1884.
At this time we were far from being well off, and we were obliged to incur many expenses for Richard's illness; besides which, I hoped he would get change of air. It may be imagined, therefore, that when the news of the death of an aunt by marriage who did not care very much for me, and whom I very seldom saw, reached me that I received the intelligence that she had left me a legacy of £500 with pleasure. All the early part of the year we had a bad time of it. Richard had insisted on going back to the big room, and once he had put on a damp coat. I always think that foreign doctors do not understand English constitutions, which can never stand starving, and they do always starve you. He went on alternately better and worse.
In all these attacks I never left his room, day or night, and I frequently used to disobey orders as to diet. When he was free from pain he was immensely cheerful, and used to laugh like a schoolboy at his doctor, who would speak English for the sake of learning and practising it. "What him eat to-day?" "Pheasant, doctor!" He plunged his hands into his hair as if he were going to tear it all out. "What for you give him the wild?" (German, das wild, meaning game). One day after about six months he said, "You sall give him ten drops of rum in a tumbler of water for his dinner!" Peals of laughter came from the sick-bed. "Ach! das ist gut to hear him laugh like dat? Vat for he laugh?" I answered, "Because he gets a brandy-grog fit for a sailor every night, or he would have been a dead man long ago." More tearing of the hair and real displeasure. When he got over that illness he was a veritable skeleton; his legs were like two sticks of sealing-wax.
On the 4th of February Richard lost the use of his legs. After this he got better and better, and we were quite cheerful till the 14th of March. He had been moved on to a divan in the drawing-room, upon which we had made a bed, for change of air. He was so well that I thought I might take a walk in the garden, when a servant came flying after me to tell me that he was faint. I rushed up again, and found him very bad, and sent off for two doctors. They gave him twenty-five drops of digitalis three times at intervals of fifty minutes, and for two days and nights I never left his side. What the doctors had feared was a clot of blood arising to the heart, and I shall never forget the anguish of that time. What it really was, though we did not know it then, was flatulence round the heart, which would have been brought away by drinking boiling water; but after two days he was so well that we could wheel him about the house in a chair. The following day he had very bad attacks of the same, and then he seemed to get quite well. He again had one bad attack, and then all was well. From that he rallied wonderfully, and he began to walk.
On the 27th of March he was allowed to go out for a drive, but even that gave him a little fresh cold. He was allowed then to sit in the garden. I had a machine constructed to carry him up and down stairs, and a wheel-chair in the garden, so that he could drive about and get out and walk a few steps with the help of my arm and a stick, if he liked.
We had a present from home of good claret and good port. He was awfully fond of port, and when he got his first glass he said, "Ah! that puts life into a man." Mr. George Paget came, and Mr. and Mrs. Phipps from the Embassy in Vienna, and Mr. Fahie from Persia, and we took drives. Richard was able to tidy his books again. The doctor came for the last time (regularly) on the 8th of April. He then went through a course of sulphur baths in the house.
During this eight months' illness he had had a bad attack of pain, and I had a mattress by his bed, and if he slept, I slept; if he was awake, I was by him; but I had been thirty-six hours on duty, without taking my clothes off, trying to alleviate the pain by various things until he slept. I then threw myself on the mattress and slept a dead sleep, and, as he told me afterwards, he woke up with the pain and groaned, and heard a sleepy voice issuing from my mattress, saying, "Oh, offer it up, dear; offer it up." I was unconscious of all this, but when after some hours I really woke, I thought he was swearing very hard, but at last I distinguished, him saying exactly in the same tones as if he were swearing, "Offer it up, dear; offer it up." I asked him what he meant, and then he told me, and he said that he had laughed so much that it had quite done him good, and he often afterwards used this expression instead of rapping out an oath when the pain came.
All this time until the 4th of June, Richard was able to be wheeled out, and to walk and sit in the garden, and to take drives with me. He was very patient, very gentle, and very cheerful too; except when he was actually suffering, and we observed rigidly all the doctor's daily orders, whether sulphur baths or medicines, only reserving the right of plenty of plain wholesome food, and some claret, a very occasional glass of port, a nightly glass of grog, and the very essence of beef by simmering the meat in a jar put into a saucepan of boiling water, or squeezing the meat in a lemon squeezer, and plenty of Brand's strengthening things for invalids. I began to perceive that the drainage left much to be desired, and I was very troublesome to my poor dear landlord, who was a personal friend; but he always stoutly maintained that the smells were in my nose, and that he could not pull down the house to please me, and it was three years before I got what I wanted.
Richard notes with sorrow the death of Admiral Glyn on February 16th.