The day before yesterday Fanny and I walked to see Mrs. Napier, all in
black for Lady Clare--the suddenness of whose death, scarcely a moment's
interval between the bright flash of life and the dark silence of death,
was most striking and awful.
Yesterday we went to see dear Lady Elizabeth Whitbread, all as it used
to be, beautiful camellias, but she herself so sad--Miss Grant is dying.
Nothing can surpass her true tenderness to this faithful, gentle,
sincere old friend. All these illnesses and deaths are the more striking
I think in a bustling capital city, than they would be in the country
surrounded by one's family. There is something shocking in seeing the
bustling, struggling crowd who care nothing for one another dead or
alive: and they may say, so much the better, we are spared unavailing
thought and anguish, and yet I would rather have the thought and even
the anguish--for without pain there is no pleasure for the heart no
prayer for Indifference for me! Every _memento mori_ comes with some
force to me at seventy-seven, and I do pray most earnestly and devoutly
to God, as my father did before me, that my body may not survive my
mind, and that I may leave a tender not unpleasing recollection in their
hearts.
Though I have written this, my dear mother, and feel it truly, I am not
the least melancholy, or apprehensive or afraid of dying, and as to the
rest I am truly resigned, and trust to the goodness of my Creator living
or dying.
_Jan. 13_.
Thursday evening at Rogers's--the party was made for us and as small as
possible, Lady Charlotte Lindsay, Lady Davy, Mr. and Mrs. Empson, and
Mr. Compton and Lord Northampton. Mr. Empson is very little altered in
twelve years: the same affectionate heart and the same excellent head.
Lord Northampton is very conversable; and Mr. Compton brought me sugared
words from troops of children.