1880-1882] My Mother s Widowhood 255 



From about this time onward my mother's health was less 

 good, and she was not able to spend so much time out of 

 doors. Thus there was a long day to be filled up with reading, 

 writing, or other occupations, for to the end of her life she 

 could hardly endure doing nothing even for a quarter of an 

 hour. But I think the years of her widowhood were happy 

 ones. She herself said to me, " I feel I can bear your father's 

 loss. I felt I couldn't bear Amy's." 1 And then she added 

 that this was her own loss and that in the past " she had had 

 so much." The only regret I ever heard her express was 

 that she had not told him how much pleased she was at his 

 putting up her photograph by the side of his big chair in his 

 study, so that he saw it as he looked up from his work. 



Emma Darwin to her son William. 



MY DEAREST WILLIAM, DowN > Ma V 10 > 1882 - 



Your dear letter was a great happiness to me. I 

 never doubted your affection for an instant, but this has 

 brought such an overflow of it that it makes me feel that 

 you could not spare me, and makes my life valuable to me- 

 and in every word I say to you, I join my dear Sara. 



Two or three evenings ago they all drew me in the bath- 

 chair to the sand-walk to see the blue-bells, and it was all 

 so pretty and bright it gave me the saddest mixture of feel- 

 ings, and I felt a sort of self-reproach that I could in a 

 measure enjoy it. I constantly feel how different he would 

 have been. I have been reading over his old letters. I 

 have not many, we were so seldom apart, and never I think 

 for the last 15 or 20 years, and it is a consolation to me to 

 think that the last 10 or 12 years were the happiest (owing 

 to the former suffering state of his health, which appears in 

 every letter), as I am sure they were the most overflowing 

 in tenderness. 



I felt secure about him, and any little drawback was felt 

 [by him as well as by me] to be temporary. How often he 

 has enjoyed his study and said how good ' the boys " were 

 to make him take it. I can look back on every visit we 



1 Her son Francis's wife who had died after Bernard's birth. 



