He was so pleased, that he said he should be quite happy to spend a night in the church.
During the week he began to fail rapidly, and on Friday spent the greater part of the day on his bed. He suffered from great mental prostration. One evening he was got out of the house as far as to the Laira, a beautiful creek with the Saltram woods beyond, touching the water; but he was too weak in body and depressed in mind to go out for exercise again.
Feeling himself growing weaker, and, as Mrs. Hawker wrote to his niece, “with the truth really beginning to dawn upon him,” he became nervously impatient to get away from Plymouth as speedily as possible, and to return to the home he loved, hallowed by the feet of St. Morwenna, and rendered dear to him by the associations of more than forty years.
But before he left Plymouth, when all had been ordered to be in readiness for departure, and notice had been given that the lodgings would be left the ensuing week, a curious occurrence took place. His beloved St. Cuthbert’s stole was sent for from Morwenstow, and a biretta, a distinctively priest’s cap, was borrowed for him—a thing he never wore himself—and he had himself photographed in cassock, surplice, stole and biretta, as a priest. It was his last conscious act; and it is certainly very inconsistent with the supposition that at the time he disbelieved in his Orders. This photograph was taken on Saturday, 7th Aug.: on Monday, 9th Aug., he was struck down with paralysis.
His action in this matter was the more extraordinary, as he had at one time manifested an extreme repugnance to having his likeness taken. He has told me himself that he would have inscribed on his tombstone: “Here lies the man who was never photographed.” For a long time he stubbornly refused the most earnest requests to be taken; and his repugnance was only overcome, at last, by Mrs. Mills bringing over a photographer from Bude, in her carriage, to Morwenstow, and insisting on having him stand to be taken.[[44]]
It was the old man’s last act, and it was a very emphatic and significant one. The photograph was taken on the very day on which Mrs. Hawker represented him as seeing that his end was drawing nigh. Every preparation was made for departure, the boxes were packed, and all was ready, on Monday; his impatience to be gone rapidly growing.
Mrs. Hawker wrote to his nephew at Whitstone, eight miles from Stratton, to say that they would lunch with him on Tuesday, the 10th, on their way back from Plymouth to Morwenstow, intending to drive the distance in the day.
He never came, nor was the reason known till it was too late for his nephew to see him.
On Monday evening, when all was ready for departure on the morrow, about seven o’clock, Mrs. Hawker saw her husband’s left hand turn dead, white and cold. Perceiving that he had a paralytic stroke, she sent immediately for a surgeon. On the morrow, Tuesday, the day on which the old man’s face was to have been turned homewards, it became evident that his face was set to go towards a happier and an eternal home.
It was then clear that there was no return for him to Morwenstow; and the lodgings were taken on for another week, which would probably see the close of the scene.