I received your letter yesterday, but I was so ill (that important as
the occasion is) I could not answer it. To-day, nothing less than the
urgency of the subject could prevail upon me to make the smallest
exertion, for I am scarcely able to drag one limb up to the other. I
have a violent catarrh, the glands of my throat are further inflamed
and ulcerated, and I am burning with fever.
With regard to divulging to Harriet the disastrous event, for which,
when once known to her, she can never be consoled; I am in a very
unfit state to give advice. I am as I have always been of opinion,
that it should be concealed from her as long as it can. It is a more
generous cause of grief than the loss of a lover; and as Harriet's
mind is built, I think more likely to shock and destroy her. You
state only one reason for breaking the secrecy which has hitherto been
observed--that it appears strange, the event public, that you are not
in mourning for it. I cannot but think that if any good can
reasonably be expected from withholding the knowledge of this dreadful
incident, it would be wrong and trifling to forego it, for the
senseless custom of putting yourself in black for a few months. I
have no crape about me. If any one were to ask the cause of my
disregard of a paltry decorum, I should either turn on my heel from
him, or explain to him that I did not put on the mockery of sorrow,
lest it should get to my sister's ear; that I was in outward mourning,
and she had to be discovering for whom.
It is, surely, easy for you to say that you do not put on black for
the same reason, to all who may enquire, or to all those to whom you
wish to appear decorous. [He then writes on family matters, but,
after a few lines, again recurs to the painful subject of his letter.]
It is known to several with whom I am acquainted in London; but, it is
easy, as Harriet restricts herself to a very narrow intercourse, to
keep it still from her knowledge, till she has recovered strength of
body to contend anew with severe and heavy affliction. How much I
have suffered from the intelligence I shall not attempt to describe to
you. I had but little interest in life before; it is now heavy and
sickening to me. I feel as if I never should smile again; every
circumstance of aggravation attends it. To perish on the verge of the
shore, when he was just about to embark, after six years in the
climate, when we thought the danger past. With letters from him full
of felicitation of himself, and rapture at the hope of soon meeting us
again, and when we were expecting him every moment in our embrace, to
be struck cold to the heart with the news that we should never see him
again. I owe little to man--I shall soon owe nothing to any other
being. I hate the cant of the doctrine of Providence 'your brother
may be snatched by a merciful power from impending evil.' Bah! why
not the merciful being continue life to my brother, and destroy the
impending evil? Well, I shall soon be as he is, and though there is
no consolation in that feeling, it is some assuagement of grief,
because sorrow will then be at an end. My duty to my father. I write
in great pain.
I am, dear Madam,
Yours very truly,
HENRY COOPER."
The following makes the last of the letters I possess, and is written six
months previous to his death; and in answer to a letter, of my mother to
him, respecting the appointment of a paid chairman, and he, a barrister
of some standing, to preside at Quarter Sessions, and to have besides (if
my recollection be correct) some civil power. This was then in the
contemplation of the Ministry; and as the poet says "coming events cast
their shadows before" evidently the shadow of the present county courts.
The letter is dated from and bears date,
5, Hare Court, Temple.
6th March, 1824.