Paradise.'

Having thus achieved her heart's desire, it seemed as if the last tie which bound the aged convert to earth was broken. A few days later she was attacked by bronchitis, and, after a short illness, passed away in her sleep on January 30, 1888, having nearly completed her eighty-ninth year. To the last, we are told, Mary Howitt's sympathy was as warm, her intelligence as keen as in the full vigour of life, while her rare physical strength and pliant temper preserved her in unabated enjoyment of existence to the verge of ninety. Although many of her books were out of print at the time of her death, it was said that if every copy had been destroyed, most of her ballads and minor poems could have been collected from the memories of her admirers, who had them--very literally--by heart.

William and Mary Howitt, it may be observed in conclusion, though not leaders, were brave soldiers in the army of workers for humanity, and if now they seem likely to share the common lot of the rank and file--oblivion--it must be remembered that they were among those favoured of the gods who are crowned with gratitude, love, and admiration by their contemporaries. To them, asleep in their Roman grave, the neglect of posterity brings no more pain than the homage of modern critics brings triumph to the slighted poet who shares their last resting-place.