Early in October, 1799, the desolating intelligence reached West
Hamble, that the lingering sufferings of the inestimable Susanna, from
long latently undermining her delicate frame, began openly to menace
its destruction.
Dr. Burney, at this period, had received no intimation of the hovering
storm, which all around him had for some time feared they saw
gathering. To spare him was the united desire of his family, while any
probability, however chequered, remained, that no dire and absolute
necessity would force the infliction of so fatal a shock.
The disposition of Dr. Burney had aided their wishes, through his
native inattention to all evil that was not obtrusive; for evil,
indeed, he as little sought as practised. Passive, therefore, on one
side, and timid on the other, the month of October, 1799, had arrived,
with little comment or discussion upon the precarious health of the
precious absentee; for Hope till then was still, even to the most
anxious of the apprehensive, predominant—Celestial Hope! more soothing
even than transient! more welcome even than delusive! and higher in
power of inspiring blissful sensations than can be cancelled even by
the misery of disappointment! for while so little of earthly happiness
is permanent, how nothingly would be our portion of earthly enjoyment,
were the episodes of ideal delights, in the epic poem of human
existence, circumscribed by experience, and bounded by reality?
But when, with regard to this affecting subject, an alarm once arose in
the family, that, striking even at Hope, showed it fading fast away,
and verging on becoming imperceptible; the same filial solicitude took
necessarily another turn, from the dread of exposing the parental
tenderness of the Doctor to a blow for which he should be utterly
unprepared.
How dire then was the task which fell upon this Memorialist, superadded
to terrors the most thrilling, and grief the most piercing, of
communicating to Dr. Burney, this harrowing menace! of tearing from
his eyes those kindly mists, which had obscured from their sight the
perspective of danger; and breaking into all the flattering schemes of
ultimately calling that darling child “to rock the cradle of declining
age,” and sooth and cheer its last days of repose!
The disclosure, however, was now imperative; the moment was come that
admitted not of another for delay. A long season of agitating doubt
was terminating in an affrighting conviction, that all possibility for
averting the fast advancing calamity, was change of air and scene for
the drooping sufferer.
The tale, therefore, was unfolded; and all that the truest filial
devotion could suggest for mitigating the misery of this tragic
confession, was zealously put forward, by an energetic enumeration of
the means which might still be essayed, to obviate the difficulties
arising from the insurrectional state of Ireland; and the lateness
of the season for making the now last attempt—a trial of her natal
air—to rescue this treasure, yet a space! from the already opening
grave.
The Doctor bore the dreadful intelligence with a taciturn sadness, a
gloomy consternation, the most affecting; yet that shewed surprise to
have little share in his grief. His heart, during the ardent passions
of glowing early manhood, had been rived by a deprivation that had
nearly assailed his reason; and ever since that baleful period, he
had recoiled from the approach of excessive affliction with a horror
of its power over his mind, that made him shut his ears, and close
his eyes, on the menace of every sorrow, of which the anticipation
would be unavailing.—Such this must have been to him; and from this,
therefore, he had sedulously turned aside; though he had long, it is
presumable, been latently annoyed by apprehensions to which he had
refused examination or harbour: for prognostics there are, where our
wills and our wishes are opposed to the probabilities of events, from
which no conflicts can rescue our fears, combat as we may to chase
them from our thoughts. Prognostics that cross our paths like ruthless
spectres; that present phantasms of perils; and that, while shunned in
one quarter, start up abruptly in another! that invade the avenues of
our most secret ruminations; that flit before even our closed eyes;
and pierce across the shattered brain, in forms, shapes, fancies, and
scenes, that relentlessly represent to us the appalling view of all we
struggle to disbelieve and to discard! To such ineludable prognostics
must be attributed the mutely mournful acquiescence that mingled with
the heavy mass of woe with which the Doctor listened to these deadly
tidings.
Winter now was nearly at hand, and travelling seemed deeply dangerous,
in her sickly state, for the enfeebled Susanna. Yet she herself,
panting to receive again the blessing of her beloved father,
concentrated every idea of recovery in her return. She declined,
therefore, though with exquisite sensibility, the supplicating desire
of this Editor to join and to nurse her at Belcotton, her own cottage;
and persevered through every impediment in her efforts to reach the
parental home.
The ceaseless endeavours to hasten her journey, and the afflicting
circumstances that intervened to retard it, cast the Doctor into a
state of inquietude and disturbance, that had little intermission.
Every part of her fond family severally, and in every way that the most
anxious tenderness could vary or devise, worked at propitiating her
arrival; while her heart-dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. Locke, and their
beautiful, inappreciable bridal daughter, Mrs. Angerstein, made never
to be forgotten, never to be equalled exertions of friendship, to draw
her first to Norbury Park—that seat of all loveliness, and of every
virtue!—that there they might recruit her debilitated frame, and brace
her shattered nerves, by their boundless and incomparable restorative
resources, and an air balsamic as their own social sweetness, before
she should venture so near to even the precincts of the Metropolis as
Chelsea College.
In her answer to the urgent propositions and prayers for preference
that now poured in upon her, from her father, her brothers, her
sisters, and these angelic friends, soothing—though nearly too
penetrating to her grateful spirit—she declined, but with the softest
expressions of reluctance, beginning her return at the dwellings of
either sisters or brothers: and to the endearing; solicitations of Mr.
and Mrs. Locke, she replied, that one thing only in the whole world
could enable her to resist their kind desire, namely, her dearest
father’s wishes to receive her himself, in all her feebleness and
shaken state; and to help her restoration by his own personal cares:
“This,” she adds, “had been such a balm to her sufferings, that she
felt as if to behold him again, to meet his commiserating eyes, and to
be under his roof and in his arms, would make him give her a second
life.”
