My dear Hope-Scott,—After writing a conversational letter to Bellasis yesterday, I heard at night so sad an account, which I had not anticipated, of his pain and his weakness and want of sleep, that I not only was distressed that it had gone, and felt that it would harass him to receive a second letter so soon, and, as he would anticipate, as unseasonable as the former. Therefore I enclose with this a few lines to him, which you can let him have when you think right.
I do not undervalue the seriousness of your first letter about him, and have had him constantly in my mind; but I did not contemplate his pain, or his sudden decline. I thought it would be a long business, but now I find that the complaint is making its way.
What a severe blow it must be to you! but to me, in my own way, it is very great too, though in a different way; for, though I am not in his constant society as you are, he has long been pars magna of this place, and he has, by his various acts of friendship through a succession of years, created for himself a presence in my thoughts, so that the thought of being without him carries with it the sense of a void, to which it is difficult to assign a limit. Three æquales I shall have lost—Badeley, H. Bowden, and Bellasis; and such losses seem to say that I have no business here myself. It is the penalty of living to lose the great props of life. What a melancholy prospect for his poor boys! When you have an opportunity, say everything kind from me to Mrs. Bellasis. I shall, I trust, say two masses a week for him. He is on our prayer lists. What a vanity is life! how it crumbles under one's touch!
I hope you are getting strong, and that this does not weigh too heavily on you….
Ever yours affectionately,
JOHN H. NEWMAN.
J. R. Hope-Scott, Esq., Q.C. to the Very Rev. Dr. Newman.
Hotel d'Orient, Hyères, Var, France:
March 6, '70.
Dear F. Newman,—I received yours yesterday evening, but withhold the enclosure for Bellasis, as I think it might do him harm. [After giving a somewhat better account of his friend's health:]