A friend has copied and sent to me a passage in the paper named "NOTES
AND QUERIES," of Saturday, July 19. 1851, No. 90. page 44.
The passage refers to my sister, Lady Flora Hastings, and a poem
ascribed to her. If it were a matter solely of literary nature, I should
not have interfered; considering the point in debate may not be
interesting to a very extended circle of persons. But I feel it is a
duty not to allow an undeserved imputation to rest on any one,
especially on one styled a "Christian lady." Probably no person but
myself can place the debated question beyond doubt. I do not know who
the "Christian lady" or who ERZA may be; but the lines entitled "Lady
Flora Hastings' Bequest" are not by Lady Flora Hastings. She solemnly
bequeathed _all_ her papers and manuscripts to me, and those verses are
not amongst them; else they should have been included in the volume of
her poems which I published. Moreover, Lady Flora Hastings never parted
with her Bible till, by my brother's desire, I had warned her on the
authority of the physicians that _any_ hour might close her existence on
earth. She was then unable to read it to herself. It was to _me_ (not to
my brother, as stated by CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH) that she confided the book
and the message for our mother; and when she did so, she was too weak in
body to have committed the simple words of the message to paper. I was
with her night and day for many days before she gave the gift and
message to my care, and she died in my arms. She could not have composed
any verses, or written a word, or dictated a sentence, without my
knowledge, for more than a week before she died.