To Rev. T.M. Hitchins, Plymouth Dock
Cawnpore: October 10, 1809.
My dearest Brother,—I am again disappointed in receiving no letter from you. The last intelligence from the West of England is Lydia’s letter of July 8, 1808. Colonel Sandys has long since ceased to write to me, and I have no other correspondent. It is very affecting to me to be thus considered as dead by almost all my natural relations and early connections; and at this time, when I am led to think of you and the family to which you are united, and have been reading all your letters over, I feel that I could dip my pen deep in melancholy; for, strange as it may seem to you, I love so true, that though it is now the fifth year since I parted from the object of my affection, she is as dear to me as ever; yet, on the other hand, I find my present freedom such a privilege that I would not lose it for hardly any consideration. It is the impossibility of compassing every wish, that I suppose is the cause of any uneasiness that I feel. I know not how to express my thoughts respecting Lydia better than in Martial’s words—Nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te. However, these are not my general sentiments; it pleases God to cause me to eat my meat with gladness, praising God. Almost always I am without carefulness, as indeed it would be to my shame if I were not.
My kindest remembrances attend my dearest sisters, Emma and Lydia, as they well know. You two are such bad correspondents that on this ground I prefer another petition for the renewal of Lydia’s correspondence,—she need not suspect anything now, nor her friends. I have no idea that I should trouble her upon the old subject, even if I were settled in England—for oh, this vain world! quid habet commodi? quid non potius laboris?
But I never expect to see England more, nor do I expect that though all obstacles should be removed, she would ever become mine unless I came for her, and I now do not wonder at it, though I did before. If any one of my sisters had had such a proposal made to them, I would never have consented to their going, so you may see the affair is ended between us. My wish is that she would be scribe for you all, and I promise on my part to send you through her an ample detail of all my proceedings; also she need not imagine that I may form another attachment—in which case she might suppose a correspondence with an unmarried lady might be productive of difficulties,—for after one disappointment I am not likely to try my chance again, and if I do I will give her the earliest intelligence of it, with the same frankness with which I have always dealt (with her).
Meanwhile, on the silent shores of South Cornwall, Lydia Grenfell was thus remembering him before God:
1809, March 30.—My dear friend in India much upon my heart lately, chiefly in desires that the work of God may prosper in his hands, and that he may become more and more devoted to the Lord. I seem, as to the future, to have attained what a year or two since I prayed much for—to regard him absent as in another state of existence, and my affection is holy, pure, and spiritual for this dear saint of God; when it is otherwise, it is owing to my looking back. Recollections sometimes intrude, and I welcome them, alas, and act over again the past—but Lord, Thy holy, blessed will be done—cheerfully, thankfully I say this.
Tregembo, July 11.—I have suffered from levity of spirit, and lost thereby the enjoyment of God. How good then is it in the Lord to employ means in His providence to recall His wanderer to Himself and happiness! Such mercy belongeth unto God—and this His care over me I will record as a testimony against myself, if I forsake Him again and lose that sweet seriousness of mind, so essential to my peace and safety. Though I have never (perhaps for many hours in a day) ceased to remember my dear friend in India, it has not of late been in a way but as I might love and think of him in heaven. Why is it then that the intelligence of his probable nearness to that blessed abode should distress me? yet it did, and does so still. It is this intelligence which has, I hope, taught that my late excessive cheerfulness was dangerous to my soul, in weakening my hold of better and calmer joys. I was directed, I think, to the thirty-sixth Psalm for what I wanted on this occasion, as I was once before to the sixty-first, and I have found it most wonderfully cheering to my heart. The Lord, as ‘the preserver of man and beast,’ caused me to exercise dependence on Him respecting the result of my friend’s illness. Then the description of the Divine perfections drew back my wandering heart, I hope to God. The declaration of those who trust in God being abundantly satisfied with the fatness of His house, taught me where real enjoyment alone will be found; but the concluding part opened in a peculiarly sweet way to my mind: ‘Thou shalt make them drink of the river of Thy pleasures.’
October 23.—I am under some painful forebodings respecting my dear absent friend, and know not how to act. I am strongly impelled to write to him, now that he is in affliction and perhaps sickness himself—yet I dread departing from the plain path of duty. ‘O Lord, direct me,’ is my cry. I hope my desire is to do Thy will, and only Thy will. I have given him up to Thee—oh, let me do so sincerely, and trust in Thy fatherly care.
1810, January 1.—Felt the necessity of beginning this year with prayer for preserving grace. Prayed with some sense of my own weakness and dependence on God—with a conviction of much sin and hope in His mercy through Jesus Christ. Oh, to be Thine, Lord, in heart and life this year! Had a remembrance of those most dear to me in prayer, and found it very sweet to commend them to God, especially my friend in India—perhaps not now in India, but in heaven. Oh, to join him at last in Thy blissful presence!