However, later on, he often quoted St. Monica’s last prayer: “Lay my body anywhere—only do not forget to remember me at the altar of God.”
Is it to be wondered at, that now there are Morwenstow people who say, that, since his death, they have seen the old man standing at the head of the stone that covers his wife, looking mournfully at the blank space where he had hoped his name would be cut; and that others, who have not seen him, aver that they have heard his familiar sighs and moans from the same spot?
Whilst he was at Boscastle he was neither mentally nor bodily himself. His brother, Mr. Claud Hawker, wrote to me that he was often in a state approaching stupor. “When he came down here in August he was very ill, and certainly broken in his mind, nearly all the time he was here: he was often in a scarce-conscious state.”
Whilst Mr. Hawker and family were staying at Penally, Mr. Claud Hawker fell ill, and it was necessary for them to move out of the house. Mr. Robert Hawker would have returned to Morwenstow, had not the curate been in the vicarage: then he wished to take lodgings at Boscastle, but was persuaded by Mrs. Hawker to go to Plymouth.
His brother wrote to me: “Robert came down to see me ill in bed. I was ill at the time; but I could see he was not like himself in any way, and it was no act of his to go to Plymouth. He declined to do so for some time, until at last, most reluctantly, and against his better judgment, he was persuaded to do so.”
On the other hand, Miss E. Newton says that the visit to Plymouth was a planned thing, as Mr. Hawker was desirous of medical advice there.
They left on 29th June, and took lodgings in Lockyer Street, Plymouth. Mr. Robert S. Hawker was still very ill and failing.
The Rev. Prebendary Thynne, rector of Kilkhampton, a near and attached friend of sixteen years, was in Plymouth not long before the end, and saw the vicar of Morwenstow. He was then agitated because he had not been able to be present at the Bishop of Exeter’s visitation at Stratton, fearing lest the bishop should take it as a slight. The rector of Kilkhampton quieted him by assuring him that the bishop knew how ill he was, and that he was away for change of air. Then he brightened up a little, but he was anything but himself.
The curate of Kilkhampton wrote to me: “Mr. Hawker complained that we had not invited him to a retreat held by one of the Cowley Missioners in the same month in which he died. Of course we knew that he could not have come, and so did not ask him. But surely his making a kind of grievance of it is hardly consistent with the idea that even at that time he was in heart a Roman Catholic.”
On Sunday, 1st Aug., Mr. Hawker went with his wife to St. James Church, Plymouth, for morning service. The service was choral, and he much enjoyed it. Mrs. Hawker saw him home, and then went on to the Roman Catholic Cathedral, to high mass; and in the evening he accompanied her to benediction, and was pleased with the beauty of the service, which to him had all the attractions of novelty, as he had never travelled abroad, and so was unfamiliar with Roman Catholic ritual. The church was very solemn, and nicely cared for; and benediction is one of the most touching, popular and elastic of services.