During the five years that followed, Lord Edward and Pamela kept in the closest possible touch with the Duchess through a constant correspondence and frequent visits. But it was only one portion of his existence which her son revealed to his loving mother. There is no hint of politics, of the stern business which was to be wound up in the bloody liquidation of “’Ninety-Eight,” in the letters which “Eddy” writes in the open bay window of the little book-room in Frescati, with the birds pouring out their song and the perfumed garden its fragrance all around him. It is of her flowers and shrubs he tells the Duchess, “I believe there never was a person who understood planting and making a place as you do. The more one sees of Carton and this place [Frescati] the more one admires them; the mixture of plants and the succession of them are so well arranged.” He gladdens her heart with a description of Frescati and the shrubs she had planted, in all their June loveliness. “All the shrubs are out, lilac, laburnum, syringa, spring roses, and lily of the valley”—in short the whole is heavenly. He seeks her approval for his own gardening plans and labours: he has had the little green full mowed and rolled, the little mound of earth that is round the bays and myrtle before the house planted with tufts of gentianellas and primroses, and lily of the valley, and they look beautiful, peeping out of the dark evergreen; close to the root of the great elm he has put a patch of lily of the valley. A fine February morning finds him “digging round roots of trees, raking ground and planting laurels,” and planning to have hyacinths, jonquils, pinks, cloves, narcissi in little beds before the house and in the rosery. If his mother will trust him to prune the trees, in the long round, he thinks he can do it prudently.
Later on he tries very hard to make his mother see the home he has made for his wife in Kildare—the little white house with bay windows, all covered with climbing roses and honeysuckle—the “dear wife” herself in her little American jacket planting sweet peas and mignonette—her work-box with the little one’s caps on the table in the open window.
The expected “little one,” “the little young plant that was coming,” filling its young father with proud joy, arrived in October, 1794, in the shape of another little Eddy, and the Duchess was very glad to accede to her big Eddy’s request, and to be its godmother. The little Eddy was subsequently left with his grandmother for good, after his parents’ visit to Hamburg in 1796, which was to have such momentous political consequences. Little did the poor Duchess know for what his father was preparing when “the precious Babe” was left with her! She is full of gratitude for the gift, and full of appreciation of the sacrifice the “dear Edwards” have made in parting with it—they “who adore it and delight in its pretty ways.” We get charming glimpses of the Duchess and the pretty boy in some letters to Lady Lucy. Now he is at play among the sheep on the green hill beneath her window; now at her elbow while she is writing, and full of messages for her to give to Papa and Mamma. “Eddy, dood boy, Eddy, happy boy. Papa ride horseback, Mama dance.” which shows, the Duchess remarks, “that he remembers them.” Again, the Duchess is showing him a lock of Papa’s hair which Lady Lucy has sent her mother, and Eddy is kissing it a thousand times: “Papa’s hair, Eddy’s own Papa’s hair!” She loves to gather up his comical remarks. “I told him something he was eating was enough and that more was too much. ‘But Eddy don’t like enough, Eddy like too much.’”
In October, 1797, Lord Edward saw his mother for the last time. After that, events moved with tragical swiftness to the catastrophe of May 19th, 1798.
It was ten days after Lord Edward had got his fatal wound in the altercation with Major Ryan that his mother was told of his condition. As soon as the news was broken to her, she declared that she must go to her boy at once. They kept her in London, persuading her that it was there she might serve his cause, seeing great people, using all the influence she could command to have his trial put off. Only poor Lucy, more closely in sympathy with Lord Edward than any of the others, feels how useless all this is. “All that human foresight could point out they are doing, but alas! Edward is dying and alone!”
It was only on June 6—when Lord Edward had been two days dead—that the Duchess, Mr. Ogilvie, Lady Sophia, Lady Lucy, and “Mimi” Ogilvie set out at length for Ireland. They were met on the road by the messenger bearing the fatal news.
Lord Edward’s daughter, Pamela, shall tell us the end of the story: “The Fourth of June, when the guns fired for the King’s birthday, was always a dark day in the house; poor Grandmamma appeared in deeper mourning, and somehow there was a sort of stillness; we spoke with bated breath, and went softly ... it was the anniversary of my father’s death. Grandmamma wore his coloured handkerchief next her heart, and it was put into the coffin with her.”