● ● ● could persist beyond a person’s lifetime. If she had only known, she was catching a glimpse of her own future.
Albert’s death brought her face to face with mortality. The brother and sister had both known the precariousness of human life from their earliest years. But here was the thing itself, so intimately bound up with her hopes for the future that she seemed at first to have lost a piece of her own life.
A month later in a poem which began “O! health, for thee I languish,” she foresaw an early death for herself and wondered whether she would be forgotten. It was not a very good poem, but it showed her baffled by the pain and mystery of finiteness.112 Back in 1840 Albert had written her:
I hope . . . that amidst the depth of your sufferings, you may receive the satisfaction, to feel, that however great may be your afflictions, it is for your good—that the chastisement is inflicted by that Hand which is never laid upon us but in mercy, though it may appear in anger.
I hope you may yet enjoy health, but whatever may be your lot, I pray you to reflect upon it, with calmness & resignation. The ways of Providence are inscrutable, but however far above us, I rely, with entire confidence in the justice of God; & whatever may happen to me, for good or for evil, I see the same hand in it all—& seeing it, I can say no less, than that God rules, let the earth submit.113
This was a far cry from the skeptical Albert of earlier years, but it was also a far cry from his spirited sister. Her poems and letters show her effort to bring herself to a complete acceptance of that “Christian resignation” which the age held out as a prime virtue, but one senses ● ● ●
112 [Mary Baker, entry dated 23 November 1841, “Impromptu to health,” poem, A09002, pp. 92– 93.] Many of the poems cited in these chapters have slight, if any, poetic merit, but they throw valuable biographical light on their author.
113 Albert Baker to Mary Baker, 16 February 1840, 1919.001.0039, LMC.