Mrs. Trevithick now joined her husband in London, but not until after prolonged importunity on his part; and her reluctance is scarcely to be wondered at when we think of the difficulties which then existed in making the journey from Cornwall to the metropolis. She had to post all the way, three hundred miles, with four children, one of them a baby, and probably with no servant. Besides which, her brother, Mr. Henry Harvey, of Hayle, represented to her that Trevithick's position in London was hardly sufficiently assured as yet to warrant her making the move. Conjugal love, however, at length prevailed over every other consideration; and on her welcome arrival, a touching little incident occurred. She found her two last letters, unopened, in her husband's pocket; and on her reproaching him with this seeming forgetfulness, which she attributed to his being so thoroughly immersed in his multifarious engineering schemes, he confessed that he had not dared to open them, lest her arguments against their reunion should have prevailed over his wishes. It was well for both that the faithful wife came to town: for soon afterwards, had she not ransacked London for a doctor, whilst her husband lay almost dying in a sponging-house, it is unlikely that he would have survived to return to his native county. To Cornwall, however, he at length returned, in broken health and spirits, in 1810, to find that his mother had just died. Trevithick went home by sea, a six days' voyage, and, as we were then at war with France, the _Falmouth Packet_ in which he sailed was under convoy. They were chased by a French man-of-war, from whom they luckily escaped; her commander little dreaming that his small craft (which seems to have owed her safety chiefly to her captain's knowledge of the coast) had on board her the man who had laid proposals before the Government for fitting vessels with high-pressure engines and launching them against the French fleet equipped at Boulogne for the invasion of England.