Had it been otherwise, "in my heart," he
says, "I could have wished--yea," here he breaks out, "yea, and cannot
cease to wish--that God would guide you to this place. "[109] And after
all, he had not long to wait, for whether Mr. Harry Locke died in the
interval, or was wearied, he too, into giving permission, five months
after the date of the letter last quoted, "Mrs. Anne Locke, Harry her
son, and Anne her daughter, and Katharine her maid," arrived in that
perfect school of Christ, the Presbyterian paradise, Geneva. So now, and
for the next two years, the cup of Knox's happiness was surely full. Of
an afternoon, when the bells rang out for the sermon, the shops closed,
and the good folk gathered to the churches, psalm-book in hand, we can
imagine him drawing near to the English chapel in quite patriarchal
fashion, with Mrs. Knox and Mrs. Bowes and Mrs. Locke, James his
servant, Patrick his pupil, and a due following of children and maids. He might be alone at work all morning in his study, for he wrote much
during these two years; but at night, you may be sure there was a circle
of admiring women, eager to hear the new paragraph, and not sparing of
applause. And what work, among others, was he elaborating at this time,
but the notorious "First Blast"? So that he may have rolled out in his
big pulpit voice, how women were weak, frail, impatient, feeble,
foolish, inconstant, variable, cruel, and lacking the spirit of counsel,
and how men were above them, even as God is above the angels, in the
ears of his own wife, and the two dearest friends on earth. But he had
lost the sense of incongruity, and continued to despise in theory the
sex he honoured so much in practice, of whom he chose his most intimate
associates, and whose courage he was compelled to wonder at, when his
own heart was faint. We may say that such a man was not worthy of his fortune; and so, as he
would not learn, he was taken away from that agreeable school, and his
fellowship of women was broken up, not to be reunited. Called into
Scotland to take at last that strange position in history which is his
best claim to commemoration, he was followed thither by his wife and his
mother-in-law. The wife soon died. The death of her daughter did not
altogether separate Mrs. Bowes from Knox, but she seems to have come and
gone between his house and England. In 1562, however, we find him
characterised as "a sole man by reason of the absence of his
mother-in-law, Mrs. Bowes," and a passport is got for her, her man, a
maid, and "three horses, whereof two shall return," as well as liberty
to take all her own money with her into Scotland. This looks like a
definite arrangement; but whether she died at Edinburgh, or went back to
England yet again, I cannot find. With that great family of hers, unless
in leaving her husband she had quarrelled with them all, there must have
been frequent occasion for her presence, one would think. Knox at least
survived her; and we possess his epigraph to their long intimacy, given
to the world by him in an appendix to his latest publication. I have
said in a former paper that Knox was not shy of personal revelations in
his published works. And the trick seems to have grown on him. To this
last tract, a controversial onslaught on a Scottish Jesuit, he prefixed
a prayer, not very pertinent to the matter in hand, and containing
references to his family which were the occasion of some wit in his
adversary's answer; and appended what seems equally irrelevant, one of
his devout letters to Mrs. Bowes, with an explanatory preface. To say
truth, I believe he had always felt uneasily that the circumstances of
this intimacy were very capable of misconstruction; and now, when he was
an old man, taking "his good-night of all the faithful in both realms,"
and only desirous "that without any notable sclander to the evangel of
Jesus Christ, he might end his battle; for as the world was weary of
him, so was he of it";--in such a spirit it was not, perhaps, unnatural
that he should return to this old story, and seek to put it right in the
eyes of all men, ere he died. "Because that God," he says, "because that
God now in His mercy hath put an end to the battle of my dear mother,
Mistress Elizabeth Bowes, before that He put an end to my wretched life,
I could not cease but declare to the world what was the cause of our
great familiarity and long acquaintance; which was neither flesh nor
blood, but a troubled conscience upon her part, which never suffered her
to rest but when she was in the company of the faithful, of whom (from
the first hearing of the word at my mouth) she judged me to be one.... Her company to me was comfortable (yea, honourable and profitable, for
she was to me and mine a mother), but yet it was not without some cross;
for besides trouble and fashery of body sustained for her, my mind was
seldom quiet, for doing somewhat for the comfort of her troubled
conscience. "[110] He had written to her years before from his first
exile in Dieppe, that "only God's hand" could withhold him from once
more speaking with her face to face; and now, when God's hand has indeed
interposed, when there lies between them, instead of the voyageable
straits, that great gulf over which no man can pass, this is the spirit
in which he can look back upon their long acquaintance. She was a
religious hypochondriac, it appears, whom, not without some cross and
fashery of mind and body, he was good enough to tend. He might have
given a truer character of their friendship had he thought less of his
own standing in public estimation, and more of the dead woman. But he
was in all things, as Burke said of his son in that ever memorable
passage, a public creature. He wished that even into this private place
of his affections posterity should follow him with a complete approval;
and he was willing, in order that this might be so, to exhibit the
defects of his lost friend, and tell the world what weariness he had
sustained through her unhappy disposition. There is something here that
reminds one of Rousseau. I do not think he ever saw Mrs. Locke after he left Geneva; but his
correspondence with her continued for three years. It may have continued
longer, of course, but I think the last letters we possess read like the
last that would be written. Perhaps Mrs. Locke was then re-married, for
there is much obscurity over her subsequent history. For as long as
their intimacy was kept up, at least, the human element remains in the
Reformer's life. Here is one passage, for example, the most likable
utterance of Knox's that I can quote:--Mrs. Locke has been upbraiding
him as a bad correspondent. "My remembrance of you," he answers, "is not
so dead, but I trust it shall be fresh enough, albeit it be renewed by
no outward token for one year. _Of nature, I am churlish; yet one thing
I ashame not to affirm, that familiarity once thoroughly contracted was
never yet broken on my default.