my mother, good literal being, had ceased her expressions of wonder that
he could so distinguish her Anna, yet like her Sarah best, she desired
she would reject Mr Porter’s addresses, if they were not perfectly
agreeable to her. She sent for my father, and desired him to join her in
this request, which he did willingly and earnestly; and since, on some
alarming appearances of a fretful and despotic disposition, they have
warmly and solemnly adjured her to break off the affair. But, alas! she
is became attached, and partial to him in the extreme.
By this generous adjuration, our parents have proved themselves really
parents, making their child’s happiness their first object. Whenever it
is otherwise, a miserable proof is exhibited of human depravity.
Adieu! adieu!--This Hymeneal gale begins to blow cold and ungenial upon
my once warm hopes, and “all their fires grow pale.”
LICHFIELD, JUNE 2, 1764.
O! my kind friend, this dear creature is dangerously ill!--a violent
fever! Thursday next was fixed for her marriage. About three o’clock
yesterday morning, I was awakened by her taking my hand, and telling me
that she was very ill. Her dear hands felt of a parching heat, and so
did her forehead and temples.
I called assistance instantly. We are all very much alarmed. Medicine
has hitherto unsuccessfully contended with the disease, which I am
afraid gains ground instead of abating. Her spirits have been too much
hurried for a constitution so delicate. Yet her youth!--I must hope, for
O! I cannot endure the thoughts of her being torn from us!
We are a sad, sad family--distracted with fears, that we dare not
communicate to each other. I will not, while any hope remains, send away
this letter; that, if it please Heaven to restore the dear sufferer, you
may be spared those grievous apprehensions which your sympathy will
excite, should you know our situation before you are informed that its
terrors are removed.
_Thursday Morning._--Congratulate me, dearest Emma!--the intended
bridal-day has arisen auspiciously, averting from my Sally’s bosom the
arrows of death, whose aim has been deprecated with our prayers and
tears. There is a remission in this cruel fever;--a balmy moisture upon
her temples, bosom, and hands. She breathes freely; is able to sit up in
an arm-chair; to smile with her wonted serenity, and cheerfully to tell
us that she shall soon be well.
Parched and exhausted as I was with weeping and watching through four
days and nights, hope has proved a restoring cordial. I leave you, that
I may refresh myself by combing my dishevelled hair, and washing from my
eye-lids the traces of those bitter tears.
_Thursday Night._--O! my friend, our hopes are vanished!--While I was
changing my gown, and preparing to carry neatness and a cheerful
countenance to my dear sister’s arm-chair, she relapsed;--the fever came
back with redoubled violence!
In the distraction with which the servants fled different ways to recall
the medical people, there was no thought of me. Nobody came near my
apartment to reveal the sad tidings, and I entered the sick room with
all the alacrity of hope. What did I behold there?--Alas! my precious
sister sunk back in her bed, just recovering from a fainting fit!--sweet
Honora supporting with her arm the dear sufferer’s head, her silent
tears falling, in large drops, upon her Sally’s pillow; my father and
mother standing by the bed-side, the deepest woe in their countenance.
Mr Porter sitting in the window, leaning upon his hand, which covered
his forehead.
The dear creature opened her languid eyes, and, looking at me
earnestly,--“My Nancy, you are dressed--are you going out?--do not leave
me long.”--“Alas, no! there was no thought of going out. I left you, my
love, to put on clean clothes, that I might look comfortable to you,
flattering myself that you were greatly better; nobody came to tell me
that you were not so well again.”
She sighed, and waved her dear hand emphatically, as if she had
said,--The days of our happiness here are passed away!
_Saturday Morning._--Ah!--she has grown worse and worse, though by slow
degrees. Dr D. says, when the fever returned, it was with a fatal change
in its nature, from inflammatory to putrid, and that he has very little
hope of saving her. O! my friend, may your heart never feel the anguish
with which mine is at this instant torn!
How much would Mr Porter be to be pitied if he had strong
sensibilities!--so near calling such a blessing his, and to have it thus
torn from him! but his sensations seem more like vexation than grief.
