The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-13 00:00:00

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11 614 IGH DIER Orin ,11

HER MAJESTY.

-- ~-

WINDSOR CASTLE, Tuesday.
The Queen and royal family are remaining at the
Castle.

Adelaide Anne Procter.

The following exquisite tribute to the memory of
Barry Cornwall's gifted daughter, the late Adelaide
Anne Procter, is prefixed to the newly-published
illustrated edition of her Lyrics, and is from the
pen of Mr. Charles Dickens. It will be read not
without emotion by all true-hearted lovers of our

living literature :
"In the spring of the year 1853, I observed, as
conductor of the weekly journal Household Words,
a short poem among the proffered contributions,
very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses
perpetually setting through the office of such a
periodical, and possessing much more merit. Its

authoress was quite unknown to me. She was one
Miss Mary Berwick, whom I had never heard of ;
and she was to be addressed by letter, if addressed
at all, at a circulating library in the western district
of London. Through this channel Miss Berwick
was informed that her poem was accepted, and
was invited to send another. She complied, and
became a regular and frequent contributor. Many
letters passed between the journal and Miss Ber-
wick, but Miss Berwick herself was never seen.
How we came gradually to establish, at the office
of Household Words, that we knew all about
Miss Berwick, I have never discovered. But, we
settled somehow, to our complete satisfaction, that
she was governess in a family ; that she went to
Italy in that capacity, and returned ; and that she
had long been in the same family. We really knew
nothing whatever of her, except that she was re-
markably business-like, punctual, self-reliant, and
reliable • so I suppose we insensibly invented the
rest. For myself, my mother was not a more real
personage to me than Miss Berwick the governess
became. This went on until December, 1854, when
the Christmas Number, entitled, The Seven Poor
Travellers,' was sent to press. Happening to be
going to dine that day with an old and dear friend,
distinguished in literature as Barry Cornwall,
took with me an early proof of that number, and
remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table,
that it contained a very pretty poem, written by a
certain Miss Berwick. Next day brought me the
disclosure that I had so spoken of the poem to the
mother of its writer, in its writer's presence ; that
I had no such correspondent in existence as Miss
Berwick ; and that the name had been assumed by
Barry Cornwall's eldest daughter, Miss Adelaide
Anne Procter. The anecdote I have here noted
down, besides serving to explain why the parents
of the late Miss Procter have looked to me for these
rbor words of remembrance of their lamented child,
strikingly illustrates the honesty, independence,
and quiet dignity of the lady's character. I had
known her when she was very young; I had been
honoured with her father's friendship when I was
myself a young aspirant ; and she had said at home,
If I send him, in my own name, verses that he
does not honestly like, either it will be very painful
to him to return them, or he will print them for
papa's sake, and not for their own. So I have
made up my mind to take my chance fairly with
the unknown volunteers.' Perhaps it requires an
editor's experience of the profoundly unreasonable
grounds on which he is often urged to accept un-
suitable articles—such as having been to school
with the writer's husband's brother-in-law, or having
lent an alpenstock in Switzerland to the writer's
wife's nephew, when that interesting stranger had
broken his own—fully to appreciate the delicacy and
the self-respect of this resolution. . . . She was
exceedingly humorous, and had a great delight in
humour. Cheerfulness was habitual with her, she
was very ready at a sally or a reply, and in her
laugh (as I remember well) there was an unusual
vivacity, enjoyment, and sense of drollery. She
was perfectly unconstrained and unaffected : as
modestly silent about her productions as she was
generous with their pecuniary results. * * * No
claim can be set up for her, thank God, to the
possession of any of the conventional poetical
qualities. She never by any means held the
opinion that she was among the greatest of human
beings ; she never suspected the existence of a
conspiracy on the part of mankind against her ;
she never recognised in her best friends her worst
enemies ; she never cultivated the luxury of
being misunderstood and unappreciated ; she
would far rather have died without seeing
a line of her composition in print than that I
should have maundered about her, here, as the
Poet,' or ' the Poetess.' * * Always impelled by
an intense conviction that her life must not be
dreamed away, and that her indulgence in her
favourite pursuits must be balanced by action in
the real world around her, she was indefatigable in
her endeavours to do some good. Naturally en-
thusiastic, and conscientiously impressed with a
deep sense of her Christian duty to her neigh-
bour, she devoted herself to a variety of beneve-
lent objects. Now, it was the visitation of the
sick that had possession of her ; now, it was the
sheltering of the houseless ; now, it was the elemen-
tary teaching of the densely ignorant ; now, it waS
the raising up of those who had wandered and got
trodden under foot ; now, it was the wider ein-,
ployment of her own sex in the general
business of life ; now, it was all these things a
once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathise
an
eager to relieve, she wrought at such designs with
a flushed earnestness that disregarded season,
weather, time of day or night, food, rest. Under
such a hurry of the spirits, and such incessant oeen"
pation, the strongest constitution will commonly g°
down. Hers, neither of the strongest nor the weak"
est, yielded to the burden, and began to sink. T°
have saved her life, then, by taking action on the
warning that shone in her eyes and sounded in her
voice, would have been impossible, without changing
her nature. As long as the power of moving about
in the old way was left to her, she must exercise it,
or be killed by the restraint. And so the time came
when she could move about no longer, and took to
her bed. All the restlessness gone then, and all tile
sweet patience of her natural disposition purified hi,
the resignation of her soul, she lay upon her bed
through the whole round of changes of the seasona•
She lay upon her bed through fifteen months. In
all that time, her old cheerfulness never quitted her:
In all that time, not an impatient or a querulovot
minute can be remembered. At length, at midnign
on the 2d of February, 1864, she turned down 0'
leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut ituF:
The ministering hand that had copied the verses lot°
~
the tiny album was soon around her neck, and she
quietly asked, as the clock was on the stroke of One,
Do you think I am dying, mamma ?'•••-.‘ I thing
you are very, very ill to-night, my dear.'—' Sen'h„
for my sister. My feet are so cold. Lift me IA
Her sister entering as they raised her, she said,
has come at last I' And with a bright and happy
smile, looked forward, and departed."
In quoting the above, the Athenwunz remarks Yell
justly that it is impossible to add to the beauty of
this monograph,
ie

