In 1802, the Barbaulds moved to Stoke Newington, where they lived at 113 Church Street. Rochemont took over the pastoral duties of the Unitarian Chapel at Newington Green, a mile away. Barbauld herself was happy to be nearer her brother, John, as her husband's mind was rapidly failing.[40] Rochemont developed a "violent antipathy to his wife and he was liable to fits of insane fury directed against her. One day at dinner he seized a knife and chased her round the table so that she only saved herself by jumping out of the window."[41] Such scenes repeated themselves to Barbauld's great sadness and real danger, but she refused to leave him. Rochemont drowned himself in the nearby New River in 1808 and his widow was overcome with grief. When she returned to writing, she produced the radical poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven (1812), which depicted England as a ruin.[42]
It was reviewed so viciously that according to Barbauld scholar William McCarthy, there "were no further separate publications from her pen", and Lucy Aikens went so far as to say, erroneously, that Barbauld gave up writing altogether.[43]
McCarthy explains that Barbauld "did not entirely withdraw from print or from writing", but that she withdrew into "the waters of a deep and long depression".[44] Barbauld confessed that her pen had been lazy in 1813, but after that year she wrote as many as three "dialogues" and an "Ode to Remorse".[45] Until the 2010s, Eighteen Hundred and Eleven was considered to have ended Barbauld's career, but recent scholarship has reinstated it to the Literature of Romantic literature as well as Barbauld's reputation as a poet of the period.[46] It is now often viewed by scholars as her greatest poetic achievement.[47] Barbauld died in 1825, a renowned writer, and was buried in the family vault in St Mary's, Stoke Newington. After her death, a marble tablet was erected in the Newington Green Chapel with the following inscription:
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In Memory of ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD, Daughter of John Aikin, D.D. And Wife of The Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, Formerly the Respected Minister of this Congregation. She was born at Kibworth in Leicestershire, 20 June 1743, and died at Stoke Newington, 9 March 1825. Endowed by the Giver of all Good With Wit, Genius, Poetic Talent, and a Vigorous Understanding She Employed these High Gifts in Promoting the Cause of Humanity, Peace, and Justice, of Civil and Religious Liberty, of Pure, Ardent, and Affectionate Devotion. Let the Young, Nurtured by her Writings in the Pure Spirit of Christian Morality; Let those of Maturer Years, Capable of Appreciating the Acuteness, the Brilliant Fancy, and Sound Reasoning of her Literary Compositions; Let the Surviving few who shared her Delightful and Instructive Conversation, Bear Witness That this Monument Records No Exaggerated Praise.[48] |
Original title page from Eighteen Hundred and Eleven |
