In later years, in Spain, I have read a little book by Fernan Caballero, "El Silencio en la Vita, e el Perdono en la Muerte," but even in the hands of the great writer the story wants the simple power which it had when told by Sir John.
The winter of 1864-65 was a terribly anxious one at Holmhurst. My mother failed daily as the cold weather came on, and was in a state of constant and helpless suffering. I never could bear to be away from her for a moment, and passed the whole day by the side of her bed or chair, feeding her, supporting her, chafing her inanimate limbs, trying by an energy of love to animate her through the weary hours of sickness, giddiness, and pain. We were seldom able to leave one room, the central one in the house, and had to keep it as warm as was possible. My recollection lingers on the months of entire absence from all external life spent in that close room, sitting in an armchair, pretending to read while I was ceaselessly watching. My mother was so much worse than she had ever been before, that I was never very hopeful, but strove never to look beyond the present into the desolate future, and, while devoting my whole thoughts and energies to activity for her, was always able to be cheerful. Still I remember how, in that damp and misty Christmas, I happened to light upon the lines in "In Memoriam"—
"With trembling fingers did we weave
The holly round our Christmas hearth;
A rainy cloud possess'd the earth,
And sadly fell our Christmas Eve."
And how wonderfully applicable they seemed to our case.
To my Sister.
"Holmhurst, Dec. 17, 1864.—How we envy you the warmth of Italy! Had we known how severe a winter this was likely to be, we also should have started for Italy at all risks, and I feel that I have been very wrong ever to have consented to the mother's staying in England, though she seemed so weary of travelling and so much better in health, that I could not believe the effect would be so bad. The cold is most intense. After a month of wet, we have had two days of snow with black east wind, and now it is pouring again, but the rain freezes as it falls.
"The dear mother is perfectly prostrated by the cold, and looks at least twenty years older than in the summer. She has great and constant pain, and trembles so greatly as to be quite unable to feed herself, and she can do nothing whatever all day, so that she is very miserable. Of course I am dreadfully and constantly anxious about her, and the dread of paralysis haunts me night and day. I need not say how sweet, and gentle, and uncomplaining my poor darling is, but one can see she suffers greatly, and 'the pleasures of an English winter,' which some of the family have always been urging her to enjoy, consist in an almost total non-existence on her part, and constant watching on mine."
Gradually the consciousness came to all around her that the only chance of my mother's recovery would be from taking her abroad. How I longed to follow the advice given in "Kotzebue's Travels" when he urges us to take pattern by our ancestors, who were content to sit still and read the injunction in their Bibles, "Let not your flight be in the winter." Yet this year even poor Lea, generally so averse to leaving home, urged us to set off. Then came the difficulty of how to go, and where. We decided to turn towards Pau and Biarritz, because easier of access than Cannes, and because the journeys were shorter: and then there was the constant driving down to look at the sea, and the discovery that, when it was calm enough, my mother was too ill to move, and when she was better, the sea was too rough. At last, on the 20th of January, we left home in the evening.
To my Sister.