My mother was never given to being alarmed about me at any time, but I think she must have had some anxieties this autumn; Oxford was so dreadfully unhealthy—suffering from a perfect "wave of cholera," while typhus fever and small-pox were raging in the lower parts of the town. But the excitement of Aunt Kitty and Arthur about Mary Stanley, who had taken great part in preparing nurses for the victims of the Crimean War, and who eventually went out to Scutari herself as the unwelcomed assistant of Miss Nightingale, kept the family heart fixed in the East all through the autumn and winter.
To MY MOTHER.
"Oxford, Oct. 23, 1854.—There was a special cholera service last night. It is very bad still, and the cases very rapid. Those taken ill at five die at seven, and for fear of infection are buried at seven the next morning."
"Oct. 24.—Typhus fever has broken out in the lower town in addition to everything else, and there are 1000 cases of small-pox, besides cholera. This morning I met two men at breakfast at Mr. Jowett's. There was nothing to eat but cold mutton and some heavy bread called 'Balliol bricks,' but Mr. Jowett was in his best humour, and though he would not utter a word himself, he assisted us into uttering a good many. He is certainly at once the terror and the admiration of those he wishes to be kind to: as for myself, I love him, though I often feel I would go round three streets any day to avoid him."
"Nov. 1.—The usual Oxford rain is now varied by a yellow fog and stifling closeness, the consequence of which is that cholera has returned in all its force to the lower town, and in the upper almost every one is ill in one way or other. Duckworth and I walked to Headington Common yesterday, and thinking that such a high open place was sure to be free from illness, asked if there had been any cholera there, in a cottage where we often go to buy fossils. 'Yes,' said the young woman of the house, 'father died of it, and baby, and seven other people in this cottage and those joining—all those who seemed the healthiest and strongest. I saw them all seized with it in the morning, and before night they were all gone.'—'What,' I said, 'did you nurse them all?' The young woman turned away, but an old woman who came up and heard me said, 'Yes, she were a good creature. There were no one took but she went to them. She were afeard of nothing. I used to think as God wouldna' let the cholera come to her because she werena' afeard, and no more He did.'"
"Dec. 2.—Mrs. Parker[99] has just been telling me the beautiful story of 'Sister Marion's' labours in the cholera. Her real name was Miss Hughes. Mrs. P. was walking with her one day, when their notice was attracted by Greenford, the landlord of the Maidenhead inn, putting his beautiful little child on his great horse, while the child was laughing and shouting for joy. Next day they heard that the child was ill. Sister Marion went at once and nursed it till it died, and it was buried the same evening. Then came the rush of cholera. When any one was seized, they sent for Sister Marion—she rubbed them, watched them, prayed with them; no cases were too dreadful for her. She often had to put them in their coffins herself. When all were panic-stricken, she remembered everything. Mrs. Parker described one deathbed, where it required two men to hold a woman down in her agonies, and her shrieks and oaths were appalling. Little Miss Hughes came in, and taking both her hands, knelt down quietly by the side of the bed, and, though the doctors and others were standing round, began to pray aloud. Gradually the face of the woman relaxed, and her oaths ceased, though her groans were still fearful. At last Sister Marion said, 'Now your mind is easier, so you have more strength, and we can try to help your body;' and when she began the rubbings, &c., the woman took it quietly, and though she died that night, it was quite peacefully.
"Then the cholera camp was made. There was one house for the malignant cases, another for the convalescents, a third for the children of those taken or for those in whom there was reason to expect the disease to appear. Almost every nurse had to be dismissed for drunkenness; the people were almost alone, and the whole town seemed to depend on Sister Marion. Nine-tenths of those who took the cholera died. Mrs. P. took it herself, and was saved by constantly swallowing ice.
"I have just been to dine with the Master—a large party of undergraduates and very dull, the Master every now and then giving utterance to a solemn little proposition apropos of nothing at all—such as 'A beech-tree is a very remarkable tree, Mr. Hare'—'It is a very pleasant thing to ride in a fly, Mr. Bowden'—which no one attempted to contradict."
"Dec. 11.—Yesterday I went to the service at St. Thomas's, where three-fourths of the congregation were in mourning owing to the cholera. The sermon began with three strange propositions—1. That the reading of the Scriptures is not necessary to salvation. 2. That the Gospel consists not in the written Word, but in certain facts laid down and elucidated by the Church. 3. That the Scriptures ought not to be used as a means of converting the heathen. I suppose the sermon was directed against the Bible Society."
I insert a few paragraphs from my written winter-journal. They scarcely give an idea of the stagnation of our Hurstmonceaux life.