180 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xin 



M. Sismondi for his nice affectionate little note. I am 

 sure I thank him with all my heart for my share of it. 

 I enjoy being at home very much, though it looks rather 

 rainy and stormy at present. I do hope that you will 

 quite have got over our going away by the time you get 

 this. I cannot bear to think of you as being melancholy. 

 Everybody compliments Mamma on her good looks, and 

 says she looks much better than when she went away. You 

 and my uncle and our charming visit at Chene are never 

 very long out of my mind. I think it is the happiest time 

 I ever spent, and that is saying a great deal. I will enjoy 

 it again some time. 



Good-bye, my own aunt Jessie, EMMA W. 



Jessie wrote to Bessy (13 Nov. 1825): "I answered your 

 last lovely letter to Emma because her postscript was irre- 

 sistible. I love to encourage the tenderness of children I 

 love as if they were my own, and who will, I hope, from time 

 to time supply to me the place of them. It is a tie the 

 tenderer between us if you will let me participate in the 

 choicest blessing you have, or any mother ever had as they 

 tell me here. 1 am so little disposed to question it that I 

 would they were my own." The natural longings of a 

 childless woman can more than once be traced in Jessie's 

 letters and appear in her attitude towards her nieces. She 

 was happy in winning a warm response to the passionate 

 love she felt for them. My cousin, Julia Wedgwood, told 

 me that the romance of Elizabeth's life was her love for her 

 aunt Jessie, and Emma's was equally warm. She was from 

 early days her aunt's pet child, and the relation only became 

 closer all through her girlhood. Although after her marriage 

 the cares of husband and children prevented frequent 

 intercourse, their love lasted through life. 



The only event to be chronicled, in the following winter 

 1825-6 is the coming of Allen, eldest son of John Wedgwood, 

 to take possession of the little living at Maer. He was still 

 lame from a long illness. In a letter from Kingscote (the 

 John Wedgwoods), in May, 1825, his aunt Fanny Allen 

 wrote: 



Allen is still going about on his crutches. He appears 

 feeble, and I should be afraid would never be any better 