My father’s sanguine and cheerful disposition will not suffer him to
think his darling so ill as she too surely is. My mother, my poor
mother!--she has heard that a clergyman in Worcestershire, of the name
of Bayley, has frequently administered James’ Powder with success, in
very dangerous cases.
She has just sent a chaise and four full speed, to conjure him to return
hither in it, on an errand of life or death. We have all eagerly caught
at this possibility, and are flattering ourselves with hopes which, I
fear, are but as the straws at which drowning wretches catch. Is it
likely that a private gentleman should know a better method of
administering that medicine than a physician of D.’s acknowledged skill?
_Sunday._--Mr Bayley is come; he arrived at ten this morning. The
instant he came into the room, my mother rushed to him, and, falling on
her knees, clasped her arms wildly around him, exclaiming, in the
piercing accent of anguish,--“Dear angel-man, save my child!”
He burst into floods of humane tears, as he raised her from the ground.
They went instantly into the sick chamber--but O! he gives us not more
hope than Dr D. If the fever had but continued inflammatory!--but here
all evacuation is pernicious. He joins the doctor in advising musk
medicines instead of the powders. Adieu! adieu!
_Wednesday Morning._--I have hardly strength to tell you--it is
pronounced, she cannot survive this night; there is no balm in
Gilead!--Pray for us that we may be supported under this severe
chastisement of Almighty power!
GOTHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE,
JUNE 23, 1764.
I have sat almost an hour at the writing-table, my hands crossed upon
this paper, unable to take up the pen; that pen which I used to seize
with such glad alacrity, when it was to convey my thoughts to you! Now,
spiritless, afflicted, weary, my mind presents only scenes of mournful
recollection; or, hovering over the silent and untimely grave of my
sister, perceives nothing but a drear vacuity.
Your last letter came to me when my heart laboured under one of the
keenest paroxysms of its late anguish. The funeral bell was tolling, and
the dear, dear remains were everlastingly passing away from our
habitation. Six of her young companions, in white raiment, the emblem of
her purity, drowned in tears, bore, with trembling hands, the pall that
covered that dim form, which, but a little, little fortnight before,
had walked amidst them with the light step of youth and gaiety. Yes,
upon the very lawn over which they were then slowly walking in grieved
and awful silence, interrupted only by the solemn death-bell.
Thus vanish our hopes!--thus cold is the bridal-bed of my dear sister!
No sun-beam shall pierce its dark recess, “till the last morn appear.”
In a few days after this sad scene was closed, we came hither, to the
village-retirement of my excellent uncle and aunt, Martin. Pious
tranquillity broods over the kind and hospitable mansion, and the balms
of sympathy, and the cordials of devotion, are here poured into our torn
hearts.
At times, I can scarce persuade myself that I shall see her no
more!--for O! how perfect was our amity! Upon that tender, instinctive
affection, which grew with our growth, was engrafted esteem the most
established, and confidence the most entire.--One bed!--one heart!--one
soul! Even the difference of our dispositions became a cement to our
friendship; her gentleness tempered my impetuosity; her natural
composure caught animation from her sister’s sprightliness;--“our
studies, our amusements, our taste the same.” O heavy, heavy loss! yet
bow thy stubborn grief, O my spirit! and remember the reason thou hadst
to fear for her happiness in that union, from which she was so awfully
snatched away.
Cut off, as she was, in the bloom of life, yet nothing could be more
resigned. Sickness, pain, and the extremest bodily weakness, had not
power to extinguish, or even to abate, the pure flame of her devotion;
yet all was calm and rational, for she had no delirium through the
course of her illness. When her eyes were closed to open no more; when
she seemed insensible to outward objects, she continued fervent in
prayer, nay, in thanksgiving to her God. She repeated the Lord’s prayer
often, and several verses out of the Scriptures which were applicable to
her expiring situation. In these repetitions, her voice, though low, and
interrupted by the pausings of weakness, was distinct. I am sure she had
a foretaste of the everlasting happiness which was soon to recompence,
ten thousand fold, the mortal struggle.
She expressed unwillingness to take the musk medicines, which, I am
afraid, were disagreeable to her. Yet, when my father and mother
solicited, she opened her mouth and swallowed them, without shewing any
more reluctance.