THE WIDOW OF THE LATE HON. G. W. GO
DON.--A GOOD EXAMPLE.— On Tuesday evening, t',;
sth inst., the ladies connected with the Caledonian-row
Chapel, Islington (Rev. Ebenezer Davies's), at the°
monthly meeting for prayer and Christian fellowship,'
unanimously and most heartily resolved that by then(4-
West India mail a letter of sympathy and condolenc°
should be sent '. their name to the widow of the late JP
11
Gordon in her terrible affliction—the greatest that r:
possibly befall a wife. The pastor's wife, Mrs. DaTfci
who presided, and who for several years has herself resi"'
in the West Indies, was requested to draw up the letter/
and to express it in their high estimate of Mr. Gordon
A'tl
character, and of the courage and self-denial on his Pt".-11
for more than twenty years, to lift up his voice so unflitte-;
ingly as he did on behalf of the oppressed. Tho
by a lady, to an assemblage of ladies, mostly wives, of
r;
Gordon's beautiful, meek, humble, loving, heroic, 811,c1;,10
all respects Christian letter to his wife, penned wit''"
few minutes of his cruel and illegal death, produced L'r.,
indescribable effect. It was felt that the case of ldrs• a°,
don, though in many respects resembling, is at the St Illof
time in many of its features far more painful than tha
Lady William Russell, in 1683.
The New York correspondent of the Cincion
th
Commercial says that at Mrs. John Wood's the
tiel?
have actually gotten up, and are performing, a burlesqt
melange of over an hour in length, devoted to Ben is
the Herald, the great black mailer. One scene is 1310.0.
purgatory— the other in James Gordon's editorial sanc`
the
In one appears the devil and his imps—in the other,oo
editor of the Herald, with goggles on, and his imps. ilthe
pith and point of the whole thing seems to be, tha.t
prince of darkness and his cohorts are taxing
genuity to devise some plan by which they ean cof
Bennett within their fold. They feel that he is ten
5..0
for them, and, indeed, he does baffle their efforts for,:siii
time, and goes on in his career of wickedness, but 14.00,
is circumvented, and falls into the hands of Satan,ho
amidst a glare of red lights, hastens him down to I
It etre I
fernal regions, and thus he expires in a blaze of sa, Pacrooo
Here the curtain drops, and a streamer is displaYedpes Doti
ct
the stage with the words:—" This establishraent
, advertise in the New York Herald." nth©r