The following sonnet is the most coherent and most descriptive of her peculiar state of mind:
“Well, thou art gone—but what wert thou to me?
I never saw thee—never heard thy voice,
Yet my soul seemed to claim affiance with thee.
The Roman bard has sung of fields Elysian,
Where the soul sojourns ere she visits earth;
Sure it was there my spirit knew thee, Byron!
Thine image haunted me like a past vision;
It hath enshrined itself in my heart’s core;
‘Tis my soul’s soul—it fills the whole creation.
For I do live but in that world ideal
Which the muse peopled with her bright fancies,
And of that world thou art a monarch real,
Nor ever earthly sceptre ruled a kingdom,
With sway so potent as thy lyre, the mind’s dominion.”
Taking all the circumstances here adduced into consideration, it is evident that this strong excitement and exclusive occupation of the mind upon one subject, operating upon a system in a high state of morbid irritability, was in danger of producing that species of mental derangement called monomania. The poor little being was aware, herself, of the dangers of her case, and alluded to it in the following passage of a letter to Colonel Wildman, which presents one of the most lamentable pictures of anticipated evil ever conjured up by the human mind.
“I have long,” writes she, “too sensibly felt the decay of my mental faculties, which I consider as the certain indication of that dreaded calamity which I anticipate with such terror. A strange idea has long haunted my mind, that Swift’s dreadful fate will be mine. It is not ordinary insanity I so much apprehend, but something worse—absolute idiotism!
“O sir! think what I must suffer from such an idea, without an earthly friend to look up to for protection in such a wretched state—exposed to the indecent insults which such spectacles always excite. But I dare not dwell upon the thought: it would facilitate the event I so much dread, and contemplate with horror. Yet I cannot help thinking from people’s behavior to me at times, and from after reflections upon my conduct, that symptoms of the disease are already apparent.”
Five months passed away, but the letters written by her, and forwarded by Colonel Wildman to America relative to her brother’s affairs, remained unanswered; the inquiries instituted by the Colonel had as yet proved equally fruitless. A deeper gloom and despondency now seemed to gather upon her mind. She began to talk of leaving Newstead, and repairing to London, in the vague hope of obtaining relief or redress by instituting some legal process to ascertain and enforce the will of her deceased brother. Weeks elapsed, however, before she could summon up sufficient resolution to tear herself away from the scene of poetical fascination. The following simple stanzas, selected from a number written about the time, express, in humble rhymes, the melancholy that preyed upon her spirits:
“Farewell to thee, Newstead, thy time-riven towers,
Shall meet the fond gaze of the pilgrim no more;
No more may she roam through thy walks and thy bowers.
Nor muse in thy cloisters at eve’s pensive hour.
“Oh, how shall I leave you, ye hills and ye dales,
When lost in sad musing, though sad not unblest,
A lone pilgrim I stray—Ah! in these lonely vales,
I hoped, vainly hoped, that the pilgrim might rest.
“Yet rest is far distant—in the dark vale of death,
Alone I shall find it, an outcast forlorn—
But hence vain complaints, though by fortune bereft
Of all that could solace in life’s early morn.
Is not man from his birth doomed a pilgrim to roam
O’er the world’s dreary wilds, whence by fortune’s rude gust.
In his path, if some flowret of joy chanced to bloom,
It is torn and its foliage laid low in the dust.”
At length she fixed upon a day for her departure. On the day previous, she paid a farewell visit to the Abbey; wandering over every part of the grounds and garden; pausing and lingering at every place particularly associated with the recollection of Lord Byron; and passing a long time seated at the foot of the monument, which she used to call “her altar.” Seeking Mrs. Wildman, she placed in her hands a sealed packet, with an earnest request that she would not open it until after her departure from the neighborhood. This done she took an affectionate leave of her, and with many bitter tears bade farewell to the Abbey.
On retiring to her room that evening, Mrs. Wildman could not refrain from inspecting the legacy of this singular being. On opening the packet, she found a number of fugitive poems, written in a most delicate and minute hand, and evidently the fruits of her reveries and meditations during her lonely rambles; from these the foregoing extracts have been made. These were accompanied by a voluminous letter, written with the pathos and eloquence of genuine feeling, and depicting her peculiar situation and singular state of mind in dark but painful colors.
“The last time,” says she, “that I had the pleasure of seeing you, in the garden, you asked me why I leave Newstead; when I told you my circumstances obliged me, the expression of concern which I fancied I observed in your look and manner would have encouraged me to have been explicit at the time, but from my inability of expressing myself verbally.”