It was in the midst of a life full of all the most coveted elements of
worldly enjoyment, and when she was still beautiful and charming, though
no longer young, that I first knew her. Her face and voice were heavenly
sweet, and very sad; I do not know why she made so profoundly melancholy
an impression upon me, but she was so unlike all that surrounded her,
that she constantly suggested to me the one live drop of water in the
middle of a globe of ice. The loss of her favorite son affected her with
irrecoverable sorrow, and she passed a great portion of the last years
of her life at a place called Cullercoats, a little fishing village on
the north coast, to which when a young girl she used to accompany her
father and mother for rest and refreshment, when the hard life from
which her marriage released her allowed them a few days' respite by the
rocks and sands and breakers of the Northumberland shore. The Duke of
Devonshire, whose infirmity of deafness did not interfere with his
enjoyment of music, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mrs. Arkwright, and
her constant and affectionate friend. Their proximity of residence in
Derbyshire made their opportunities of meeting very frequent, and when
the Arkwrights visited London, Devonshire House was, if they chose it,
their hotel. His attachment to her induced him, towards the end of his
life, to take a residence in the poor little village of Cullercoats,
whither she loved to resort, and where she died. I possess a copy of a
beautiful drawing of a head of Mrs. Arkwright, given to me by the duke,
for whom the original was executed. It is only a head, with the eyes
raised to heaven, and the lips parted, as in the act of singing; and the
angelic sweetness of the countenance may perhaps suggest, to those who
never heard her, the voice that seemed like that face turned to sound.
So Fanny Kemble married, and Adelaide Decamp came and lived with us, and
was the good angel of our home. All intercourse between the two (till
then inseparable companions) ceased for many years, and my aunt began
her new life with a bitter bankruptcy of love and friendship, happiness
and hope, that would have dried the sap of every sweet affection, and
made even goodness barren, in many a woman's heart for ever.
Without any home but my father's house, without means of subsistence but
the small pittance which he was able to give her, in most grateful
acknowledgment of her unremitting care of us, without any joys or hopes
but those of others, without pleasure in the present or expectation in
the future, apparently without memory of the past, she spent her whole
life in the service of my parents and their children, and lived and
moved and had her being in a serene, unclouded, unvarying atmosphere of
cheerful, self-forgetful content that was heroic in its absolute
unconsciousness. She is the only person I can think of who appeared to
me to have fulfilled Wordsworth's conception of
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