PREFACE
WITH the exception of the last two chapters, these three volumes were printed at the same time with the first three volumes of “The Story of my Life” in 1896, therefore many persons are spoken of in them as still living who have since passed away, and others, mentioned as children, have since grown up.
Reviews will doubtless, in general, continue to abuse the book, especially for its great length. But personally, if I am interested in a story, I like it to be a long one; and there is no obligation for any who dislike a long book to read this one: they may look at a page or two here and there, where they seem promising; or, better still, they can leave it quite alone: they really need have nothing to complain of.
In the later volumes I have used letters for my narrative even more than in the former. Many will feel with Dr. Newman that “the true life of a man is in his letters.... Not only for the interest of a biography, but for arriving at the inside of things, the publication of letters is the true method. Biographers varnish, they assign motives, they conjecture feelings, but contemporary letters are facts.”
C. HARE.
IN MY SOLITARY LIFE
“Console if you will, I can bear it;
’Tis a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death.”—Lowell.
“Whoever he is that is overrun with solitariness, or crucified with worldly care, I can prescribe him no better remedy than that of study, to compose himself to learning.”—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy.
“E certo ogni mio studio in quel temp’ era
Pur di sfogare il doloroso core
In qualche modo, non d’acquistar fama,
Pianger cercai, non già del pianto onore.”
—Petrarch, In Morte di Laura, xxv.
“Why should we faint, and fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heaven hath willed, we die,
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh?”
—Keble.
“Let us dismiss vain sorrows: it is for the living only that we are called to live. Forward! forward!”—Carlyle.
I SPENT the greater part of the fiercely cold winter of 1870-71 in complete seclusion at Holmhurst, entirely engrossed in the work of the “Memorials,” which had been the last keen interest of my Mother’s life. In calling up the vivid image of long-ago days spent with her, I seemed to live those days over again, and I found constant proof of her loving forethought for the first months of my solitude in the materials which, without my knowledge, and without then the slightest idea of publication, she must have frequently devoted herself to arranging during the last few years of her life. As each day passed, and the work unravelled itself, I was increasingly convinced of the wisdom of her death-bed decision that until the book was quite finished I should give it to none of the family to read. They must judge of it as a whole. Otherwise, in “attempting to please all, I should please none: shocking nobody’s prejudices I should enlist nobody’s sympathies.”
Unfortunately this decision greatly ruffled the sensibilities of my Stanley cousins, especially of Arthur Stanley and his sister Mary, who from the first threatened me with legal proceedings if I gave them the smallest loop-hole for them, by publishing a word of their own mother’s writing without their consent, which from the first, also, they declared they would withhold. They were also “quite certain” that no one would ever read the “Memorials” if they were published, in which I always thought they might be wrong, as people are so apt to be when they are “quite certain.”
My other cousins did not at first approve of the plan of the “Memorials,” but when once completely convinced that it had been their dear aunt’s wish, they withdrew all opposition.
Still the harshness with which I was now continually treated and spoken of by those with whom I had always hitherto lived on terms of the utmost intimacy was a bitter trial. In a time when a single great gri
WITH the exception of the last two chapters, these three volumes were printed at the same time with the first three volumes of “The Story of my Life” in 1896, therefore many persons are spoken of in them as still living who have since passed away, and others, mentioned as children, have since grown up.
Reviews will doubtless, in general, continue to abuse the book, especially for its great length. But personally, if I am interested in a story, I like it to be a long one; and there is no obligation for any who dislike a long book to read this one: they may look at a page or two here and there, where they seem promising; or, better still, they can leave it quite alone: they really need have nothing to complain of.
In the later volumes I have used letters for my narrative even more than in the former. Many will feel with Dr. Newman that “the true life of a man is in his letters.... Not only for the interest of a biography, but for arriving at the inside of things, the publication of letters is the true method. Biographers varnish, they assign motives, they conjecture feelings, but contemporary letters are facts.”
C. HARE.
IN MY SOLITARY LIFE
“Console if you will, I can bear it;
’Tis a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam
Has made Death other than Death.”—Lowell.
“Whoever he is that is overrun with solitariness, or crucified with worldly care, I can prescribe him no better remedy than that of study, to compose himself to learning.”—Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy.
“E certo ogni mio studio in quel temp’ era
Pur di sfogare il doloroso core
In qualche modo, non d’acquistar fama,
Pianger cercai, non già del pianto onore.”
—Petrarch, In Morte di Laura, xxv.
“Why should we faint, and fear to live alone,
Since all alone, so Heaven hath willed, we die,
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh?”
—Keble.
“Let us dismiss vain sorrows: it is for the living only that we are called to live. Forward! forward!”—Carlyle.
I SPENT the greater part of the fiercely cold winter of 1870-71 in complete seclusion at Holmhurst, entirely engrossed in the work of the “Memorials,” which had been the last keen interest of my Mother’s life. In calling up the vivid image of long-ago days spent with her, I seemed to live those days over again, and I found constant proof of her loving forethought for the first months of my solitude in the materials which, without my knowledge, and without then the slightest idea of publication, she must have frequently devoted herself to arranging during the last few years of her life. As each day passed, and the work unravelled itself, I was increasingly convinced of the wisdom of her death-bed decision that until the book was quite finished I should give it to none of the family to read. They must judge of it as a whole. Otherwise, in “attempting to please all, I should please none: shocking nobody’s prejudices I should enlist nobody’s sympathies.”
Unfortunately this decision greatly ruffled the sensibilities of my Stanley cousins, especially of Arthur Stanley and his sister Mary, who from the first threatened me with legal proceedings if I gave them the smallest loop-hole for them, by publishing a word of their own mother’s writing without their consent, which from the first, also, they declared they would withhold. They were also “quite certain” that no one would ever read the “Memorials” if they were published, in which I always thought they might be wrong, as people are so apt to be when they are “quite certain.”
My other cousins did not at first approve of the plan of the “Memorials,” but when once completely convinced that it had been their dear aunt’s wish, they withdrew all opposition.
Still the harshness with which I was now continually treated and spoken of by those with whom I had always hitherto lived on terms of the utmost intimacy was a bitter trial. In a time when a single great gri