Her partial affection for me was almost the latest yearning of her
gentle spirit. As I sat by her weeping, the morning of the final day,
and saw her lie pale and stretched out, her sweet eyes unable to open,
she said, in a low voice, when we had all thought her invisible to
every earthly recollection,--“Speak, my Nancy; let me once more hear
that dear voice, ever welcome to me!”
O! how those words yet vibrate on my ear! I repeat them to myself many
times in every day and night, endeavouring to imitate the sweet mournful
accent in which they fell upon my soul with indelible impression.
My father was agonized by the loss of this, the darling of his heart;
but it is amazing how soon the native cheerfulness of his temper has
arisen from beneath the blow. My mother, at first, bore it better. She
directed the funeral; and the business which it created seemed to have
rendered her spirits collected, and to have dried the source of her
tears; but, when that was over, a deep severe dejection succeeded, which
nothing seems of power to comfort or to cheer.
My cousin, Miss Martin, is of my sister’s age, and was deservedly
beloved by her above all her other companions, next to myself and
Honora. She grieves for our loss and her own with passionate tenderness.
Honora, young as she is, has shared all my sorrow. If she is but spared
me, I shall not be quite bereaved. It will not be wholly in vain that I
shall say, Return, blest days! Adieu! adieu!
GOTHAM, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE,
JUNE 27, 1764.
With what kind anxiety do you enquire of me if our sorrows soften? Mine
do soften, my dear creature; participation has been their balm.
Upon a pleasant grass-plat, in my uncle’s garden, stands a fine old
mulberry-tree, of extensive and luxuriant shade, beneath which we all
used to sit, reading and working, in the happy days that are flown.
There is an austerity in my mother’s grief, which, in a great measure,
keeps us silent in her presence. We see my father cheerful, and fear to
open afresh the wound of his heart, by even alluding to any thing which
must recall the image of her he has lost. So, in these summer heats, we
hasten to the mulberry shade. It is there that her name is ever on our
lips. We recollect her looks, her voice, her gesture, her sentiments. We
search for the passages in our poets of which she was most enamoured,
and her accents return upon our ear as we read them; and thus do we
extract the bitterness with which unpartaken sorrow broods over the
laceration of its tenderest ties.
How comfortable is it that we can pass many hours of every day exempt
from the intermixture of society with indifferent people, who would soon
be tired of this eternal looking-back to the past, and recalling the
image of the everlasting absent! They would fancy it right to force our
thoughts into other channels. Mistaken idea! which yet, against
experience, maintains its ground.
We are never weary of our heart-affecting theme, equally interesting to
all the three. It, in some measure, restores to us the angelic friend we
have lost. She seems yet to mix in our conversations. We take delight in
assuring ourselves that her spirit hovers round us, and receives a part
of its happiness from the consciousness how tenderly she is yet beloved,
how incessantly remembered by those who were dearest to her on earth.
Ah! I hope they will one day be re-united to her in a state, the
felicity of which will have its completion in the conviction of its
permanence!
Early next week I shall accompany my father to Eyam, his living in
Derbyshire. During the last week of our residence there, Mr Porter means
to join us, whom we left behind with his sister. After he has passed
some days with us there, we shall all re-assemble at Lichfield.--Changed
Lichfield! Ah! how miserably changed! With what different sensations, to
what I used to feel, shall I catch the first glimpse of its spires from
the neighbouring hills!--those spires, never till then, after absence,
beheld with less than rapture.
But, as to Derbyshire, I shall feel a mournful sweetness in returning to
the mountain-heights of that village, in whose bosom my sister and
myself first saw light, and where we sported away the hours of infancy
till I was six, she five, years old; and which we have re-visited
together of late years, passing frequently some of the summer months in
that romantic retreat.
Much, however, shall I lose in not having Honora with me, whom my mother
cannot spare, since my father has no gratification in recalling the
past, in “overtaking the wings of Time,” and in bringing back, arrayed
in all the softening hues of recollection,
----“the hours, the days,
The years, that saw us happy.”
I am afraid that men, in general, feel little of all this. Ah! rather
than my destiny should ever be united to one whose spirit is proof
against these pensive luxuries, may I never change the name my Sally
bore! lest the habit of suppressing sensibilities which cannot be
partaken, change the nature of that heart, on whose softness her image,
and the remembrance of her virtues, is so deeply impressed, and to which
you are unalienably dear.
