Jewsbury, Maria Jane (1800-1833). - Letter, from the Indian Ocean, some 700 miles from Ceylon and at Colombo, Island of Ceylon, to Dora Wordsworth (1804-1847), at Rydal Mount, near Ambleside, Westmoreland, England, dated 4 January 1833. WLMS A / Jewsbury, Maria Jane / 40.

The Indian Ocean -

Some 700 miles from Ceylon.

January 4 - 1833

My own dearest Dora

What an odd place to remember Fox Ghyll Dungeon Gill & Kent's Bank in! - And yet there & many other places where you, & I, & Willy - rode & laughed together & perhaps may ride & laugh again are full in my mind. You see, hope has a place in me yet, or remembering my old moody mind, I ought to say at last. The truth is, the farther I get from England the more I look back, & if the bull may pass, forward to it. As the butcher said the other day I proceed forward [aft]. I have thought of Rydal more than ever within the last day or two - from the accidental discovery, that one of the middies, is a youth of the name of Newton from Waterhead House near Ambleside - that he could speak of all the neighbourhood - & knew your family - he is what the first mate calls "a very decent youth," - & ever since, Mr F & I have quite warmed to him. We quite agree in thinking no mountains yet seen (Madeira, Tenereffe, & the Mauritius) equal those of Westmoreland "[awa]" - Mr Newton is well - & wrote home from the Mauritius.

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And how are you all? How very vain the question! Birds we see & have seen in plenty, boobies, albatrosses, Mother Carey's chickens & many more - but none are messenger birds, & till you write to me per post - little shall I know of your dearly remembered circle - to which it is a constant matter of regret, I could not introduce Mr Fletcher. Lest I scribble on & have no space, re give my affectionate love & respects all round - particularly to Aunt Wordsworth. My kind regards too to E. & H. Cookson - & tell Mrs: Luff with my respects, I thought of her at the Mauritius, where we remained nearly a week. - visiting & exploring. If it was agreeable when she lived there, she would find Port Louis sadly changed - there was an insurrection last June - the French have vowed to suffer no more English Judges to sit - no intercourse between the two nations now takes place - the frivolity of the manners in Port Louis, disgusted us all - & we heard of things that shocked us still more in the way of morals. The Judge we took out there was immediately attacked by the Press, - and till the arrival of the new Governor [[-?-?-]] he declined attempting to act. They want a Charter - a la jeune France! -

My Journals have I hope travelled to you - & light & meagre as they are, you must look on them in the light of letters.

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More than in any descriptions of [sparking] You will feel interested I know in hearing that now I have recovered from illness brought on by Isle of Francing, my health is very good: & my spirits much more tranquil than ever they were on land: a foolish person like my sensitive self, must fret & fume [[-?-]]sometimes every where but on the whole this climate has had a beneficial influence on me. I rise every morning at six - & by early rising, & occupation, hope to keep both mind & body in health. We are both anxious to go up the country on reaching Bombay, & from the strong letters of recommendation Mr F. carries to the Governor (Lord [[?]]) both Ministerial & private, I doubt not, we shall have as good a station as may be at liberty. All the Anglo-Indians represent the Chaplaincies as pleasant & highly advantageous - if I can succeed, in keeping my health, making my Cabbages & English flowers grow, - & if my English friends will not die or forget me, I dare say I shall be very happy in India - [meagre] my occasional fits of melancholy. Whatever happens always remember, I never repented the 1st: of August. Human health & happiness, depend after all far more on conduct than climate duty is as sacred with the Thermometer at 87 in January as in your January, at some 32 or 6 - I shall often read over your father's Ode to Duty. - Today's duty is patience, for we have had some 48 hours calm

