Another last separation, long menacing, yet truly grievous to the Doctor, was now almost momentarily impending. His good, gay-hearted, and talented old friend, Mr. Hayes, had had a new paralytic seizure, which, in the words of Dr. Burney, “deprived him of the use of one side, and greatly affected his speech, eyes, and ears; though his faculties were still as good and as sound as his heart.”
This account had been addressed, the preceding year, to George Earl of Orford, by desire of the poor invalid.
Pitiable as was this species of existence, Mr. Hayes long lingered in it, with a patience and cheerfulness that kept him still open to the kind offices, as well as to the compassion of his friends: and Dr. Burney held a regular correspondence with Lord Orford upon this subject, till it ceased from a calamitous catastrophe; not such as was daily expected to the ancient invalid, though then bed-ridden, and past eighty years of age, but to the Earl himself, from an attack of insanity.
EARL OF ORFORD.
This was a new grief. Lord Orford had been not only an early patron, but a familiar friend of the Doctor’s during the whole of his sojourn in Norfolk.
This truly liberal, though, as has been acknowledged, not faultless nobleman, attached himself to all that was literary or scientific that came within reach of his kindness at Haughton Hall; yet without suffering this intellectual hospitality to abridge any of the magnificence of the calls of fair kindred aristocracy, which belonged to his rank and fortune. His high appreciation of Mr. Bewley has been already mentioned; and his value of the innate, though unvarnished worth of Mr. Hayes, sprang from the same genuine sense of intrinsic merit.
Nearly in the meridian of his life, Lord Orford had been afflicted with a seizure of madness, occasioned by an unreflecting application of some repelling plaster or lotion to an eruption on the forehead, that had broken out just before one of the birthdays of the King,[23] upon which, as his lordship was then first Lord of the Bedchamber in waiting, his attendance at St. James’s had seemed indispensable.
This terrible malady, after repeated partial recoveries and disappointing relapses, had appeared to be finally cured by the same gifted medical man who blessedly had restored his Sovereign to the nation, Dr. Willis. Lord Orford, from that happy lucid interval, resided chiefly at Ereswell, his favourite villa. And here, once more, Dr. Burney had had the cordial pleasure of passing a few days with this noble friend; who delighted to resort to that retirement from the grandeur and tumult of Haughton Hall.
It had been nineteen years since they had met; and the flow of conversation, from endless reminiscences, kept them up nearly all the first night of this visit. And Dr. Burney declared that he had then found his lordship’s head as clear, his heart as kind, and his converse as pleasing, as at any period of their early intercourse.