The Last Voyage: To India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam'. Brassey AnnieЧитать онлайн книгу.
father. After her marriage she was good and kind to my parents. To my brothers, until they were old enough to form happy homes of their own, she was an affectionate sister.
At the date of our marriage, no definite career had opened out for me. To follow my father's business was not considered expedient, and I had no commanding political influence. In the endeavour to help me to obtain a seat in Parliament, your dear mother displayed a true wife-like devotion. She worked with an energy and earnestness all her own, first at Birkenhead in 1861, and later at Devonport and Sandwich – constituencies which I fought unsuccessfully – and my return for Hastings in 1868 afforded her the more gratification. It had been the custom in the last-named constituency to invite the active assistance of ladies, and especially the wives of the candidates, in canvassing the electors. Your mother readily responded to the call. She soon became popular among the supporters of the Liberal party, and throughout my connection with Hastings she retained the golden opinions which she had so early won. Her nerve, high spirit, and ability, under the fierce ordeal of the petition against my return, have been described in his memoirs by Serjeant Ballantine, who conducted my case. He called your mother as his first witness for the defence, put one or two questions, and then handed her wholly unprepared to the counsel for the petitioners – the present Lord Chancellor. With unflinching fortitude your mother endured a cross-examination lasting for upwards of an hour. Her admirable bearing made a great impression upon the eminent judge (Mr. Justice Blackburn) who tried the case, and won the sympathies of the dense crowd of spectators. I remember how gratefully your mother acknowledged the mercy of Heaven in that crisis of her life. 'I could not have done it unless I had been helped,' were her simple words to me.
Down to the latest election in which I was engaged, your dear mother, in the same spirit of personal devotion to her husband, wrought and laboured in the political cause. I have put her love for me as the prime motive for her efforts in politics; but she had too much intelligence not to form a judgment of her own on public issues. Her sympathies were instinctively on the side of the people, in opposition to the old-fashioned Toryism, so much more in vogue a quarter of a century ago than it is to-day.
In helping me to hold a seat in Parliament, your dear mother was inflicting upon herself a privation very hard to bear. Owning to the rapid changes in all the circumstances of our lives, it was difficult to preserve old associations. In the midst of new environments, to make her way alone was a great strain. It is some consolation to know what happiness I gave when, upon my release from the urgent demands of Parliamentary and official life, I was able to spend much of my time in her dear society. It is sad that this happy change should have come so late.
In addition to the share which she took in my Parliamentary labours, your mother undertook the exclusive management at home. This responsibility was gradually concentrated in her hands, owing to my long service in the House of Commons, combined with exceptionally heavy extra-Parliamentary work, finally culminating in my holding office at the Admiralty for more than five years.
How we shall miss her in everything! specially in the task of arranging in the museum, now near completion, the combined collections of our many journeys! She had so looked forward to being able to bring together these collections in London; one of her objects being to afford instruction and recreation to the members of the Working Men's Clubs, to whom she proposed to give constant facilities of access to the collection.
The same spirit, which made your dear mother my helpmeet in my public life, sustained her, at the sacrifice of every personal predilection, in constant companionship with her husband at sea. She bore the misery of sea-sickness without a murmur or complaint. Fear in storm and tempest she never knew. She made yachting, notwithstanding its drawbacks, a source of pleasure. At Cowes she was always on deck, card in hand, to see the starts in the various matches. At sea she enjoyed the fair breezes, and took a deep interest in estimating the daily run, in which she was generally wonderfully exact. She had a great faculty for seamanship, and knew as well as anybody on board what should be done and what was being done on deck.
The same eager sympathy with every interest and effort of mine led your dear mother to help me as President of the Working Men's Club and Institute Union. She attended the meetings, distributed the prizes, and on one occasion entertained the members and their friends at Normanhurst. Upwards of a thousand came down from London, and were addressed by Lord Houghton and by M. Waddington, the French Ambassador. She also did all she could to encourage the Naval Artillery Volunteers. For years she attended inspections and distributed prizes on board the 'President' and the 'Rainbow.' She was always present at the annual service in Westminster Abbey. She witnessed the first embarkation in a gunboat at Sheerness. She carried through all the commissariat arrangements for the six hundred naval volunteers who were brought together from London, Liverpool, and Bristol for the great review at Windsor, sleeping under canvas for three nights in our encampment, and personally and most efficiently superintending every detail. The men were enthusiastic in their appreciation of her efforts.
The same interest was shown in my naval work. Your dear mother accompanied me frequently in my visits to the dockyard towns at home and abroad, attended naval reviews, and was present at the manœuvres on the coast of Ireland in 1885, and in Milford Haven in 1886. At home and abroad she always aided most cordially my desire to establish kindly relations with the naval profession, among whom she numbered, I am sure, not a few sincere friends. The same spirit of sympathy carried your mother with me on dreary and arduous journeys to Ireland, where she paid several visits to the Lough Swilly estates. She called personally on every tenant, asked them to visit the 'Sunbeam,' treated them most kindly, and won their hearts.
Her reception of the Colonial visitors to England last year, when suffering from severe illness, and the visits to the Colonies, which were the last acts of her life, are the most recent proofs which your dear mother was permitted to give of her genuine sympathy with everything that was intended for the public good. The reception which she met with in Australia afforded gratifying assurances of the wide appreciation of her high-minded exertions on the part of our Colonial friends.
The last day of comparative ease in your mother's life was spent at Darnley Island. You remember the scene: the English missionaries, the native teacher with his congregation assembled around him, the waving cocoa-nuts, the picturesque huts on the beach, the deep blue sea, the glorious sunshine, the beauty and the peace. It was a combination after your mother's heart, which she greatly enjoyed, resting tranquilly under the trees, fanned by the refreshing trade-wind. You will remember her marked kindness of manner in giving encouragement to the missionaries in their work. It was another instance of her broad sympathies.
In attempting to give a description of your dear mother's fine character, I cannot omit her splendid courage. I have referred to it as shown on the sea. You who have followed her with the hounds, as long as she had strength to sit in the saddle, will never forget her pluck and skill. Her courage never failed her. It upheld her undaunted through many illnesses.
And now I turn to that part of the work of her life by which your dear mother is best known to the outer world. Her books were widely read by English-speaking people, and have been translated into the language of nearly every civilised nation. The books grew out of a habit, early adopted when on her travels, of sitting up in bed as soon as she awoke in the morning, in her dressing-jacket, and writing with pencil and paper an unpretending narrative of the previous day's proceedings, to be sent home to her father. The written letter grew into the lithographed journal, and the latter into the printed book, at first prepared for private circulation, and finally, on completion of our voyage round the world, for publication. The favourable reception of the first book was wholly unexpected by the writer. She awoke and found herself famous.
Her popularity as a writer has been won by means the simplest, the purest, and most natural which can be conceived. Not a single unkind or ungenerous thought is to be found in any book of hers. The instruction and knowledge conveyed, if not profound, are useful and interesting to readers of all classes. The choice of topics is always judicious. A bright and happy spirit glows in her pages, and it is this which makes the books attractive to all classes. They were read with pleasure by Prince Bismarck, as he smoked his evening pipe, as well as by girls at school. Letters of acknowledgment used to reach your mother from the bedside of the aged and the sick, from the prairies of America, the backwoods of Canada, and the lonely sheep-stations of Australia. Those grateful letters