PART II. Our best beliefs from best affections spring, WILLIAM SMITH: Guidone. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath, MRS. BROWNING. CHAPTER XVI. MEETING. THE story of the man's life has been told partly in the words of his wife, as she wrote it in the early days of her bereavement, at first for dear friends only, then yielding with hesitancy to entreaties that it should be given to a wider circle. And now there lies at hand the fuller story of her own heart in its springtime, a story she wrote out at a later time for her solace. Under what impulse it was written is told in its opening words: "My husband, my all, even now, despite the distance and the dark,' I have often thought of writing down more fully my happy memories of our blended life. I will begin to-day (March 27, 1875) — will take refuge if I may from the unspeakable sorrow of the present in the glad completeness of the past. 6 "I was always fond of looking back even when, with you by my side, the now was better than any then, since you said you loved me more and more.' You would point me to the future, to other happy years. But now, I do not think you would blame me for seeking some alleviation for a grief that you pitied 'infinitely, infinitely.' I will weave into my narrative of facts bits of your writings, your letters. If I live to be old, to be blind, some kind soul will read these pages to me. They will help me to bear and to hope. They will quicken the failing life. It may be too that our nieces may find them. precious, for surely it is good for all to dwell upon a character like yours, to sympathize with my love of you." And so, in the rare intervals when she was quite alone, through the next four years, she lived out, on paper, the time from the first meeting of the two until the weddingday. Parts of the story she read to one or another intimate friend, and the whole of it she left at her death to a beloved niece of her husband's, giving it to her absolute disposal. She was a woman completely retired from publicity, without a spark of literary ambition for herself, and never entertaining a thought of self-disclosure except to friends; but, as to her husband, divided between a sympathy with his own aversion to conspicuousness, and a wish that others might know his worth. In her words above quoted "Surely it is good for all to dwell upon a character like yours, to sympathize with my love for you may be seen some vague idea that others beside the nieces might possibly hear this fuller story. But, once embarked in the telling, it is plain that all auditors were forgotten the flow of memory took its way as spontaneous, as unchecked, as the heart beats. In the next three chapters two strands are woven together, one from the Memoir, the other from the Manuscript. Among the passages omitted from the latter are most of the interspersed expressions which tell of aching loss. That belongs to a later time. Here shall be given, almost unshadowed by after years, the story of love's happy beginning. (From the Memoir.) It was in the August of 1856 that William Smith and his future wife first became acquainted. My beloved mother, at that time a complete invalid, a little niece of mine who then lived with us, and I had been spending the early summer in Borrowdale, and we too, attracted by the new and cheerful row of lodging-houses, now took up our abode at 3 Derwentwater Place. The solitary student, to whom I confess I not a little grudged the drawing-room floor, soon sent to proffer one request that the little girl would not practise her scales, etc., during the morning hours. Now and then we used to pass him in our walks, but he evidently never so much as saw us. There was something quite unusual in the rapt abstraction of his air, the floating lightness of his step; one could not help wondering a little who and what he was, but for several weeks nothing seemed more entirely unlikely than our becoming acquainted. The lodging-place that we all occupied was kept by a mother and two daughters, who had had a reverse of fortune, and to whom this way of life was new. We were their first tenants. One of the daughters especially was well educated and interesting. To her I gave a copy of Grillparzer's "Sappho," which I had recently translated. I knew she would value it a little for my sake, but it never occurred to me that she would take it to the recluse in the drawing-room. She did so, however. Piles of manuscript on his desk had convinced her that he was "an author," and it amused her to show him the little production of one of the other lodgers! Perhaps he may have thought that she did this at my request, perhaps his kindliness disposed him to help by a hint or two some humble literary aspirant- for always he was kind; at all events, the very next day he sent down a message proposing to call, and on the 21st of August there came a knock at our sitting-room door; the rapid entrance of a slight figure, some spell of simplicity and candor in voice ́and manner that at once gave a sense of freedom; and the give-and-take of easy talk - beginning with comments on the translation in his hand had already ranged far and wide before he rose, and, lightly bowing, left the room. I thought him absolutely unlike any one 1 One little observation of his clung to my memory, and returns to it very often in my present loneliness is it too trivial to record? Discussing the building instinct in insect and bird, and their variety of dwellings, he said, "The primary condition of the home is that there should be two." |