“How shall I sufficiently thank you for all your kindness to me? You know my heart, and I may spare my words, for, God knows, my mind is in so distracted a state, that I can hardly write or speak rationally. Oh! why did not Mr. Siddons tell me when she was first taken so ill? I should then have got clear of this engagement, and what a world of wretchedness and anxiety would have been spared to me! And yet—good God! how should I have crossed the sea? For a fortnight past it has been so dangerous, that nothing but wherries have ventured to the Holy Head; but yet I think I should have put myself into one of them if I could have known that my poor dear girl was so ill. Oh! tell me all about her. I am almost broken-hearted, though the last accounts tell me that she has been mending for several days. Has she wished for me? But I know—I feel that she has. The dear creature used to think it weakness in me when I told her of the possibility of what might be endured from illness when that tremendous element divides one from one’s family. Would to God I were at her bedside! It would be for me then to suffer with resignation what I cannot now support with any fortitude. If anything could relieve the misery I feel, it would be that my dear and inestimable Sir Lucas Pepys had her under his care. Pray tell him this, and ask him to write me a word of comfort. Will you believe that I must play to-night, and can you imagine any wretchedness like it in this terrible state of mind? For a moment I comfort myself by reflecting on the strength of the dear creature’s constitution, which has so often rallied, to the astonishment of us all, under similar serious attacks. Then, again, when I think of the frail tenure of human existence, my heart fails and sinks into dejection. God bless you! The suspense that distance keeps me in, you may imagine, but it cannot be described.”
Meantime, no letters came. The winds raged without, and no vessel could cross. At the end of the week the news that arrived was not satisfactory. She made up her mind to throw up her engagement at any cost, and return. She and Patty Wilkinson set out for Dublin; there they were again detained, and received no news. Nearly beside herself with anxiety, she again appealed to Mrs. Fitzhugh:—
“Dublin, April 2nd, 1803.
“I am perfectly astonished, my dear Friend, that I have not heard from you after begging it so earnestly. Good God! what can be the reason that intelligence must be extorted, as it were, in circumstances like mine? One would think common benevolence, setting affection quite aside, might have induced some of you to alleviate as much as possible such distress as you know I must feel. The last letter from Mr. Siddons stated that she was better. Another letter from Mr. Montgomery, at Oxford, says that George gave him the same account. Why—why am I to hear this only from a person at that distance from her, and so ill-informed as the writer must be of the state of her health? Why should not you or Mr. Siddons have told me this? I cannot account for your silence at all, for you know how to feel. I hope to sail to-night, and to reach London the third day. God knows when that will be. Oh God! what a home to return to, after all I have been doing! and what a prospect to the end of my days.”
At last she was able to cross to Holyhead. At Shrewsbury she received a letter from Mr. Siddons confirming the worst accounts of Sally’s illness, but begging her to “remember the preciousness of her own life, and not to endanger it by over-rapid travelling.” As she read, Miss Wilkinson was called from the room; a messenger had arrived with the news of the girl’s death. Mrs. Siddons guessed what had happened by the expression of Miss Wilkinson’s face when she returned, and, sinking back speechless, lay for a day “cold and torpid as a stone, with scarcely a sign of life.”
Her own family came forward with consolation and help. Her brother John wrote a letter, which she received at Oxford; her brother Charles came to meet her, and conducted her on her first visit to her widowed mother. Every other grief had sunk into insignificance by the side of the death of her daughter. So worn out was she with misery and overwork, that the doctors recommended the quiet and bracing air of Cheltenham. We get a glimpse of her frame of mind in a letter addressed thence to her friend Mrs. Fitzhugh in June 1803:—
“The serenity of the place, the sweet air and scenery of my cottage, and the medicinal effect of the waters, have done some good to my shattered constitution. I am unable at times to reconcile myself to my fate. The darling being for whom I mourn is assuredly released from a life of suffering, and numbered among the blessed spirits made perfect. But to be separated for ever, in spite of reason, and in spite of religion, is at times too much for me. Give my love to dear Charles Moore, if you chance to see him. Have you read his beautiful account of my sweet Sally? It is done with a truth and modesty which has given me the sincerest of all pleasures that I am now allowed to feel, and assures me still more than ever that he who could feel and taste such excellence was worthy of the particular regard she had for him.”
The life out of doors at Birch Farm, reading “under the haystack in the farm-yard,” rambling in the fields, and “musing in the orchard,” gradually soothed the poignancy of her grief. “Rising at six and going to bed at ten, has brought me to my comfortable sleep once more,” she writes. “The bitterness and anguish of selfish grief begins to subside, and the tender recollections of excellence and virtues gone to the blessed place of their eternal reward, are now the sad though sweet companions of my lonely walks.”
In spite of all her stoicism and resolve, however, the sense of her loss would come back, carrying away all artificial barriers of restraint.
“If he thinks himself unfortunate,” she wrote of a friend, “let him look on me and be silent—‘the inscrutable ways of Providence.’ Two lovely creatures gone, and another is just arrived from school with all the dazzling frightful sort of beauty that irradiated the countenance of Maria, and makes me shudder when I look at her. I feel myself like poor Niobe grasping to her bosom the last and youngest of her children; and, like her, look every moment for the vengeful arrow of destruction. Alas! my dear Friend, can it be wondered at that I long for the land where they are gone to prepare their mother’s place? What have I here? Yet here, even here, I could be content to linger still in peace and calmness—content is all I wish. But I must again enter into the bustle of the world; for though fame and fortune have given me all I wish, yet while my presence and my exertions here may be useful to others, I do not think myself at liberty to give myself up to my own selfish gratification. The second great commandment is ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself,’ and in this way I shall most probably best make my way to Heaven.”