About a month before his decease he wrote to Mr. Barham, whom he requested to run down to Fulham and see him, as he was too ill to leave home himself; and of the interview which ensued we are enabled to give a somewhat full account, committed to paper shortly afterwards, and evidently with the view of fixing the impression, yet fresh, in the writer's mind:—
"It was on the 29th of July, 1841, that I last saw poor Hook. I had received a note from him requesting me to come down and see him, as he wished much to talk over some matters of importance, and could not, from the state of his health, drive into town. I went accordingly, and after a long conversation, which related principally to * * * and to his novel, 'Peregrine Bunce,' then going through the press, but which he never lived to complete, a roast fowl was put on the table for luncheon. He helped me and took a piece himself, but laid down his knife and fork after the first mouthful, which, indeed, he made an unsuccessful attempt to swallow. On my observing his unusual want of appetite—for his luncheon was in general his dinner—he said: 'It is of no use, old fellow; the fact is I have not tasted a morsel of solid food these five days!' 'Then what on earth have you lived upon?' to which he replied, 'Effervescing draughts;' adding afterwards, that he was allowed to take occasionally a tumbler of rum and milk, or a pint of Guinness's bottled porter.
At the age of 51 from a Portrait by Count D'Orsay
"On hearing this, I strongly pressed on him the necessity of having further advice, which he at length promised he would do, if he were not better in a day or two. I told him that my wife and myself were going down to the Isle of Thanet, and pressed him very much to throw work overboard for a while, and accompany us and be nursed. He said, however, 'he was completely tied to his desk till he had concluded what he was then writing for Colburn and Bentley; but that he should get quite clear of his trammels in about a month, and then, if we were still there, he would make an effort to pay us a visit.'"
In truth, he was soon past writing; death was advancing upon him with rapid strides, while earthly prospects were growing, daily, darker and more threatening. It is painful to reflect that his last hours, ere the struggling mind had sunk into insensibility, were disturbed by the apprehension of inability to meet a couple of bills of comparatively trifling amount, on the point, as he believed, of becoming due. On Friday, the 13th of August, he took finally to his bed, the stream hurried on with increasing velocity as it approached the fall—a brief agitated interval, happily not neglected, was left for the first, last work of erring man, and on the evening of the 24th he expired.
The disorder under which he had been labouring for years, arose from a diseased state of the liver and stomach, brought on partly by mental anxiety, but principally, it is to be feared, by that habit of over-indulgence at table, the curse of Colonial life, which he had early acquired, and to which he held with fatal perseverance to the end. It needed no ordinary powers to enable him to sustain the contest so long; but his frame was robust and his constitution vigorous; and he seems to have possessed in a remarkable degree that power of maintaining the supremacy of mind over matter, which rendered him indifferent to, or unconscious of, the first slow approaches of decay. He was buried with extreme privacy at Fulham; a simple stone bearing his name and age marks the spot, which is immediately opposite the chancel window, and within a few paces of his former home.
