Volume 1 — EXTRACTS FROM MISS SEWARD’S LITERARY CORRESPONDENCE. (continued 2)

Our party broke up at nine. Mr and Mrs Porter supped, by engagement, with their relation, Mr White. A few of my mother’s intimates, with our beauteous Helen, staid supper here. The instant the brother and sister were decamped, every body spoke at once, and all in jocose invective upon your poor friend’s mischievous eyes, as they called them.

Sarah, smiling, claimed of me the promise I had asked of her, viz. that she might accompany me into Italy. She claimed it with a rising blush, and a tremulous motion in the eye-lid, visible only to my searching glance, “which knows each line and trick of her sweet countenance;” but to that glance it discovered a little latent chagrin, so natural to the delicacy of virgin-pride.

Ah! sweet one, thought I, thou wilt never go into Italy under the Porter auspices, if thou goest not a principal of the party. However, you may be sure no such premature and needless assertion escaped my lip; yet, vexed at an undiscerning idea of such apparently general influence, I warmly declaimed upon its absurdity.

Honora gazed upon me while I was speaking, with eyes which bore animated assent to my protest, and then turned them, with a smile of scorn, upon the group, who were interrupting me with laughing, but earnest and clamorous dissention. Throwing my arms round Honora’s neck, and kissing her, I exclaimed, “Here is this child looking down upon you all as the idlest dupes existing, to a style of behaviour which, being otherwise, the man must have had too coarse a mind for the endurance of a woman of delicacy.” Helen vowed she would find it all out at her uncle W——’s. We shall know, added she, what our Italian prince thinks of these rival sisters. “Rival!” I could have beat her.

Conceive this provoking Helen, rushing in as we were at breakfast, the ensuing day, her fine face all in a glow, her hands spread: “It is verily, and even so!—this irresistible madame Anne! Sarah must wear the willow, but I think it will not be with a very aching heart.” “No, indeed!” said the sweet maid, with a look of blended, or rather instantaneously changing sensation, the result of which was ineffable. It was a gleam of disdain, immediately softening into the most affectionate sweetness, as her eyes remained fixed on me.

I asked Helen on what grounds she built her mighty probable conclusion. “My uncle W——,” replied she, “told me he had asked Mr Porter how he liked Mr and Mrs Seward?” “Extremely!” “And Miss Seward?” “I think her charming.” (And Helen ran on in a string of hyperbole which I have no inclination to repeat.) “The youngest?”—“She seems a modest, pleasing young woman.”

“Now, for all this,” cried out Honora, “I don’t believe he likes Nancy best.” I called her wiser than the aged, and grew so saucy to my mother, that she looked grave, and took her pinch of snuff first at one nostril, and then at the other, with swift and angry energy, and her eyes began to grow dark and to flash. ’Tis an odd peculiarity; but the balls of my mother’s eyes change from brown into black, when she feels either indignation or bodily pain.

Reports of this imaginary preference of the eldest sister spread rapidly through our little city; and, before night, it was asserted that he had made proposals in form to Miss Seward.

Messages of enquiry concerning our healths only passed between us and the Porters through the course of that day; but, at eleven the next morning, the brother and sister called upon us to go with them to Mrs Porter’s new house, just built, but not yet inhabited. He looked much better; the mountebank had vanished with the black velvet. Helen joined our party. Mr Porter’s whole attentions were devoted to Sarah; and Honora and I exulted not a little over Helen about her prediction. He took an opportunity of frankly offering his hand and heart to her acceptance, ere we reached home, where he passed the remainder of the day with us.

The general misconstruction of his civility to me had been much in his favour. Hence maiden-pride was busy with its whisper, that now rejection, on her part, would be deemed dislike on his, and preference of another. So this circumstance acted as a powerful counterpoise to the quack-doctor impression given by the black velvet and fine waistcoat, which I had not been able to forbear imparting to her. She owned her heart had recoiled a little from the unusual tout-ensemble produced by those habiliments. How much better did he look in his brown coat!

Behold him an accepted lover! and a very pressing one. He wants to hurry the nuptials, saying he must be in Italy before winter. I am afraid I see about him an impolite impatience of contradiction; a proud, not an enamoured jealousy, and a considerable degree of peevishness. Heaven protect my sweet Sarah’s peace!

When people are tolerably happy, how dangerous is a material change in the habits of life! Ah! what halcyon days have this dear girl and I passed with our little Honora, beneath the fair spires of tranquil Lichfield! How immaterial were the clouds of an horizon so azure! Some violence of temper, and vapourish despondency, from causes provokingly trivial, on my mother’s part, some absurdities on my father’s; yet, left so much to ourselves, and perfectly aware of the value of time, how interesting have been our employments, how animated our pleasures!

You enquire after the duration of my enfranchisement from the fetters of love. My heart has not resumed them; but, indeed, all its sensations have, of late, been absorbed in my sister’s impending destiny.

The continual disgust you express to the joyless crowds and dissipation of London, is worthy of an ingenuous mind, to which domestic pleasures are, above all others, dear. Remember you have a relation in Lichfield, who would be happy to receive you into her family.