P. S. This letter is short, but you shall hear from me more at large
after I get to Eyam.
EYAM, DERBYSHIRE, JULY, 1764.
The fortnight, passed beneath my native rocks, has not elapsed without
interest. Little as I expected gratifications of that sort, the sorrows
of my heart have been soothed by sympathy.
There are some liberal-minded people in this village, by no means a
small one. Mr L---- is an excellent young man, intelligent and familiar
with the writings of our best authors. He was often the companion and
guide of our exploring rambles in this romantic country, when my father
used to be here during some weeks of the former summers, with both his
daughters. Mr L---- indulges me in recalling traces of my Sally amid the
rocks, and in the shady depths of those sequestered vallies which were
so dear to her taste.
But I have met with sympathy yet more animated and indulgent, in another
gentleman here, whose more advanced life, and the gayer manner in which
his youth was spent, little promised this softness of spirit. He is the
eldest son of the esquire of our village. The late Duke of Devonshire
procured him an ensign’s commission when he was only sixteen, and made
him page to the duchess when himself became lord-lieutenant of Ireland.
It happened that he was always with the regiment when I went to Eyam
after I grew up. Indeed I never, till now, saw him since the
commencement of my existence, when my father, in the triumph of parental
pleasure, took him, then a military youth scarce twenty, into the
nursery, and put me into his arms before I had been born three hours.
After a series of military services, behaving gallantly as aid-de-camp
to General Howard, in the last war, and obtaining the rank of major, Mr
W---- beat his sword into a ploughshare, and lives as a private
gentleman and justice of the peace, chiefly upon the income for which he
sold his commission, since a very large family, and his father’s
expensive habits, have left his patrimonial property small. He is joint
house-keeper with his sister, a widow lady of genteel fortune, whose
life has been eventful, and called forth uncommon exertions of that
prudence, spirit, and virtue, which adorn her character.
* * * * *
I spoke to you of our ride home last night by moonlight. Major W----,
and his sister, Mrs T----, accompanied my father and myself to dine and
sup with a friendly old bachelor, whose mansion is situated behind
yonder large and rocky mountain, that fronts, a quarter of a mile
distant, the window of the apartment in which I am now writing.
The good old bachelor’s retreat is defended on the west from wintry
storms by this immense hill, which rises immediately from the back part
of his house.--The house stands on a terrace, about half way down the
hill, shaded by that hill, and by the umbrage of luxuriant plantations,
from these scorching heats, which, since our arrival here, have been so
intense, and which are now darting their noon-tide fervours over our
mountains.
The front of Mr Oxley’s bowery little mansion overlooks a sweet
romantic, though narrow valley. The opposite hill is covered very richly
with woods, beautifully intermixed with sloping corn fields.--Above that
hill a vast ridge of rocks arises, over whose summits stretches the
black and dreary East Moor, which seems to give stern protection to the
cultivated and smiling scene beneath. My favourite river, the Derwent,
rolls its clear and amber waves in the bosom of this valley. The Derwent
waters are said to receive that tinge from the peculiar colour of the
clay on the hills amid which they rise. The banks of this river, along
its course through our romantic country, are every where shaded by a
fringe of shrubby underwood, alders, and nut-trees, whose overhanging
branches touch the waves as they wander by. The amber tint of the river
becomes this dark foliage, which is so luxuriant upon its banks, and
which changes a defect into a beauty.
The rural mansion I am describing, is low-roofed and long. It stands on
the brink of this lovely valley, which has a back-ground so wild,
desert, and sublime. A pretty grassy terrace, about ten yards broad, and
an hundred long, extends parallel with the front of the house, and then
the hill descends abruptly, and almost perpendicularly, to the river
side. Upon this terrace, and under the parlour windows, stand a row of
bee-hives. I am sure you love bees, for I love them infinitely. Their
cheerful, active industry; the order and regularity with which, in their
different departments, they promote the common good, must have attracted
the pleased attention of every mind which has any congeniality to
qualities so estimable.
