Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/81

69 But neither family nor friends could help me to redeem those hostages—my children; and not yet seeing my way to the struggle a new law afterwards enabled me to make, I supplicated incessantly, and in vain. I thought of nothing, day or night, hut my children. Lord Melbourne wrote to me, surprised at my silence after the trial; and I told him I was broken-hearted on this point, and had written to petition my husband for mercy respecting them. I wrote bitterly and despondingly; and Lord Melbourne's replies were certainly not cheering or comforting. His anger against Mr Norton for having submitted to be employed, to injure not only him but his party—"those who are attached to me and follow my fortunes"—was mixed with something like reproach to me, for not having more keenly and severely judged and foreseen the conduct of the husband I had toiled and asked favours for. I had not the "lover" attributed to me; but I had a friend, deeply wounded, and whom I grieved to wound; and these are his letters;—

"South Street, July 2nd, 1836. "''Well, come what may, I will never again, from silence or any other symptom, think that you can mean anything unkind or adverse to me. I have already told you that most of the bitterness which I have felt during this affair, was upon your account. &hellip;&hellip; do not think your application to Norton was judicious. From the beginning, your anxiety to prevent publicity has induced you to apply to him too much. Every communication elates him, and encourages him to persevere in his brutality. You ought to know him better than I do, and must do so. But you seem to me to be hardly aware what a gnome he is: how perfectly earthy and bestial. He is possessed of a devil y and that the meanest and basest fiend that disgraces the infernal regions. In my opinion he has somehow or other made this whole matter subservient to his pecuniary interest. He has got money by it, from or some one else. I should feel certain of this, if it were not for his folly, which is so excessive as to render him incapable even of forwarding his own low designs''."