In the dread of disappointment, I hardly dare trust myself with an idea so agreeable, which flatters me with seeing you every day, and often all the day, when I am in England.

In England!—Ah! now that my continental vision approaches its realization, I begin to tremble at the thought how large a tract of seas and shores, mountains and plains, must shortly divide me from the home of my youth!—from my parents!—from my dear Honora!—That, during two long years, I shall not see the rising sun slant his beams into the lake of Stowe Valley, or change into pale gold the stone of the cathedral turrets. Yet, though tempted, like the swallows, into warmer climates afar off, my wings, any more than theirs, will not be cropt. I can fly back again when I please. But Sarah, my dear Sarah! she must be borne back by permission, and in a cage! a golden one, ’tis true, but still a cage.

However, if she enters it, most voluntary will be that entrance. After my mother, good literal being, had ceased her expressions of wonder that he could so distinguish her Anna, yet like her Sarah best, she desired she would reject Mr Porter’s addresses, if they were not perfectly agreeable to her. She sent for my father, and desired him to join her in this request, which he did willingly and earnestly; and since, on some alarming appearances of a fretful and despotic disposition, they have warmly and solemnly adjured her to break off the affair. But, alas! she is became attached, and partial to him in the extreme.

By this generous adjuration, our parents have proved themselves really parents, making their child’s happiness their first object. Whenever it is otherwise, a miserable proof is exhibited of human depravity.

Adieu! adieu!—This Hymeneal gale begins to blow cold and ungenial upon my once warm hopes, and “all their fires grow pale.”

Lichfield, June 2, 1764.

O! my kind friend, this dear creature is dangerously ill!—a violent fever! Thursday next was fixed for her marriage. About three o’clock yesterday morning, I was awakened by her taking my hand, and telling me that she was very ill. Her dear hands felt of a parching heat, and so did her forehead and temples.

I called assistance instantly. We are all very much alarmed. Medicine has hitherto unsuccessfully contended with the disease, which I am afraid gains ground instead of abating. Her spirits have been too much hurried for a constitution so delicate. Yet her youth!—I must hope, for O! I cannot endure the thoughts of her being torn from us!

We are a sad, sad family—distracted with fears, that we dare not communicate to each other. I will not, while any hope remains, send away this letter; that, if it please Heaven to restore the dear sufferer, you may be spared those grievous apprehensions which your sympathy will excite, should you know our situation before you are informed that its terrors are removed.

Thursday Morning.—Congratulate me, dearest Emma!—the intended bridal-day has arisen auspiciously, averting from my Sally’s bosom the arrows of death, whose aim has been deprecated with our prayers and tears. There is a remission in this cruel fever;—a balmy moisture upon her temples, bosom, and hands. She breathes freely; is able to sit up in an arm-chair; to smile with her wonted serenity, and cheerfully to tell us that she shall soon be well.

Parched and exhausted as I was with weeping and watching through four days and nights, hope has proved a restoring cordial. I leave you, that I may refresh myself by combing my dishevelled hair, and washing from my eye-lids the traces of those bitter tears.

Thursday Night.—O! my friend, our hopes are vanished!—While I was changing my gown, and preparing to carry neatness and a cheerful countenance to my dear sister’s arm-chair, she relapsed;—the fever came back with redoubled violence!

In the distraction with which the servants fled different ways to recall the medical people, there was no thought of me. Nobody came near my apartment to reveal the sad tidings, and I entered the sick room with all the alacrity of hope. What did I behold there?—Alas! my precious sister sunk back in her bed, just recovering from a fainting fit!—sweet Honora supporting with her arm the dear sufferer’s head, her silent tears falling, in large drops, upon her Sally’s pillow; my father and mother standing by the bed-side, the deepest woe in their countenance. Mr Porter sitting in the window, leaning upon his hand, which covered his forehead.

The dear creature opened her languid eyes, and, looking at me earnestly,—“My Nancy, you are dressed—are you going out?—do not leave me long.”—“Alas, no! there was no thought of going out. I left you, my love, to put on clean clothes, that I might look comfortable to you, flattering myself that you were greatly better; nobody came to tell me that you were not so well again.”

She sighed, and waved her dear hand emphatically, as if she had said,—The days of our happiness here are passed away!

Saturday Morning.—Ah!—she has grown worse and worse, though by slow degrees. Dr D. says, when the fever returned, it was with a fatal change in its nature, from inflammatory to putrid, and that he has very little hope of saving her. O! my friend, may your heart never feel the anguish with which mine is at this instant torn!

How much would Mr Porter be to be pitied if he had strong sensibilities!—so near calling such a blessing his, and to have it thus torn from him! but his sensations seem more like vexation than grief.

My father’s sanguine and cheerful disposition will not suffer him to think his darling so ill as she too surely is. My mother, my poor mother!—she has heard that a clergyman in Worcestershire, of the name of Bayley, has frequently administered James’ Powder with success, in very dangerous cases.

She has just sent a chaise and four full speed, to conjure him to return hither in it, on an errand of life or death. We have all eagerly caught at this possibility, and are flattering ourselves with hopes which, I fear, are but as the straws at which drowning wretches catch. Is it likely that a private gentleman should know a better method of administering that medicine than a physician of D.’s acknowledged skill?

