Annie Besant : an autobiography ... / [Annie Wood Besant].

  • Annie Besant
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annie Besant : an autobiography ... / [Annie Wood Besant]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tion ; you will not have him with you six weeks longer.” The wife staggered back, and fell like a stone on the floor. But love triumphed over agony, and half an hour later she was again at her husband’s side, never to leave it again for ten minutes at a time, night or day, till he was lying with closed eyes asleep in death. I was lifted on to the bed to “ say good-bye to dear papa ” on the day before his death, -and I remember being frightened at his eyes which looked so large, and his voice which sounded so strange, as he made me promise always to be “ a very good girl to darling mamma, as papa was going right away.” I remember insisting that “ papa should kiss Cherry,” a doll given me on my birthday, three days before, by his direction, and being removed, crying and struggling, from the room. He died on the following day, October 5th, and I do not think that my elder brother and I—who were staying at our maternal grandfather’s—went to the house again until the day of the funeral. With the death, my mother broke down, and when all was over they carried her senseless from the room. I remember hearing afterwards how, when she recovered her senses, she passionately insisted on being left alone, and locked herself into her room for the night ; and how on the following morning her mother, at last persuading her to open the door, started back at the face she saw with the cry: “ Good God, Emily! your hair is white ! ” It was even so; her hair, black, glossy and abundant, which, contrasting with her large grey eyes, had made her face so strangely attractive, had turned grey in that