THOMAS BEWICK. 



237 



seventy-two, deeply and justly regretted, Isabella, wife of Mr. Thomas 

 Bewick of this town, engraver," his heart must have been heavy indeed; 

 while the nearness of death and the uncertainty of all things human would 

 lead him to meditate on his own more than completed threescore years and 

 ten — a time of life he as a younger man did not think he ever would reach. 

 Bewick records that from their marriage day until the end no cloud, so 

 far as concerned themselves, ever passed over them to obscure a lifetime 

 of uninterrupted happiness. " My Bell," as he was in the habit of fondly 

 calling her, " the best of wives and very best of mothers," died after a 

 protracted and severe illness, and was buried beside her husband's kinsfolk 

 in the churchyard of Ovingham.* 



Not long after his wife's death Bewick was ordered to go to drink the 

 waters at Buxton, as he was suffering severely from gout in the stomach, and 

 he set out on the journey thither, with his daughters Jane and Isabella, at the 

 end of May. Before starting he wrote a letter (now in the possession of 

 Mr. C. J. Pocock) to Charnley, the bookseller, dated May 22nd, 1826, in which, 

 after relating the cause of his approaching departure, he says, "lam aware 

 of the heavy and at this time inconvenient expense this will bring upon me 

 and am using every exertion to come at the means and enable me to meet it, 

 and it is on this account that I now solicit payment of your Christmas 

 account, which I hope it will be convenient to you to settle." 



Dovaston, in the "Magazine of Natural History" for March, 1830, states 

 that early in June, 1826 (misprinted 1827), Bewick wrote to him from 

 Buxton, telling him of his visit, and Dovaston, a man of independent means 

 and enthusiastic tendencies, at once started from his house at Shrewsbury 

 for the same place. Dovaston relates his interviews with the old man and 

 his daughters at their apartments, nearly opposite the Old Hall, and close 

 to the famous Crescent. There Bewick sat at the window watching the 

 people passing to and fro, and Dovaston says he drew caricatures of the 



* As mentioned on p. 85, there is some doubt as to Mrs. Bewick's age. 



