Bursledon Lodge, Dec. 15, 1813.
Both your letters reached me this evening on our return from a journey to Bath and London, which absorbed about a fortnight. I feel for the mother’s grief in losing her little blossom. ’Tis a more serious calamity than any one, except a mother, can imagine—I should have said, a parent, for I do believe with you, that a father often suffers quite as much. Do you remember Mrs. Grant’s stanza on the loss of her husband? What you say recalled it to my memory:—
‘I have sighed o’er the bud, I have wept o’er the blossom,
And beauty full grown ’twas my lot to deplore;
But the voice which was wont to speak peace to my bosom
Shall whisper compassion’s soft accents no more.’
There is something to me inexpressibly affecting in these lines. Pray tell me soon that your daughter continues to recover. Unless under very peculiar circumstances, the loss of an infant is much less injurious to a youthful mother than the sight of its sufferings. I cannot bear, however, to hear any one too decisive on what may or may not deeply wound the bosom of another. Mad. de Staël justly says, ‘Nul a le droit de contester à un autre sa douleur.’ There is much implied in this short sentence.