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

WAYS.

tinrt erafhtt

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
Aane 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 ono
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-
ma,rks bly 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, I
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
roor 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,
'lf 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
au 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 benevo-
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 tinder foot ; now, it was the wider em-
ployment of her own sex in the general
business of life ; now, it was all these things at
once. Perfectly unselfish, swift to sympathise and
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 occu-
pation, the strongest constitution will commonly go
down. Hers, neither of the strongest nor the weak-
est, yielded to the burden, and began to sink. To
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 the
sweet patience of her natural disposition purified by
the resignation of her soul, she lay upon her bed
through the whole round of changes of the seasons.
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 querulous
minute can be remembered. At length, at midnight
on the 2d of February, 1864, she turned down a
leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it uP.
The ministering hand that had copied the verses into
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 think
you are very, very ill to-night, my dear.'—' Send
for my sister. My feet are so cold. Lift me up
Her sister entering as they raised her, she said,
has come at last !' And with a bright and happy'
smile, looked forward, and departed."
In quoting the above, the Athenzum remarks very'
justly that it is impossible to add to the beauty of
this monograph.

THE WIDOW OF THE LATE HON. G-. W. Gort-
Dois.--A GOOD EXAMPLE.—On Tuesday evening, the
sth inst., the ladies connected with the Caledonian-road
Chapel, Islington (Rev. Ebenezer Davies's), at their
monthly meeting for prayer and Christian fellowshiPt
unanimously and most heartily resoled that by the next
West India mail a letter of sympathy and condoler°
should be sent in their name to the widow of the late AV'
Gordon in her terrible affliction—the greatest that csll
possibly befall a wife. The pastor's wife, Mrs. DavieS:
who presided, and who for several years has herself reside,'
in the West Indies, was requested to draw up the letter,
and to express it in their high estimate of Mr. Gordore°
character, and of the courage and self-denial on his Part
for more than twenty years, to lift up his voice so unfiincll-
ingly as he did on behalf of the oppressed. The readilo
by a lady, to an assemblage of ladies, mostly wives, of Mr'
Gordon's beautiful, meek, humble, loving, heroic, and ilia,
all respects Christian letter to his wife, penned within
-
few minutes of his cruel and illegal death, produced
indescribable effect. It was felt that the case of Mrs. G°•-
don, though in many respects resembling, is at the 011
time in many of its features far more painful than that °
Lady William Russell, in 1683.
The New York correspondent of the CincinOti
Commercial says that at Mrs. John Wood's theatre WI
have actually gotten up, and are performing, a bur
lesrlill
melange of over an hour in length, devoted to Bennett
iace.
the Herald, the great black mailer. One scene is laid
_.
purgatory— the other in James Gordon's editorial sancta%
In one appears the devil and his imps—in the other,,,titi%
editor of the herald, with goggles on, and his imps. '-`,,,
pith and point of the whole thing seems to be, that t.Pir
prince of darkness and his cohorts are taxing
gathertheir in'
genuity to devise some plan by which they can „,
Bennett within their fold. They feel that he is too Iro°_:0
for them, and, indeed, he does baffle their efforts for 01:14
time, and goes on in his career of wickedness, but fi ,1;',
is circumvented, and falls into the hands of Satan, rile
amidst a glare of red lights, hastens him down to
file ielalthr eegciounr s7t a
iann
drops,
drtohpts7
andhe eaxaptirreeasmineraia blazediapoi
anti
yseapaectruro°oo9;
the stage with the words:—" This establiO4Dient 014
advertise in the New York Herald."