THE SISTERS OF GREAT MEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 20019, 7 August 1920, Page 2

THE SISTERS OF GREAT MEN.

STORIES OF LIFES.OHG DEVOTION.

There is nothing sweeter in Iranian ' history than tho story of Dorotbv i Wordsworth's life-long devotion To hoc gifted brother, the Lake Poet (says “John o’ London's Weekly”). In tho long panorama of their'lives we.see tho children toddling hand in hand to the dame’s school, rambling in the country, frolicking in the old-fashioue 1 garden at Cockermouth ; profoundly tm. happy when poverty separated them for a few later years, and Bent Dorothr to servo behind her grandfather’*; liter in Penrith, and feeling a “ jn\ above all joys” on the rare occasions of their meeting. Then ilie supreme happiness vlicn once again the same root sheltered them—the Dorsetshire farmhouse Hr* delightful long trumps together in all weitliete, tho joint work- in garden and house, the ponce of tho evening hours, William writing poetry, Dono thv r.l, her needlework or Italian. 1 was full of thought about, m darling,'’ sho writes in her diary ■'Blessings on that brother mine!’ And so it was to the end. Her whole life was dedicated to the brother c 'm loved—as a widowed mother might loro her only child.

HER BROTHER'S NUESE.

And even when no took to himself a wife her devotion was disturbed by no pang of jealousy. ifhc took hia wife and little ones to hor great heart; sho washer brother's nurse in sickness, the inspiver and gentle critic of his work, the comrade of his journeys, and even when her long illness cloud r' her mind and crippled her body, on! sko “lived in second infancy,” she clung to him with a love she carrici to her grave in tho groeeu churchyard of Grasmere, where even death was powerless to divide them. No lets touching in its loyalty was Mary Lamb's demotion to her brother Charles—“'Saint Charles,” as lovers ci his essays have come to call him—which no assault of unkind fate had power io weaken. From the day Charles was cradled in tho by no mean* happy .homo of his father, the Bencher’s clerk in the- Temple, his. ten-year-old sister dedicated her- life to him. As soon as ho had learned to walk she took him to see tho great, shining river, the splashing fountain in the Temple gardens; mid taught him to spell out. the inscription on tho sun dial and on tho tombstones in tho old buryiug-ground. fcbe was mother, nurse, and devoted sister in _ one.

THE TKAGEIVY

Throng]'. ,hk schooldays and ear-1 v. years at'his clerk s desk, ‘‘they shared ea.ch other’s joys, and sorrows,' aril mutual love helped to brighten thei; dreary, monotonous round of duty”; Mary toiling long hours with her needle in a brave effort to keep poverty from the clcdr, for the family nad fa lie t on evil days, and on the clerk and his sister fell -the bnrdeii of its support Then came that day of tragedy when Mary’s reason completely gave way under the terrible-strain; and in a- sudden attack oDmadnesshslie stubbed her mother ■to thc’ihear.l,: d''-' ' ■ | “My . poor,; dear; dearest sister her heart-broken brother wrote,; ‘‘ in a fit of insanity lias been the death of her mother. She ia at presnt in a madhouse—God Almighty have us in His keeping!” When at last reason was restored and she, returned to her brother, it was but for a brief time; for on the following Christmas Day she was hack in the. asylum, and Charles, in his grief, was writing:— " l,am ,a widowed thing,, now tlum art gone!—Kov;*' tho’ lift' gooey, my; ’own '■familiar friend, . -v ].. r , Companion, siitor. helpmnto.'.counsel-

But, although the cloud of insanity always hovered over sister and brother alike, it only served to make them more devoted and indispensable .to each other; and to'both the intervals when they could be together were “ glimpses ef heaven,”

Now we see them installed in their Islington cottage, a. delightful change from tbcir attic lodgings' in Inner Temple Lane, spending happy hours, together at 'work in the- garden.. Of' afternoons,” tars Charles. “w6 pick primroses, and Maw corrects me when [ call 'em cowslips. - ’ And now at Enfield, where Charles retired from- his clerkship, n “ passing rich” on n pension of £‘M a year.

STARVING IX AX ATTIC

And all that these devoted sisters were to their brothers Hcilriette Ileuan was to her brother Ernest. Xo sacrifice was over too great to make for the child she loved so .much;, more than herself. Ehc renounced her great longing for the life of. the convent' she rejected the otters of many. a. devoted lover and .good man that she might live for his welfare. For Ernest she would live, and, if need he, for Ernest she would die. When poverty fell on her home, and, weett than poverty, the shame of heavy Jetts incurred hy an improvident father, she resolutely took all the burden on her frail shoulders; and, pinning on her old green shawl and kissing, a. tong good-bye to all she loved on r-artb. she fared to Paris- to : face the drudgery of school-teaching, starving in ai! attic that'she might send her last possible franc borne for her mother's emptv purse. AX EXILE. tVh©n more money was required than she could scrape in Paris, she exiled herself to Poland for the sake of hotter [raid work, her hard-earned bank-notes coming to her brother with unfailing regularity. “ I shall owe you everything, poor Tlennette.” Ernest wrote to her in 1842. “ You have been n. second mother to me, and all my heart is given to you.” Even when her brother, after all her self-denial, decided that his conscience would not permit him to become a priest, not a word of reproach escaped her. It was only after ten years of severahoo that brother and sister met again, when they set up house together "in n modest apartment in Paris: and those were the happiest years of ’Henriette's lib. * It was during a. visit to the East that both were struck down hy fever; and, after a gallant struggle for life. Henrietta drew her last breath. Henriette, bravo, loving soul, was left to sleep under the palms of the Holy Land.