Believe me ever affectionately yours,
A. Opie.
William Hayley, Esq., near Chichester.
Shortly after the date of this letter, Mrs. Opie was alarmed by tidings of the severe illness of her aged friend; she says, (in the sketch given in Hayley’s life before referred to,) “I went down to Bognor, not certain that I should not arrive too late to see him; but I found him out of danger, and had the happiness of returning to London at the end of the week, leaving him recovering. But I saw him no more. He died in November of the following year.”
Another of her old friends (Mrs. Inchbald) wrote to her this year, under the pressure of a malady beneath which she speedily succumbed. She wrote again, for the last time, at the Christmas of the following year, thus:—
Kensington House, 19th Dec., 1820.
My dear Mrs. Opie,
Your kind Christmas-box arrived safe, and temptingly beautiful, yesterday evening; many thanks.
We are, even in these dark and short days, as brilliant on the high road, and in open air, as during the long and bright days of summer and autumn. I think I never saw a more gaudy, yet numerous and sober procession, (processions, I should say, for they lasted from morning till night,) than passed the house yesterday. I think myself particularly fortunate in the place of my abode, on this account. The present world is such a fine subject to excite intense reflection.
Mr. Kemble called on me, during the short time he was in England; he looked remarkably well in the face, but as he walked through the court-yard, to step into his carriage, I was astonished to perceive him bend down his person, like a man of eighty. How, I wonder, does she support her banishment from England? He has sense and taste to find “books in the running brooks, and good in everything.”