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& a calm is the peculiar time of being cross, the ship heaves, the sun scorches, the breeze won't blow - does no more good than a lady's fan - we are all conscious of standing still - & get weary of the hours - having nothing fresh to talk of. Our passing though not swift has been very prosperous - we had off the Cape a few gales, but nothing to signify - I thought them however sufficiently significant. At Ceylon where we land to Chief Justice, we shall remain several days - My anxiety is becoming great to reach India & be settled in privacy in house - bungalow - or tent. I must now my dearest Dora draw to a close - writing is the most fatiguing of all tropical occupations - however I hope this letter short as it is, will convince you, that having loved you in the North, I love you still in the East. God bless you all. My love to Hampstead when you write - & believe me ever & ever more yrs - M.J. Fletcher -

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Jan 16 - I add a P.S. - just to say that calms & cross winds have stayed us from Ceylon till now, & if we reach before Friday it will be well - it will be the middle or end of Feb: before we make Bombay - however it will be all [one] in March - how you would smile could you see me now - Our Cabin - both from size, light & air, quite a parlour - Mr. Fletcher deep in divinity studies in white jacket & trowsers - black handkerchief, no waistcoat - no light, no sound but of the sea. Yet all in our cabin resembling an English Morning - My Canaries, singing & quarrelling to perfection - English songs heard from the next Cabin - English thoughts in my head & my hand writing to a dear dear English friend -

<May I venture to express my respect for the family at Rydal Mount? although I have not the honor of their acquaintance I feel proud that that my wife has. W.K.F>

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Columbo. Jan 22 - This letter was sealed - but I open it, to give you the heads of a little romance. Two days ago we made anchored here - Being Sunday, Mr Fletcher came off to Church - while waiting, - he was saluted as an old friend by the Senior Chaplain, Mr Bailey who insisted on our spending our stay in his house - We came - on sitting down to dinner, he casually quoted a line of your father's - And "are you a Wordsworthian?" - and "do you know Wordsworth" were natural exclamations - He is a friend of a friend of yours - Mr Kenyon - & such a Wordsworthian as I have rarely if ever met - every edition of your father is here - filled with M.S. notes - Sonnets - remarks &c In fact, it is carries me home again, despite of Cocoa nut trees - [Cingalese - Punkaps - Palanguins] & heat. I must transcribe his lines on one of your

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father's pictures (he did not know of Boxall's) - His Mind is of quite the highest order - & he has drunk deeply into of sorrow - His hospitable kindness is very great - but as he wishes me to transcribe a message to your father, I must copy the lines & have done.

On Wordsworth's portrait. Though sadness seem to dwell upon this face, It is of Thought, the “melancholy grace”: Deep thought is seated on that ample brow, And sheds a grandeur on the face below; A countenance serene, where feelings mild With high Imagination mingle, - Child, And Youth, and Manhood, - every age we trace Depicted in his works, and in his face.

Whether we shall see Judge Rough or not I do not know, as he is on circuit some 60 miles off - You must wait my next Journal for particulars of Ceylon - but hitherto I like

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it as much as I disliked the Mauritius -

Memorandum for Mr Wordsworth. "Mr. Bailey took the liberty, before he left England, in the autumn of 1831 to desire his publisher to send to Mr: Wordsworth, a few verses, an opusculum, not a book - "Poetical Sketches of the South of France," All Mr B desired in this was to shew his respect for an individual, the productions of whose mind, have been familiar to Mr B for about twenty years, nearly the half of his life - the relief of his more oppressive studies, the solace of his more profound sorrows. Since Mr B. has been in India, very shortly after his arrival, it was God's will that he should be deprived, until he himself quit this scene, of the dear companion of his life - bound to him by the strongest ties of affection - by taste, feeling, & all the higher properties of a fine heart & mind. The last books she read were the Bible, Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living, a volume of Shakspeare, & a volume of Wordsworth. If the last named Poet will write an epitaph on his beloved wife, the writer of these lines will bear that gratitude individually, which will be the kindred feeling to the veneration he has long borne mentally to the only one whom for ages of English literature he deems worthy of the name of[] Confident of meeting him hereafter in the yet brighter character of a Christian" - Columbo Island of Ceylon - Jan 22 - 1833.

Miss Dora Wordsworth

Rydal Mount

nr Ambleside

Westmoreland

England.

Columbo. January 19th

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Object summary: WLMS A / Jewsbury, Maria Jane / 40