If I do not write, it is because I have absolutely nothing to tell you that you have not known for the last twenty years. Here I live still, reading, and being read to, part of my time; walking abroad three or four times a day, or night, in spite of wakening a Bronchitis, which has lodged like the household ‘Brownie’ within; pottering about my Garden (as I have just been doing) and snipping off dead Roses like Miss Tox; and now and then a visit to the neighbouring Seaside, and a splash to Sea in one of the Boats. I never see a new Picture, nor hear a note of Music except when I drum out some old
Tune in Winter on an Organ, which might almost be carried about the Streets with a handle to turn, and a Monkey on the top of it. So I go on, living a life far too comfortable as compared with that of better, and wiser men: but ever expecting a reverse in health such as my seventy-five years are subject to. What a tragedy is that of ---! So brisk, bright, good, a little woman, who seemed made to live! And now the Doctors allot her but two years longer at most, and her friends think that a year will see the End! and poor ---, tender, true, and brave! His letters to me are quite fine in telling about it. Mrs. Kemble wrote me word some two or three months ago that he was looking very old: no wonder. I am told that she keeps up her Spirits the better of the two. Ah, Providence might have spared ‘pauvre et triste Humanité’ that Trial, together with a few others which (one would think) would have made no difference to its Supremacy. ‘Voilà ma petite protestation respectueuse à la Providence,’ as Madame de Sévigné says.
To-morrow I am going (for my one annual Visit) to G. Crabbe’s, where I am to meet his Sisters, and talk over old Bredfield Vicarage days. Two of my eight Nieces are now with me here in my house, for a two months’ visit, I suppose and hope. And I think this is all I have to tell you of
Yours ever sincerely
E. F. G.
* * * * *
This was in all probability the last letter FitzGerald ever wrote. On the following day, Wednesday, June 13, he went to pay his annual visit at Merton Rectory. On Friday the 15th I received from Mr. Crabbe the announcement of his peaceful end: ‘I grieve to have to tell you that our dear friend Edward FitzGerald died here this morning [June 14]. He came last evening to pay his usual visit with my sisters, but did not seem in his usual spirits, and did not eat anything. . . . At ten he said he would go to bed. I went up with him. . . . At a quarter to eight I tapped at his door to ask how he was, and getting no answer went in and found him as if sleeping peacefully but quite dead. A very noble character has passed away.’ On the following Tuesday, June 19, he was buried in the little churchyard of Boulge, and the stone which marks his grave bears the simple inscription ‘Edward FitzGerald, Born 31 March 1809, Died 14 June 1883. It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.’
For some time before his death he seems to have had a foreboding that the end was not far distant. In one of the last conversations I had with him, certainly during my last visit at Easter 1883, he spoke of his mother’s death, in its suddenness very like his own, and at the same age. ‘We none of us get beyond seventy-five,’ he said. At this age his eldest brother had died, four years before. And in a letter to one of his nieces, after speaking of the fatal malady by which the wife of a dear friend was attacked,
he added, ‘It seems strange to me to be so seemingly alert—certainly, alive—amid such fatalities with younger and stronger people. But, even while I say so, the hair may break, and the suspended Sword fall. If it would but do so at once, and effectually!’ Sixteen days later his wish was fulfilled.
INDEX TO LETTERS
To Miss Aitken, 188