Henry Crabb Robinson, Bury St. Edmunds, to the Rev. John Miller, [Bockleton], 3 September 1857.

Bury St Edmunds

3d Septr 1857./ –

My dear Sir,

     It will give you pleasure, I have no doubt, to read that on a recent visit to Rydal I found dear Mrs Wordsworth all I could wish and more than I could hope – It would seem burlesque to refer in speaking of a blind old woman of 88 to such an image as – the phantom of delight Yet the weightier couplet

                         A perfect woman, nobly planned

                         To warn, to comfort and command

may still be brought to one’s mind –

     In her extreme old age she has attained an age not contemplated in those three stanzas to which I have referred And exhibits a phase of existence worthy to be the sequel of those – I spent nearly a week with her – during my stay I had frequent walks with her on the well known terrace And read to her from her husbands poems – The reading in which she most delights –

    During this stay I never heard a syllable of regret pass her lips – She is the beau ideal of resignation – I probably related to you an anecdote – It is said that at the very last hour moment of his life She was heard to whisper in his ear – You are going to Dora. We may be sure therefore that in her calm submission she never forgets that she is going to William

     The faithful James is still at Rydal And will not leave his mistress – She had her choice between her Carriage or him – And she retains him she enjoys the perfect health of an Octogenarian

     Not far from Rydal resides Mrs Hutchinson and her daughters – They all speak of you with gratitude and affection as the friend and patron of their Son and brother – the clergyman – And are expecting from his Northern Mission the other brother

     The chief changes I remark in this district are made by death – Those who depart have successors, but in the nature of things, these must be for the present at least, inferiors, whatever they may become hereafter. The most remarkable of the residents is Mrs Fletcher, whose husband was Anno 1794 one of the legal defenders at Edinburg of the famous Scotch victims of judicial oppression – Muir and Palmer &c &c to whose memory Columns have lately been erected, poor compensation for exile to the Antipodes – their crime being the recommendation of that act which has been imperfectly performed in a parliamentary reform – Its imperfection being acknowledged by the ministerial announcement of a further instalment My only fear is lest the balance be now inclined too much on the other side – Mrs Fletcher [is] older than Mrs W: has been eulogised by Lord Brougham with his characteristic force And after years of comparative poverty & threatened with want, because the leader of Edinburg Society literary society – but in the time of Jeffery’s triumph, was the almost single avowed admirer of the lyrical ballads – She exhibits the remains of great personal beauty resembling Mrs Barbauld in whose house I saw her sixty years since.  There too is the widow of Dr Arnold – She scarcely belong[s] to the same age – yet she has a son known as the author of a military novel of which the Scene is in India He is at the head of the Educational Establishment, in the Punjab – And Mrs A. read to me a letter written to me early in the Spring, before any awkward Symptom was exhibited of the Catastrophe that has since burst out in which however his apprehensions are clearly announced – And now assume the character of prophecy – Subsequent letters from him shew that he is aware of the full extent of the peril tho’ it has not yet reached the district in which he lives –

     No calamity so vast was ever brought to our notice – not in the Gazette of the day merely but even in the history of the past, at least I can call to mind none of equal malignity, without any redeeming quality – The horrors of the reign of terror and attending the earlier periods of the French Revolution may have been equally revolting to the Imagination. But these were accompanied by magnanimous aspirations & met by heroic resistance – Here we can see nothing but the brutal impulses of a half <–> savage race who are striving to recall sustain a ferocious superstition Their effort is to preclude a future civilization And the only defence which the objects of this insane attack venture to make, is – That they never attempted to do what it was their duty to do – in another way certainly – And if we succeed in subduing the insurgents, it will not be because their ^our^ own cause is a holy one, Or that of their foes enemy a mere brutal struggle of barbarism against the spirit of civilisation – but merely on account of the disproportion of physical power –

     During the successive campaigns of the French Revolution wars, there was not One without its lesson – few have learned it I fear – But what is to be learned in this forthcoming conflict In the mean while how extreme the peril – we are of necessity throwing ourselves at the feet of France, relying on the Fidelity – of Louis Napoleon, of Alexander, of Francis, &c &c &c – Can we contemplate such a prospect without Alarm?

     Before I went to the north, I spent a few days at Manchester – And since, I attended the Archaeologians at their assembly this year at Norwich from whence I came to my native town – whence I write – Here I expect to remain a few weeks – London seemed deserted – at least by all those in whose society I delight – At my age however on all sides I hear of the departure of old friends – And you, I know, have experienced the like – Such is our condition It is consolatory to think of a distant friend, tho’ the thought is not enlivened by a personal recollection

             I am dear Sir   sincerely yours

                                 H. C. Robinson

Revd John Miller./ –

Text: WLL/2000.24.2.8, Wordsworth Trust and Museum, Grasmere.