DEATH OF MR. SHAEN
14, Nottingham Place,
March 4th, 1887.
To Mrs. Edmund Maurice.
I gather that you have not seen the terribly sad news which reached me yesterday about dear Mr. Shaen. He is gone from us, and in a moment. I think of the girls and Mrs. Shaen, but I cannot help feeling, too, how irreparable is such a loss of a friend of nearly thirty years’ standing, who never failed in noble and wise counsel, and to whose judgment nearly all the work I ever did has owed so much. And one was so sure, not only of his wisdom and generosity, but of his kindness. It is a heavy blow.
14, Nottingham Place, W.,
March 15th, 1887.
To Miss Shaen.
Dearest Maggie,
Looking back on Mr. Shaen’s life as I remember it, and his character, as I saw it, nothing is to me so wonderful as the tenderness and the silence of it. The pity and the chivalry were quite infinite; and the expression of them was absolutely in deeds only. Then, I should think, there never was a more entire truth of nature than his; no shadow of lie or equivocation could sully it. Hence, I think, the purity of his nature. Amid the noisy and shallow philanthropy we see around us, how the silent service of a life stands out! The memory of it is a possession for ever; and there is a rebuke to our faithlessness in the memory of his faith that the only thing was the right thing. How poor all these words seem! but, believe me, they come with a love that will last on, and on which you may count.—I am