They laid him there, and she loved to walk to the grave of an evening,
so long as she stayed in Edmonton. Indeed, she was with difficulty
induced to go away for short visits to the Moxons and other friends. She
was still at the Waldens in July, 1836, for an indenture has been shown
to me lately, of that date and of that place, by which she disposes of
the copyright of the “Tales from Shakespear” and of “Mrs. Leicester’s
School.” This document was witnessed by Edward Moxon and Frederick
Walden. Her signature to it is in distinct and unshaken characters, and
her middle name is written without the final _e_, thus, curiously
enough, spelling it Ann; for it was always elsewhere and by every one
spelled Anne.
Later, her lucid intervals becoming less frequent and less prolonged,
and her malady growing so nearly chronic that there was only “a
twilight of consciousness in her,” she was kept under care and restraint
in St. John’s Wood until her death, thirteen years after his. She rests
by his side, in the same grave, as they both wished. His pension had
been, with rare generosity, continued to her by the East India Company,
and, in addition, she enjoyed the income of his small savings (£2,000)
during her life; at her death it went to Emma Isola Moxon. This was the
sum total of coin which he had gathered together; his real riches were
lavishly dispensed during his life, and are hoarded now by all of us who
love his memory.
We walk from Enfield by the same path across the fields through which
Lamb escorted Wordsworth and his other visitors to the _Bell_ at
Edmonton, there to take a parting glass with them, before the return
coach to town should come along. That famous inn is no longer as it was
in his day, even then still in the same state as it was when Cowper
laughed all night at the diverting history of John Gilpin, just heard
from Lady Austen, and said that he “must needs turn it into a ballad
when he got up,” to relieve his reaction of melancholy. The balcony
from which the thrifty wife gazed on Johnny’s mad career is gone, the
very walls are levelled, a vilely vulgar gin-palace rises in their
place, and the ancient sign, bearing the legend, _The Bell and John
Gilpin’s Ride_, is now replaced by a great aggressive gilt emblem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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