‘Le chef-d’œuvre d’amour est le cœur d’une mère.’
My other affections appeared to require food, and, if not supported by adequate returns, I was sensible might expire; but this attachment seemed a part of my existence which could neither be increased nor diminished by any outward circumstances. My husband’s delight in the birth of his son nearly equalled mine. My love for him, the father of my child, grew in strength, and I looked on myself as one of the happiest of women.
Alas! this was the pinnacle of my enjoyments, and from this moment fortune never ceased to undermine the basis on which I founded my future hopes. The gradual decline of Colonel St. George’s health, a series of circumstances concurring to check his prospects of worldly advancement, the immense difference between the poor realities of life and the splendid pictures drawn by my youthful fancy, the void occasioned by a course of dissipation and trivial pursuits, were all strongly felt by a mind so susceptible as mine; and my situation at the birth of my second son was a perfect contrast to that which saw me first a mother, though divided from it by little more than a year. My husband was in the South of France. We had sailed for Bourdeaux about two months before I lay in. The wind was contrary, and I was so ill that he apprehended I could not proceed without danger, so that after I had suffered six-and-thirty hours’ wretched sickness, being still in sight of the Irish coast, he prevailed on the captain to land us at Wicklow, and in two days pursued the voyage alone. My agitation on our parting, and remorse for having suffered any personal consideration to prevent me from attending him, affected my unborn child, who, nine days after his birth, died of inward fits. Thus I suffered all the pains of a lying in, without the comfort of my husband’s presence or my infant’s smiles, without a single female friend to cheer the hours of confinement, regretting the past, and apprehensive of the future. At this time I wanted five months of one and twenty.
Sad and slow the months passed on, and when I had nearly arrived at that age, Mr. St. George returned to settle some affairs which depended on my majority, and to take me with him to a more southern climate. Greatly was I shocked at the change of his appearance. His figure was shrunk and emaciated, his features sharpened, and his eyes had acquired a distressing keenness. Every day some new remedy was proposed and tried, some fresh physician called in and obeyed. From March to November I passed hovering round the couch of sickness, or preparing for a voyage to Lisbon, which I looked on as a certain means of recovery, and undertook with the most flattering hopes. My Portuguese journal will prove their fallacy. It breaks off seven days before Mr. St. George’s death.[7]
‘Long at his couch death took his patient stand,
And menaced oft, and oft withheld the blow.’
Yet the moment of his final dissolution shocked me no less than if it had been sudden and unexpected. To say the truth, to me it was so; strong affection will hope where reason would despair, and I never for an instant relinquished the expectation of his recovery. His last moments will never be erased from my memory, were I to live for ages. All the surrounding objects are likewise engraved on my brain, and can never perish while that endures. Even the orange tree which waved its branches across the window between my fixed eyes and that setting sun he had seen for the last time, is impressed with every leaf on my imagination. My friends, the Warres, in a few hours took me to their home, and neglected none of the offices of friendship. I required them all, for my mind was deeply affected. Sometimes I talked incessantly, recapitulated all the incidents of our courtship and marriage, then sunk into sullen silence. Sometimes I reproached myself vehemently for imaginary faults toward him, and formed wild schemes of expiating errors I had not committed. Sometimes I imagined all was a dream, from which I might yet awake. But my predominant idea was regret for not having shown him warmer love, more observant duty, more tender fondness. I wished that these ‘had been in every point twice done, and then done double;’ and whenever I was alone, used to address him in the language of contrition, and call on him with all the fervour of passionate attachment.
The day which completed my two-and-twentieth year, found my mind in this disordered state, and saw the remains of my husband placed on shipboard to be deposited at Athlone in the tomb of his ancestors. I soon followed those precious relics. The scene of my misfortune was hateful to me. The spring was advancing with charms of which a more northern climate had given me no idea; but I saw with displeasure beauties he could not enjoy, and longed to remove, as if I hoped to fly from grief. In vain did the Warres intreat me to pass the summer with them, and promise they would themselves conduct me to Ireland in the beginning of the autumn. Without motive or object, without even a home to return to, I felt a vague desire of wandering, and I sailed for Dublin about a month after my misfortune. As I crossed the bar, which half a year before I had passed with the gayest and most lively hopes, the large waves rolled solemnly toward the vessel, and I often wished it were possible that one of them might receive me into its dark bosom and all my inquietudes.
Contrary winds forced our vessel to take shelter in Cork harbour. There I landed, and was taken to an inn, and was put to bed more dead than alive. Next morning I arose to pursue my journey to Dublin, as rest was hateful to me. I longed to be with Mr. St. George’s nearest relations and dearest friends. A magazine lay on the table; I took it up, and mechanically turned toward the Deaths. There my grandfather’s name was the first I saw. At any time nature must have spoken to the heart of a child thus shocked with the intelligence of a parent’s loss; but in my position the incident was doubly affecting.
After a melancholy journey, I arrived at Mrs. Cradock’s. With her and Mrs. Marjoribanks I passed the first year of my widowhood. I suffered much both in mind and body; however, I recovered by the pure air of Broomfield, and the unremitting attention of those who loved me. In about fifteen months after my return, I resolved on visiting England, and invited Miss Chenevix to accompany me. At the commencement of that journey I began a regular journal, which I shall probably continue to the end of my life and faculties.