Her expressions had the genuine charm of native eloquence, for her
language was that of her soul, and her soul seemed already angelical;
so that all she said, and all she wrote, when addressing those she
loved, found a passage to the inmost heart, of which they took the
tenderest, the fullest, the most lasting possession.
Every obstacle, at length, being finally vanquished, the journey was
resolved upon, and its preparations were made;—when a fearful new
illness suddenly confined the helpless invalid to her bed. There she
remained some weeks; after which, with the utmost difficulty, and by
two long days’ travelling, though for a distance of only twenty-six
miles, she reached Dublin; where, exhausted, emaciated, she was again
forced to her bed; there again to remain for nearly as long a new delay!
Every hour of separation became now to the Doctor an hour of grief,
from the certainty that, the expedition once begun, it could be caused
only by suffering malady, or expiring strength.
It was not till the very close of the year 1799, amidst deep snow,
fierce frost, blighting winds, and darksome days, that, scarcely alive,
his sinking Susanna was landed at Park Gate.
There she was joined by her affectionate brother, Dr. Charles; who
hastened to hail her arrival, that he might convey her in his own warm
carriage to her heart-yearning father, her fondly impatient brethren,
and the tenderest of friends.
But he found her in no state to travel further!—feeble, drooping,
wasted away, scarcely to be known shrunk, nearly withered!—yet
still with her fair mind in full possession of its clearest powers;
still with all the native sweetness of her looks, manners, voice, and
smiles; still with all her desire to please; her affecting patience of
endurance; her touching sensibility for every species of attention; and
all her unalterable loveliness of disposition, that sought to console
for her own afflictions, to give comfort for her own sufferings!
During the space of a doubtful week, her kind brother, Dr. Charles,
awaited the happy moment when she might be able to move on—— But
on—save as a corpse,—she moved no more!
Gentle was her end! Gentle as the whole tenor of her life; but as
sudden in its conclusion as it had been lingering in its approach.
The news of her reaching—at length!—these shores, written by herself
from Park Gate, in a brief, but soul-touching letter to her father, and
another to this Memorialist, had been enchanting to the whole family.
Not to risk for her any fresh fatigue from haste, all impatience for
her sight was suppressed. A distant day, therefore, had been named by
Dr. Charles for her arrival at Chelsea College.
What a blessed instant was the reception of that appointment to the
Doctor!—An instant indeed, for it passed away, never to return!
But, during its brief interval, the Doctor devoted himself to making
arrangements for this felicitous restoration; and fixed the nearest
time that he could hope his Susanna would be sufficiently recovered to
give, and to receive, the joy springing from a family assemblage to
celebrate her return.——
Such was the radiant gleam that transiently shone upon the Doctor
and his happy race, when all the fair fabric of his renovating
expectations, his parental hopes, his fondest wishes, was broken
down, dissolved, confounded, by tidings that his Susanna—instead of
hastening to his roof, his arms, his blessing——was gone from all! was
gone on that awful journey whence no traveller returns—had landed but
to die—and was gone—gone hence for ever!
The deadly catastrophe was conveyed to the Doctor by his son-in-law
and nephew, the deserving Mr. Burney; who kindly spared his afflicted
wife—rent by personal sorrow—the dreadful task which, necessarily,
had been appointed to her by Dr. Charles. The good Mr. Burney, as the
Doctor afterwards declared, unfolded the irreparable calamity with as
much judiciousness as feeling. And the Doctor again evinced a force
of character unshaken by years, that shewed him capable of supporting,
while bewailing this terrific blow, with the submission of resignation,
and the fortitude of reason; not desponding, however wretched; not
overwhelmed, though indescribably unhappy.
What scenes were those which followed! how deep the tragedy! How wide
from their promised joys were the family meetings! Yet all his family
impressively hastened to the Doctor, and all were kindly received.
It was on the midnight of the first day of this woe, that his unhappy
daughter of West Hamble, whom its baleful blight had pierced the
preceding noon, forced her way, with her sympathizing partner, to
Chelsea College. Her, however, the Doctor could not see! His courage
sunk from that interview! He gave them the apartment that for so far
happier a purpose had been destined, and remitted a meeting to the next
morning.
Nor yet, even at breakfast, was he able to encounter her grief; it
was twelve or one o’clock at noon ere he could assume the strength
necessary: and then, his first words, on opening the parlour door, at
which he stopped and stood, feeble and motionless, with shut eyes, and
a look of unutterable anguish, were an almost inaudible exclamation, “I
dread to see _you_, Fanny! I dread to see _you_!”
The first heart-breaking effort, however, made, all else could not but
be soothing to each, even while to each piercing; and he kept her at
the College for some weeks, during which she devoted herself to him
wholly.
* * * * *
But for the fair hope that all the pungency of heart-riving separations
such as these, from the objects of our purest affections, is left
behind;—that their bitterness is not shared; that the void, cold!
unsearchable! of such dire deprivations, is known only to the
survivors—while to the gone all clouds are cleared away, all storms
are calmed, all pangs are chased by bliss; but for this celestial Hope,
and spiritual Belief,—how could the fragile human frame be strong
enough to sustain the convulsed human mind, in the writhings of its
first desolating experience of a woe, which, by one fatal stroke,
seems, for the moment, to leave life without a charm?—For such is the
first, instinctive, imperious sensation upon such dread catastrophes;
whatever are the consolations with which remaining tender ties may
speedily afterwards soothe and regenerate our feelings; and exchange
our mortal grief for immortal aspirations.
* * * * *
The ensuing lines were written by Dr. Burney, for an epitaph in Neston
churchyard, near Park Gate, where the remains of Mrs. Phillips were
deposited: