TO MRS. HAMILTON.
‘July 24, 1869.
‘Beloved Laura,—So tenderly and so gently the Lord has dealt with our sweetest Mother! She woke this morning, and told Cousins that she herself had slept too long. There was a slight feeling of sickness about eight, which made Cousins call poor Clara. In about an hour she gently fell asleep.... No pain nor even consciousness at the last. I had gone to London on business, as you know. I was telegraphed to; but ere I arrived she—the sweet, the beloved—was where she had wished to be. O Laura, Laura, she has long been drinking the dregs of life, however sweetened by affection. I felt for her. But I seem as if I could hardly write connectedly. All the three dear brothers have been here. St. George still is here. Poor dear Fanny also,—she is to have my room, for she is so thankful to be here. We have, however, only been allowed one very brief glimpse and kiss of the revered remains. Only remains, my Laura. Think of her bliss! She is not here.... Your fond
‘C. M. T.’
In Charlotte’s desk, kept as one of her greatest treasures, and found there, years later, after her own death, was the last note ever written to her by Mrs. Tucker. It contained these words—‘My precious Charlotte, you have been such a comfort to me!’ No wonder the loving utterance was treasured up by the daughter through the rest of her life.
During forty-eight years Charlotte Tucker had known but one home—No. 3 Upper Portland Place. Now at length in her forty-ninth year the inevitable family break-up had come; and the dear home of her infancy, of her girlhood, of her middle age, could be hers no longer. No. 3 had to be given up; and the sisters had to go forth into fresh scenes. The trial must to all of them have been great; perhaps least so to the gentle Fanny, already on the border-land of the Life beyond.
As a first move, Charlotte and Fanny went together for about two months to Sutton. An idea had, however, arisen of a home, at least for a time, with their brother, Mr. St. George Tucker, and his wife; and the next step was to join them at Wickhill, Bracknell, in the month of September 1869. This was Fanny’s last move. She was taken thither, from Sutton, most carefully by Charlotte, in a post-chaise; and the long drive does not appear to have materially affected her. Although by this time wasted to skin and bone, Fanny still kept about in the house; spending much time in her own sitting-room, yet often coming down among the rest for a short time; and during this autumn Charlotte seems to have chiefly devoted herself to Fanny. Before the close of November, however, the end of the long illness was reached.
One day, when speaking to her brother, in allusion to her earlier good health and plumpness, Fanny observed: ‘My dear St. George, I have been imprudent.’ She did not specify what manner of imprudence hers had been. Probably, like many another in a thoroughly healthy family, she had not soon enough read the true meaning of suspicious symptoms. During some four years past she had been steadily failing; and the end could but have been a joyous release to one so ready to go.
Thus blow upon blow had fallen between the years of thirty and fifty upon the golden staff of Charlotte Tucker’s Will. Her Father’s death; the death of Robert; the death of Letitia; the death of her Mother; the death of Fanny; all these one after another make a list of sorrows. Doubtless, the most keen and bitter losses which she had to endure were, above all, the death of her almost idolised Father, and the death of Letitia. No other pain would equal these, dearly as she loved her brother Robert, her Mother, and Fanny, until her own peculiar sister-friend, Laura Hamilton, should be summoned away. Mercifully, that blow was not allowed to fall until a very short time before her own call Home.