Bursledon Lodge, Nov., 1816.
It will be a relief to you to hear that my health is unimpaired by an affliction, of which you cannot know the extent without having witnessed the delightful qualities and endearing habits of the lovely little being it has pleased Heaven to resume.
You have too much feeling to be ignorant of the irreparable loss a mother incurs by being deprived of an only daughter, such a joy-inspiring creature, gifted with every endowment of mind and body desired either by the wise or the unwise—gentle, gay, blooming, beautiful, and affectionate. I looked to her for consolation under the total privation of your society I am likely to suffer, and in all the other calamities which may occur in the destiny of an affectionate woman. A son may be alienated by an unfeeling wife, a husband may be seduced by a mistress; but a daughter is a benignant star, shining through the clouds of adversity, and embellishing every scene of joy, her mother’s companion in sorrow, her attendant in sickness; it is on her a mother relies to close her eyes, and cherish her remembrance, which the scenes of busy life may soon efface from the breast of man. I spoke of her but little, partly from a natural tendency in the heart to silence on what interests it very deeply, and partly that I feared to show my triumph and exultation. She was my secret hoard of promised pleasure and gratification; and I had a sort of dread of letting in too much light on the fairy picture of happiness.
I have not thought it right to omit the following letter, though in one sentence it is a repetition of that immediately preceding.
TO MRS. TUITE.
Bursledon Lodge, Dec. 20, 1816.
I thank you for the sympathy you express in my deep affliction, and am aware (for I am practised in sorrow), of the effects of time and religion. Truly does Wallenstein say, under deplorable calamity,
‘I know I shall wear down this sorrow;