DEATH OF MRS. DELANY.
April.-I have scarce a memorandum of this fatal month, in which I was bereft of the most revered of friends, and, perhaps, the most perfect of women.[273] I am yet scarce able to settle whether to glide silently and resignedly—as far as I can—past all this melancholy deprivation, or whether to go back once more to the ever-remembered, ever-sacred scene that closed the earthly pilgrimage of my venerable, my sainted friend.
I believe I heard the last words she uttered: I cannot learn that she spoke after my reluctant departure. She finished with that cheerful resignation, that lively hope, which always broke forth when this last—awful—but, to her, most happy change seemed approaching.
Poor Miss Port and myself were kneeling by her bedside. She had just given me her soft hand; without power to see either of us, she felt and knew us. O, never can I cease to cherish the remembrance of the sweet, benign, holy voice with which she pronounced a blessing upon us both! We kissed her—and, with a smile all beaming—I thought it so—of heaven, she seemed then to have taken leave of all earthly solicitudes. Yet then, even then, short as was her time on earth, the same soft human sensibility filled her for poor human objects. She would not bid us farewell—would not tell us she should speak with us no more—she only said, as she turned gently away from us, “And now—I’ll go to sleep!”—But, O, in what a voice she said it! I felt what the sleep would be; so did poor Miss Port.
Poor, sweet, unfortunate girl! what deluges of tears did she shed over me! I promised her in that solemn moment my eternal regard, and she accepted this, my first protestation of any kind made to her, as some solace to her sufferings. Sacred shall I hold it!—sacred to my last hour. I believe, indeed, that angelic being had no other wish equally fervent.
How full of days and full of honours was her exit! I should blush at the affliction of my heart in losing her, could I ever believe excellence was given us here to love and to revere, yet gladly to relinquish. No, I cannot think it: the deprivation may be a chastisement, but not a joy. We may submit to it with patience; but we cannot have felt it with warmth where we lose it without pain, Outrageously to murmur, or sullenly to refuse consolation—there, indeed, we are rebels against the dispensations of providence—and rebels yet more weak than wicked; for what and whom is it we resist? what and who are we for such resistance?
She bid me—how often did she bid me not grieve to lose her! Yet she said, in my absence, she knew I must, and sweetly regretted how much I must miss her. I teach myself to think of her felicity; and I never dwell upon that without faithfully feeling I would not desire her return. But, in every other channel in which my thoughts and feelings turn, I miss her with so sad a void! She was all that I dearly loved that remained within my reach; she was become the bosom repository of all the livelong day’s transactions, reflections, feelings, and wishes. Her own exalted mind was all expanded when we met. I do not think she concealed from me the most secret thought of her heart; and while every word that fell from her spoke wisdom, piety, and instruction, her manner had an endearment, her spirits a native gaiety, and her smile, to those she loved, a tenderness so animated.
Blessed spirit! sweet, fair, and beneficent on earth!—O, gently mayest thou now be at rest in that last home to which fearfully I look forward, yet not hopeless; never that—and sometimes with fullest, fairest, sublimest expectations! If to her it be given to plead for those she left, I shall not be forgotten in her prayer. Rest to her sweet soul! rest and everlasting peace to her gentle spirit!
I saw my poor lovely Miss Port twice in every day, when in town, till after the last holy rites had been performed. I had no peace away from her; I thought myself fulfilling a wish of that sweet departed saint, in consigning all the time I had at my own disposal to solacing and advising with her beloved niece, who received this little offering with a sweetness that once again twined her round my heart....
Poor Mrs. Astley, the worthy humble friend, rather than servant, of the most excellent departed, was the person whom, next to the niece, I most pitied. She was every way to be lamented: unfit for any other service, but unprovided for in this, by the utter and most regretted inability of her much attached mistress, who frequently told me that leaving poor Astley unsettled hung heavy on her mind.
My dearest friends know, the success I had in venturing to represent her worth and situation to my royal mistress. In the moment when she came to my room to announce his majesty’s gracious intention to pension Mrs. Astley here as housekeeper to the same house, I really could scarce withhold myself from falling prostrate at her feet: I never felt such a burst of gratitude but where I had no ceremonials to repress it. Joseph, too, the faithful footman, I was most anxious to secure in some good service—and I related my wishes for him to General Cary, who procured for him a place with his daughter, Lady Amherst.
I forget if I have ever read you the sweet words that accompanied to me the kind legacies left me by my honoured friend. I believe not. They were ordered to be sent me with the portrait of Sacharissa, and two medallions of their majesties: they were originally written to accompany the legacy to the Bishop of Worcester, Dr. Hurd, as you may perceive by the style, but it was desired they might also be copied:—
“I take this liberty, that my much esteemed and respected friend may sometimes recollect a person who was so sensible of the honour of her friendship and who delighted so much in her conversation and works.”
Need I—O, I am sure I need not say with what tender, grateful, sorrowing joy I received these sweet pledges of her invaluable regard!
To these, by another codicil, was added the choice of one of her mosaic flowers. And verbally, on the night but one before she died, she desired I might have her fine quarto edition of Shakespeare, sweetly saying she had never received so much pleasure from him in any other way as through my reading.