Accompanied by the canon Riego, brother to her husband, and her attached sister, Donna Lucie, she removed in March to Malaga, from whence the advance of the French army into the south of Spain obliged them to seek protection at Gibraltar, which, under the advice of General Riego, they left for England on the 4th of July, but, owing to an unfavourable passage, did not reach London until the 17th of August. Here the visitation which impended over her was still more calamitous than all that had preceded it. Within little more than two months after her arrival in London, the account arrived of General Riego’s execution. [97]
Gerald Griffin, the Irish novelist, in a letter dated 22nd of November, 1823, says,—
“I have been lately negotiating with my host (of 76 Regent Street) for lodgings for the widow and brother of poor General Riego. They are splendid apartments, but the affair has been broken off by the account of his death. It has been concealed from her. She is a young woman, and is following him fast, being far advanced in a consumption. His brother is in deep grief. He says he will go and bury himself for the remainder of his days in the woods of America.”
The house,
No. 1, Seymour Place,
“I was introduced the other day to poor Madame Riego, the relict of the unfortunate general. I was surprised to see her look much better than I was prepared to expect, as she is in a confirmed consumption.”
Mental grief, which death only could terminate, had at that moment “marked” Madame Riego “for his own;” yet her look, like that of all high-minded Spaniards, to a stranger was calm—“much better than he was prepared to expect.”
On the 18th of May, exactly one month and a day before the termination of her sufferings, Griffin says,—
“The canon Riego, brother to the poor martyr, sent me, the other day, a Spanish poem of many cantos, having for its subject the career of the unhappy general, and expressed a wish that I might find material for an English one in it, if I felt disposed to make anything of the subject. Apropos, Madame Riego is almost dead. The fire is in her eye, and the flush on her cheek, which are, I believe, no beacons of hope to the consumptive. She is an interesting woman, and I pity her from my soul. This Mr. Mathews, who was confined with her husband, and arrived lately in London, and who, moreover, is a countryman of mine, brought her from her dying husband a little favourite dog and a parrot, which were his companions in his dungeon. He very indiscreetly came before her with the remembrances without any preparation, and she received a shock from it, from which she has not yet, nor ever will recover. What affecting little circumstances these are, and how interesting to one who has the least mingling of enthusiasm in his character!”