When my sister and myself used to pass serene days in my uncle Astley’s
patriarchal habitation at Famhorn, near Lichfield, we often brought
chairs and our work upon the grass-plot, and sat by the hives, attentive
to the little busy creatures, and all their various occupations. We were
delighted to observe the legs of one loaded, as they returned to the
hive, with yellow wax; another with globules of water about their head,
legs, and wings; another with the richer, and more glutinous honey
which these insects draw up the tubes of the flowers with their little
proboscis.
It was then that we used so frequently to repeat those beautiful lines
in Milton which describe a beehive and its virtuous commonwealth:
----“The bees
In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters. They, among fresh dews and flowers,
Fly to and fro; or, on the smoothed plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubb’d with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs.”
What a divine poet is Milton!--The grace with which he speaks of common
and minute objects equals in its degree the sublimity of his demoniac
and angelic descriptions.
Picturesque scenery abounds every where in this country. Our own village
wants not its striking features, and boasts a Salvatorial dale and glen;
but attempting to describe them now, this letter would be longer than
suits my swiftly-wasting interval of leisure.
* * * * *
LICHFIELD, AUG. 1764.
How strange is it that I returned to Lichfield a whole month ago, and
have not written to you in the interim; not even acknowledged one of the
kindest and dearest of your letters! Alas! my averseness to take up the
pen yet remains undiminished.
You express a desire to know how we bore the tearing-open, as you
emphatically call it, of our recent wound, by a re-entrance beneath this
roof, over which the shadows of death had so lately brooded. We were all
of us deeply, my mother terribly, affected.
“In vain I looked around
O’er all the well-known ground,
My Sally’s wonted footsteps to descry!
Where oft we used to walk,
Where oft, in tender talk,
We saw the summer sun go down the sky;
Nor by yon fountain’s side,
Nor where its waters glide
Along the valley, can she now be found;
O’er all the pleasing prospect’s verdant bound,
No more my mournful eye
Can aught of her espy,
But the sad sacred earth, where her dear relics lie.”
Those charming lines of Lord Lyttleton’s are as a mirror, in which you
will see reflected the feelings of your Anna’s heart on returning to the
mansion of her youth and happiness; yet you needed it not; your heart
would suggest, your sensibility paint them.
But the pleasure of seeing my Honora again, of weeping upon her neck,
and of mingling our tears, was, and yet remains, a great and increasing
consolation.
It was an extreme effort of resolution to resume my apartment--the
scene, during many years, of pleasing hopes and perfect confidence;
during thirteen succeeding days and nights, the scene of dread suspense;
of the struggles of improbable hope against despair; of parental
anguish; of fond compassion, torturing because unavailing; of blasted
expectation; of expiring loveliness!
Immediately on my arrival, I desired my mother to allot me some other
room, for I should never, I said, be able to inhabit that again. She
observed, it was a charming apartment, and, consisting of three rooms,
was very convenient for my employments; that it would be better if I
could teach my heart to find satisfaction in seeing Honora occupy what
once was Sally’s dressing-room. I perceived the justness of the remark,
and felt a foretaste of the consolation which would result from that
last circumstance.
The dear girl, who was present, said, with a tender smile, “It may be
melancholy, but it will not be lonely; and surely the sooner you get
over the first shock of re-entering that apartment, the better; let us
go to the room your sister loved!”
Ah! exclaimed I, and wept, but it must be immediately then; long
preparation and reflection will but increase my reluctance.
We went up stairs; I hurried through the passage, moulding, in the
throes of anguish, Honora’s arm, on which I leaned. On opening the door,
the bed! the chairs! the bureau! the dressing-table! every separate
piece of furniture seemed to bear the stamp and image of her we have
lost.
We sat down, and wept during some time in passionate silence. Honora
then led me to the window, and made me observe how beautifully the
setting sun had gilded those spires, whose illumination our departed
friend used to contemplate with delight. She pointed out to me from
those windows, every pleasing object that my sister used to observe, and
said, “We will love them more than ever for her sake.”
At that instant I felt that in this apartment, of all other places, I
should be most contented, most consoled.
Honora proposed requesting my mother’s permission, as she had her friend
Miss Hammond with her, that we might sup where we were, without quitting
the room for an instant till the next morning.