TO MRS. LEADBEATER.
Bursledon Lodge, Sept. 15, 1818.
I sympathize in your affliction; but I revere your calmness and resignation, and, as far as is permitted to be proud of the qualities of our friends, I am proud of it. I feel myself raised by contemplating the union of the warmest family affection, of inexpressible tenderness in all the relations of life, with a sublime firmness which unites Christian hope and stoical fortitude. Oh, do not say you are vain of my friendship. Believe me, the exultation ought all to be on my side, and I often thank Heaven for the kindness which prompted you to seek me at Ballitore, and has followed me with partial affection from that hour, veiling my many faults, and placing the less exceptionable features in the fairest points of view.
The manner in which you and yours support your present sorrow, reminds me forcibly of what was said to me by another mourner not very long since. She and her husband had attended her brother to the island of Madeira in his last illness, and shared with his young wife in the anxious task of nursing him. One of them was always by his side night and day, and frequently all. He lingered many weeks in a decline; he was her favourite brother; he was her husband’s bosom friend, previous to the connexion by marriage.
I dreaded meeting his sister on her return; and looked with a kind of sensitive apprehension to the day she immediately offered to pass with me. But she entered with a seraphic smile, was composed and sweet as usual, and in the evening when we were alone, she owned that she must always look back to the period of his loss as one of the most soothing recollections of her life;—‘he was so completely resigned, and so perfectly prepared.’ She is an admirable woman. At eight-and-twenty she has a consummate judgment, is perfectly pure from vanity or selfishness, has looked through the decorations and trappings of grandeur (she is daughter of Lord A——) with that quiet perception which has enabled her to rate them at their real value, is serene like the first mornings of spring, pious, affectionate, and somewhat between the violet and the lily of the valley, in an exterior feminine and pleasing in the highest degree.
Her husband, a clergyman, was obliged to perform the last duties to his friend before and after the termination of existence. He filled all the duties of his office for the inhabitants of Madeira, where there was no resident clergyman. They wrote him a most grateful farewell, accompanied with a present of two hundred pounds, which he accepted, and gave to assist in building a church in the island. These are pleasing passages in the lives of our friends.
Sept. 10, 1818, Bognor.—This is still a wild, and, in my opinion, unpleasant watering-place. I should rather say cheerless than wild, for it is tame as to scenery; all the buildings are irregular—not that rural irregularity which is consistent with beauty, but that of negligence and indifference to appearance. I am engaged to visit Mr. Hayley to-morrow at half-past twelve.