There is a regret expressed by Colman that he kept no copy of his answer, “which,” he adds, “was written in the ‘flow of soul,’ and at the impulse of the moment?” Mr. Lowth wrote in reply to Colman, detailing in a most amusing manner his having, in the pursuit of two Cockneys, who had made an attack upon a grove of Orleans plum-trees in his grounds, taken cold, which confined him to his room.
“But for this inter poculum et labra,” continued Mr. Lowth, “it was my intention to have made you my first post restante, with, perhaps, a walk down the old avenue, in my way to town, that identical day; and, still hoping to accomplish three miles and back, I have hoped from day to day, but I cannot get in travelling condition, even for so short a journey. Therefore I hope you will send me word by my new Yorkshire groom lad, that you will take pot-luck with me on Sunday as the most likely day for you to suburbise.”
Colman accepted the invitation, believing from the length of Mr. Lowth’s letter (three pages), and the playfulness of his old friend’s communication, that nothing more than an ordinary cold was the matter with him. A note, however, which followed from one of Mr. Lowth’s daughters, stated that the meeting proposed by her father must be postponed, that he “had become extremely unwell, that bleeding and cupping had been prescribed,” and the most perfect quiet enjoined.
On the day after the receipt of this note, Colman sent over to Grove House, Chiswick, to make inquiries as to Mr. Lowth’s health, when the reply given by an elderly female at the gate, after considerable delay, was that “her master was no more.”
A letter from Dr. Badeley to Colman, dated 22d August, 1822, confirmed the melancholy intelligence, which he had at first hesitated to believe. It stated that “the decease of Mr. Lowth took place on Sunday evening,” the very evening appointed by him for their anticipated happy reunion; and that his remains were to be interred in the family vault at Fulham on Monday morning at ten o’clock.
“I continued,” said Colman, “at Fulham Lodge, which is nearer in a direct line to the church than to the Bishop’s Palace and the ‘old avenue.’ On Monday the adjacent steeple gave early notice of the approaching funeral; religion and sorrow mingled within me while the slow and mournful tolling of the bell smote upon my heart. Selfish feelings, too, though secondary, might now and then obtrude, for they are implanted in our nature. My departed friend was about my own age: we had entered the field nearly at the same time; we had fought, indeed, our chief battles asunder, but in our younger days he had been my comrade, close to me in the ranks: he had fallen, and my own turn might speedily follow.”
These are the ideas which George Colman the younger records as having passed through his mind while an inmate of Fulham Lodge:—
“My walk next morning,” he says, “was to the sepulchre of the Lowths, to indulge in the mournful satisfaction of viewing the depository of my poor friend’s remains. It stands in the churchyard, a few paces from the eastern end of the ancient church at Fulham. The surrounding earth, trampled by recent footsteps, and a slab of marble which had been evidently taken out and replaced in the side of the tomb, too plainly presented traces of those rites, which had been performed on the previous day. For several mornings I repeated my walk thither, and no summer has since glided away, except the last, when my sojournment at Fulham was suspended, without my visiting the spot and heaving a sigh to the memory of Robert Lowth.”
Theodore Hook’s manuscript Diary contains the following entries with reference to visits made by him at Fulham Lodge:—
“2nd January, 1826.—Called. Mrs. Carey’s luncheon.
“Thursday, 5th January.—Drove over to Fulham. Mrs. Carey’s din. Colman, Harris, Mrs. G. Good hits. Mrs. Coutts, ‘Julius Cæsar,’ &c. Stayed very late, and walked home.”