Subsequently to this painful collision with Mrs. Lee
at the Oxford Assizes, I heard nothing of her for
many years, excepting only this—that she
was residing in the family of an English clergyman
distinguished for his learning and piety. This
account gave great pleasure to my mother—not
only as implying some chance that Mrs.
Lee might be
finally reclaimed from her unhappy opinions, but also
as a proof that, in submitting to a rustication so
mortifying to a woman of her brilliant qualifications,
she must have fallen under some influences more promising
for her respectability and happiness than those which
had surrounded her in London. Finally, we saw
by the public journals that she had written and published
a book. The title I forget; but by its subject
it was connected with political or social philosophy.
And one eminent testimony to its merit I myself am
able to allege, viz., Wordsworth’s.
Singular enough it seems, that he who read so very
little of modern literature, in fact, next to nothing,
should be the sole critic and reporter whom I have
happened to meet upon Mrs. Lee’s work.
But so it was: accident had thrown the book in
his way during one of his annual visits to London,
and a second time at Lowther Castle. He paid
to Mrs. Lee a compliment which certainly he paid to
no other of her contemporaries, viz., that of
reading her book very nearly to the end; and he spoke
of it repeatedly as distinguished for vigor and originality
of thought.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “My sister Mary’s governess.”—This
governess was a Miss Wesley, niece to John Wesley,
the founder of Methodism. And the mention of her
recalls to me a fact, which was recently revived and
misstated by the whole newspaper press of the island.
It had been always known that some relationship existed
between the Wellesleys and John Wesley. Their
names had, in fact, been originally the same; and
the Duke of Wellington himself, in the earlier part
of his career, when sitting in the Irish House of
Commons, was always known to the Irish journals as
Captain Wesley. Upon this arose a natural belief
that the aristocratic branch of the house had improved
the name into Wellesley. But the true process
of change had been precisely the other way. Not
Wesley had been expanded into Wellesley, but, inversely,
Wellesley had been contracted by household usage into
Wesley. The name must have been Wellesley
in its earliest stage, since it was founded upon a
connection with Wells Cathedral, It had obeyed the
same process as prevails in many hundreds of other
names: St. Leger, for instance, is always pronounced
as if written Sillinger; Cholmondeley as Chumleigh;
Marjoribanks as Marchbanks; and the illustrious name
of Cavendish was for centuries familiarly pronounced
Candish; and Wordsworth has even introduced this name
into verse so as to compel the reader, by a metrical
coercion, into calling it Candish. Miss Wesley’s
family had great musical sensibility and skill.
This led the family into giving musical parties, at
which was constantly to be found Lord Mornington,
the father of the Duke of Wellington. For these
parties it was, as Miss Wesley informed me, that the
earl composed his most celebrated glee.
Copyrights
Autobiographical Sketches from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
