Thy attached friend,
A. Opie.
Mrs. Opie returned from Cromer in the middle of June; in her notes we find the following entries:—
I am come home, not the better for the sea and baths, though much so in mind and feelings for the great attentions and kindnesses I received. A lame old woman is, however, best at home. Poor dear Dr. Chalmers! he passed four or five as happy days as he could pass there, with the daughter of J. J. G.; he would not rest without going, and was so charming! he died two days after. He left Darlington well, but went home as it proved—to die! He was every day, when there, going to write to me, and I was just about to write to him, from Cromer, when he died. (6th mo., 18th.) In the year 1809 I began to write lines to Mrs. Lemaistre, on her birthday, and ever since, from 1809 to the fifth of this month, 1847, I have never omitted writing the accustomed verses. I wonder whether any king’s laureat ever wrote so many to one potentate; perhaps Colley Cibber did to George III. (19th.) I have been reading the life of Sarah Martin; it made me shed many tears, from the sense of her superior virtue, and my own inferiority. What an example she was, and how illustrative her life, of what that of a humble, but real, and confiding Christian should be! and her end was one of intense bodily suffering! as Pope says of some one:—
“Heav’n, as its purest gold, by torture tried—
The saint sustain’d it, but the woman died!”
W. Allan’s admirable Life I have read quite through, with delight, and, I hope, instruction.
Mrs. Opie visited her friends at Brooke in the following month, and writing shortly after to Miss Gurney, she says:—
* * * I received, before I went to Brooke, a very valuable present from Lord Brougham, which he had ordered to be sent two months ago, and I expected. It arrived at last, and is a folio volume, two nails thick, containing the evidence before the select committee of the House of Lords, appointed to inquire into the execution of the criminal law, especially respecting juvenile offenders and transportation. It interests me, and I daresay I shall read it through. When I came home I found a very interesting letter from Lord B.—that letter I am answering to-day. I am glad he has renewed correspondence with me; he often wrote during last autumn, and he is one of the pleasantest recollections of my early days, when I was first in London society.
My head is full of this horrible, most horrible of murders, at Paris! I am glad I do not know the parties concerned. I earnestly hope that if he must die, he will be allowed no privileges on account of his rank; the people would not bear it! and the Most High “is no respecter of persons.” We purse-proud English are a sadly aristocratic nation, and want humbling. * * * If my aunt’s health allow, I intend to go to the Birkbecks’ ere long for a few days, but yesterday I conceived an alarm concerning her, poor dear, and I must talk to her medical man on the subject.