Note 244 — Chapter XVI · LAST YEARS, 1808-1820

This is explained in a letter from Mary Young to her brother Arthur, dated March 27; no year added, but evidently written in 1811. The Duke of Grafton died March 14, 1811. ‘It seems that the poor patient was very intractable, and that the operator said, “Indeed, sir, if you are not more patient I must leave you.”... Mr. Wilberforce, with the best wishes imaginable, called [after the couching], and was shown up to his bedroom; and the very first words he said were, “So we have lost the poor Duke of Grafton!” then began and continued in his mild, soft manner a most pathetic dissertation on the duke’s pious resignation, &c. &c., till your father burst into tears, which was, Phipps (the oculist) vowed, the worst thing possible, and which anyone knew in his lamentable state of inflammation was destruction. It flung him back, being only a week after the operation. Oh, Ar., as I greatly believe he will be entirely blind, do try to come to him.’