III
At this period Cobbett married. Nobody has left us wiser sentiments or pithier sentences on the choice of a wife. His own, the daughter of a sergeant of artillery, stationed like himself at New Brunswick, had been selected at once. He had met her two or three times, and found her pretty; beauty, indeed, he considered indispensable, but beauty alone would never have suited him. Industry, activity, energy, the qualities which he possessed, were those which he most admired, and the partner of his life was fixed upon when he found her, one morning before it was distinctly light, “scrubbing out a washing-tub before her father’s door.” “That’s the girl for me,” he said, and he kept to this resolution with a fortitude which the object of his attachment deserved and imitated.
The courtship was continued, and the assurance of reciprocated affection given; but before the union of hands could sanctify that of hearts, the artillery were ordered home for England. Cobbett, whose regiment was then at some distance from the spot where his betrothed was still residing, unable to have the satisfaction of a personal farewell, sent her 150 guineas, the whole amount of his savings, and begged her to use it—as he feared her residence with her father at Woolwich might expose her to bad company—in making herself comfortable in a small lodging with respectable people until his arrival. It was not until four years afterwards that he himself was able to quit America, and he then found the damsel he had so judiciously chosen not with her father, it is true, nor yet lodging in idleness, but as servant-of-all-work for five pounds a year, and at their first interview she put into his hands the 150 guineas which had been confided to her—untouched. Such a woman had no ordinary force of mind; and it has been frequently asserted that he who, once beyond his own threshold, was ready to contend with every government in the world, was, when at home, under what has been appropriately called the government of the petticoat.
Cobbett’s marriage took place on the 3rd of February, 1792; that is, about ten weeks after his discharge; but having in March brought a very grave charge against some of the officers of his regiment, which charge, when a court-martial was summoned, he did not appear to support, he was forced to quit England for France, where he remained till September, 1792, when he determined on trying his fortune in the United States.