Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin

by Earl of James Bruce Elgin

In this letter, and others of the same date, there is no hint of suffering or of ill-health; but when they were written he had already received the stroke which was to lay him in the grave. Before the departure of the next mail symptoms had appeared of serious disease of the heart, probably long lurking in his constitution, and now brought out into fatal activity by fatigue and the keen mountain air; and on the 4th of November, having with difficulty reached Dhurmsala, a station in the Kangra Valley,[3] he wrote to Sir Charles Wood in an altered tone, yet still hopeful and cheerful; and intent to the last in India, as at the first in Jamaica, and afterwards in Canada and China, on mitigating so far as lay in his power the evils which man brings on man.

[Sidenote: Last letter.]

You will not expect (he wrote, in this his last letter) to hear much from me by this mail when you hear how I am situated. The Hill expedition, of which I gave you some of the details in my last, had an unexpected effect upon me; knocking me down prostrate to begin with, with some symptoms of an anxious character behind, which require looking into. The nature and extent of the mischief are not sufficiently ascertained yet to enable me to say positively whether my power of doing my duty is likely to be in any degree impaired by what has happened. But Lady Elgin has brought up from Calcutta the medical man who attended me there, and he arrived this morning; so that a consultation will take place without delay. Meanwhile I have got over the immediate effects sufficiently to enable me to do such business as comes before me now. No change has taken place in our plans. We move rather more slowly, and I have given up the idea of going to Peshawur; but this is rather occasioned by the desire to confer with the Punjâb Government, while these affairs on the frontier are in progress, than by my mishap.

I think that the expedition (against the Sitana fanatics) will be a success; and I labour incessantly to urge the necessity of confining its objects to the first intentions. Plausible reasons for enlarging the scope of such adventures are never wanting; but I shall endeavour to keep this within its limits.

Lady Elgin is bearing up courageously, under a great pressure of labour and anxiety.

The sad story of what follows cannot be told in other words than those in which it has already been given to the world, with all the skill of an artist combined with the tenderness of a brother, and with that fulness of authentic detail which only one source could supply.[4]

'Although he had suffered often from the unhealthy and depressing climate of Calcutta during the summer and autumn of 1862, and thus, to the eyes that saw him again in 1863, he looked many years older than when he left England, yet it was not till he entered the Hills that any symptom manifested itself of the fatal malady that was lurking under his apparently stout frame and strong constitution. The splendid scenery of those vast forests and snow-clad mountains inspired him with the liveliest pleasure; but the highly rarefied atmosphere, which to most residents in India is as life from the dead, seemed in him to have the exactly reverse effect.

'It was on the 12th of October that he ascended the Rotung Pass, and on the 13th he crossed the famous Twig Bridge over the river Chandra. It is remarkable for the rude texture of birch branches of which it is composed, and which, at this late season, was so rent and shattered by the wear and tear of the past year as to render the passage of it a matter of great exertion. Lord Elgin was completely prostrated by the effort, and it may be said that from the exhaustion consequent on this adventure he never rallied. But he returned to his camp, and continued his march on horseback, until, on the 22nd, an alarming attack obliged him to be carried, by slow stages, to Dhurmsala. There he was joined, on the 4th of November, by his friend and medical adviser, Dr. Macrae, who had been summoned from Calcutta, on the first alarming indications of his illness. By this time the disorder had declared itself in such a form as to cause the most serious apprehensions to others, as well as to himself the most distressing sufferings. There had been a momentary rally, during which the fact of his illness had been communicated to England. But this passed away; and on the 6th of November Dr. Macrae came to the conclusion that the illness was mortal. This intelligence, which he communicated at once to Lord Elgin, was received with a calmness and fortitude which never deserted him through all the scenes which followed. It was impossible not to be struck by the courage and presence of mind with which, in the presence of a death unusually terrible, and accompanied by circumstances unusually trying, he showed, in equal degrees and with the most unvarying constancy, two of the grandest elements of human character—unselfish resignation of himself to the will of God, and thoughtful consideration, down to the smallest particulars, for the interests and feelings of others, both public and private.

'When once he had satisfied himself, by minute inquiries from Dr. Macrae, of the true state of the case, after one deep, earnest, heartfelt regret that he should thus suddenly be parted from those nearest and dearest, to whom his life was of such inestimable importance, and that he should be removed just as he had prepared himself to benefit the people committed to his charge, he steadily set his face heavenward. He was startled, he was awed; he felt it "hard, hard, to believe that his life was condemned;" but there was no looking backward. Of the officers of his staff he took an affectionate leave on that day. "It is well," he said to one of them, "that I should die in harness." And thenceforth he saw no one habitually, except Dr. Macrae, who combined with his medical skill the tenderness and devotion at once of a friend and of a pastor; his attached secretary, Mr. Thurlow, who had rendered him the most faithful services, not only through the period of his Indian Vice-royalty, but during his last mission to China; and Her who had shared his every thought, and whose courageous spirit now rose above the weakness of the fragile frame, equal to the greatness of the calamity, and worthy of him to whom, by night and day, she constantly ministered.

'On the following day, the clergyman whom he had ordered to be summoned, and for whose arrival he waited with much anxiety, reached Dhurmsala, and administered the Holy Communion to himself and those with him. "We are now entering on a New Communion," he had said that morning, "the Living and the Dead," and his spirit then appeared to master pain and weakness, and to sustain him in a holy calm during the ceremony, and for a few hours afterwards. "It is a comfort," he whispered, "to have laid aside all the cares of this world, and put myself in the hands of God;" and he was able to listen at intervals to favourite passages from the New Testament. That evening closed in with an aggravation of suffering. It was the evening of the seventeenth anniversary of his wedding-day.