2, Elm Court, Temple,
25th June, 1822.
To the same,—
I received your letter yesterday, but I was so ill (that important as the occasion is) I could not answer it. To-day, nothing less than the urgency of the subject could prevail upon me to make the smallest exertion, for I am scarcely able to drag one limb up to the other. I have a violent catarrh, the glands of my throat are further inflamed and ulcerated, and I am burning with fever.
With regard to divulging to Harriet the disastrous event, for which, when once known to her, she can never be consoled; I am in a very unfit state to give advice. I am as I have always been of opinion, that it should be concealed from her as long as it can. It is a more generous cause of grief than the loss of a lover; and as Harriet’s mind is built, I think more likely to shock and destroy her. You state only one reason for breaking the secrecy which has hitherto been observed—that it appears strange, the event public, that you are not in mourning for it. I cannot but think that if any good can reasonably be expected from withholding the knowledge of this dreadful incident, it would be wrong and trifling to forego it, for the senseless custom of putting yourself in black for a few months. I have no crape about me. If any one were to ask the cause of my disregard of a paltry decorum, I should either turn on my heel from him, or explain to him that I did not put on the mockery of sorrow, lest it should get to my sister’s ear; that I was in outward mourning, and she had to be discovering for whom.
It is, surely, easy for you to say that you do not put on black for the same reason, to all who may enquire, or to all those to whom you wish to appear decorous. [He then writes on family matters, but, after a few lines, again recurs to the painful subject of his letter.] It is known to several with whom I am acquainted in London; but, it is easy, as Harriet restricts herself to a very narrow intercourse, to keep it still from her knowledge, till she has recovered strength of body to contend anew with severe and heavy affliction. How much I have suffered from the intelligence I shall not attempt to describe to you. I had but little interest in life before; it is now heavy and sickening to me. I feel as if I never should smile again; every circumstance of aggravation attends it. To perish on the verge of the shore, when he was just about to embark, after six years in the climate, when we thought the danger past. With letters from him full of felicitation of himself, and rapture at the hope of soon meeting us again, and when we were expecting him every moment in our embrace, to be struck cold to the heart with the news that we should never see him again. I owe little to man—I shall soon owe nothing to any other being. I hate the cant of the doctrine of Providence ‘your brother may be snatched by a merciful power from impending evil.’ Bah! why not the merciful being continue life to my brother, and destroy the impending evil? Well, I shall soon be as he is, and though there is no consolation in that feeling, it is some assuagement of grief, because sorrow will then be at an end. My duty to my father. I write in great pain.
I am, dear Madam,
Yours very truly,
HENRY COOPER.”
The following makes the last of the letters I possess, and is written six months previous to his death; and in answer to a letter, of my mother to him, respecting the appointment of a paid chairman, and he, a barrister of some standing, to preside at Quarter Sessions, and to have besides (if my recollection be correct) some civil power. This was then in the contemplation of the Ministry; and as the poet says “coming events cast their shadows before” evidently the shadow of the present county courts. The letter is dated from and bears date,
5, Hare Court, Temple.
6th March, 1824.
To the same,—
“I did not return to Town till Sunday morning, when I found your letter at my chambers. I hope you will accept, as a sufficient excuse, the extreme fatigue and languor which I felt all yesterday for not answering it immediately.
I lament exceedingly, that my father should not have been early enough in his application to the Lieutenant of the County, in whose gift, by the frame of the bill, the appointment is placed, and in whose hand, I fear, by the act itself it will remain.
I cannot conjecture to whom it has been promised by Col. Wodehouse. To Alderson is not at all probable, from the part he has taken against the Wodehouse’s, who are the most bigoted and relentless Tories in existence. To Preston [another provincial barrister in Norwich, and the late Jermy, who was shot by Rush], ought not to be probable, because he is not competent either in law or common sense to fill the office; and the favour to him would be an injury to the public. My father has every claim to it, and I think that it would have been no more than what was due from Col. Wodehouse, both to the county and my father, to offer it to him before he promised it to another.
I wish you might be right in your surmise, that the patronage will be placed in another quarter; but, of that there is the faintest chance, I should advise you to press my father to exert himself to procure the appointment, as it will be an office of the most agreeable kind, affording considerable profit at very little trouble. I, myself, know not a soul in the world who could influence any one of the present government: and any enquiries or attempt by me would have, in all probability, an adverse operation. I am of no importance whatever to any party, but my opinions, humble and insignificant as they are, have been noticed and recorded; and I am down in the black book for persecution, rather than in the red for favour. Of little note and importance as I am, such is the consciousness, in their own infirmity, in those who rule us, that the very lowest who have denounced their system, are objects of their hatred, for they are the objects of their fear; and those who have put them to the pain of apprehension, are marks for their revenge. I should think that the best course that my father could take would be to apply to Mr. John Harvey, to induce his brother, Onley Harvey, Esq. (a brother barrister of my father too), to ask it of the Home Department; if he asked it (supposing the gift to be there), I think, without doubt it would be given. [The rest of the letter relates to family matters, and concludes my love to William. He attributes too much honour to me by looking to me with any admiration.] My duty to my father.
I am, dear Madam,
Yours very truly,
HENRY COOPER.”
My task is all but accomplished. I have but now to lay before the reader the promised verses; those on Buonaparte are characteristic of the writer, who, with his high intellectual powers, possessed to the last, a noble and independent spirit, which despised even the appearance of servility. I shall then add the notices that appeared in the Morning Chronicle, and Gentleman’s Magazine, soon after his decease, which clearly show
that He, whose death they record, was no common person; as, also, the high estimation he was held in by the profession, to which he was an honour; and by the public who admired him for his eloquence, and prized him for his independence of character. In the sketches I have given of the two lives, which were, of necessity intermingled,—it is true, I have given but a rough outline of each, and my hope is they will portray the lineaments and character as effectually as a more lengthened biography; as I have seen, and often the character of a friend’s face better given in a few mere outlines, than in the finished likeness. In looking at a small duodecimo edition I possess of Plutarch’s lives, I perceive that the lives of his greatest heroes and statesmen, are comprised within a hundred pages, and yet how clearly does he portray their lives to the reader. He gives a few anecdotes of their youth, a few salient points of their character in manhood, and then concludes with their actions and their deaths; and leaves the rest to the imagination and “the mind’s eye;” and who, after, reading them, does not see clearly before him the man whose life has been so ably delineated? I mean not, by this, to compare myself for an instant, with that great writer; but, having, as I said before, such slender materials to deal with, I have, as far as I was able, and after re-perusing the writer referred to, done my best, with my small abilities to follow his example, and pursue his arrangement; I can only hope I may have in part succeeded.
After the notices referred to, I shall end by laying before the reader the verses written on my brother, after his death, by my mother and Mr. Wing; and in the appendix I shall refer the reader to the life of Erskine