Sunday.—Mr Bayley is come; he arrived at ten this morning. The instant he came into the room, my mother rushed to him, and, falling on her knees, clasped her arms wildly around him, exclaiming, in the piercing accent of anguish,—“Dear angel-man, save my child!”

He burst into floods of humane tears, as he raised her from the ground. They went instantly into the sick chamber—but O! he gives us not more hope than Dr D. If the fever had but continued inflammatory!—but here all evacuation is pernicious. He joins the doctor in advising musk medicines instead of the powders. Adieu! adieu!

Wednesday Morning.—I have hardly strength to tell you—it is pronounced, she cannot survive this night; there is no balm in Gilead!—Pray for us that we may be supported under this severe chastisement of Almighty power!

Gotham, Nottinghamshire, June 23, 1764.

I have sat almost an hour at the writing-table, my hands crossed upon this paper, unable to take up the pen; that pen which I used to seize with such glad alacrity, when it was to convey my thoughts to you! Now, spiritless, afflicted, weary, my mind presents only scenes of mournful recollection; or, hovering over the silent and untimely grave of my sister, perceives nothing but a drear vacuity.

Your last letter came to me when my heart laboured under one of the keenest paroxysms of its late anguish. The funeral bell was tolling, and the dear, dear remains were everlastingly passing away from our habitation. Six of her young companions, in white raiment, the emblem of her purity, drowned in tears, bore, with trembling hands, the pall that covered that dim form, which, but a little, little fortnight before, had walked amidst them with the light step of youth and gaiety. Yes, upon the very lawn over which they were then slowly walking in grieved and awful silence, interrupted only by the solemn death-bell.

Thus vanish our hopes!—thus cold is the bridal-bed of my dear sister! No sun-beam shall pierce its dark recess, “till the last morn appear.”

In a few days after this sad scene was closed, we came hither, to the village-retirement of my excellent uncle and aunt, Martin. Pious tranquillity broods over the kind and hospitable mansion, and the balms of sympathy, and the cordials of devotion, are here poured into our torn hearts.

At times, I can scarce persuade myself that I shall see her no more!—for O! how perfect was our amity! Upon that tender, instinctive affection, which grew with our growth, was engrafted esteem the most established, and confidence the most entire.—One bed!—one heart!—one soul! Even the difference of our dispositions became a cement to our friendship; her gentleness tempered my impetuosity; her natural composure caught animation from her sister’s sprightliness;—“our studies, our amusements, our taste the same.” O heavy, heavy loss! yet bow thy stubborn grief, O my spirit! and remember the reason thou hadst to fear for her happiness in that union, from which she was so awfully snatched away.

Cut off, as she was, in the bloom of life, yet nothing could be more resigned. Sickness, pain, and the extremest bodily weakness, had not power to extinguish, or even to abate, the pure flame of her devotion; yet all was calm and rational, for she had no delirium through the course of her illness. When her eyes were closed to open no more; when she seemed insensible to outward objects, she continued fervent in prayer, nay, in thanksgiving to her God. She repeated the Lord’s prayer often, and several verses out of the Scriptures which were applicable to her expiring situation. In these repetitions, her voice, though low, and interrupted by the pausings of weakness, was distinct. I am sure she had a foretaste of the everlasting happiness which was soon to recompence, ten thousand fold, the mortal struggle.

She expressed unwillingness to take the musk medicines, which, I am afraid, were disagreeable to her. Yet, when my father and mother solicited, she opened her mouth and swallowed them, without shewing any more reluctance.

Her partial affection for me was almost the latest yearning of her gentle spirit. As I sat by her weeping, the morning of the final day, and saw her lie pale and stretched out, her sweet eyes unable to open, she said, in a low voice, when we had all thought her invisible to every earthly recollection,—“Speak, my Nancy; let me once more hear that dear voice, ever welcome to me!”

O! how those words yet vibrate on my ear! I repeat them to myself many times in every day and night, endeavouring to imitate the sweet mournful accent in which they fell upon my soul with indelible impression.

My father was agonized by the loss of this, the darling of his heart; but it is amazing how soon the native cheerfulness of his temper has arisen from beneath the blow. My mother, at first, bore it better. She directed the funeral; and the business which it created seemed to have rendered her spirits collected, and to have dried the source of her tears; but, when that was over, a deep severe dejection succeeded, which nothing seems of power to comfort or to cheer.

My cousin, Miss Martin, is of my sister’s age, and was deservedly beloved by her above all her other companions, next to myself and Honora. She grieves for our loss and her own with passionate tenderness.

Honora, young as she is, has shared all my sorrow. If she is but spared me, I shall not be quite bereaved. It will not be wholly in vain that I shall say, Return, blest days! Adieu! adieu!

Gotham, Nottinghamshire, June 27, 1764.

With what kind anxiety do you enquire of me if our sorrows soften? Mine do soften, my dear creature; participation has been their balm.

Upon a pleasant grass-plat, in my uncle’s garden, stands a fine old mulberry-tree, of extensive and luxuriant shade, beneath which we all used to sit, reading and working, in the happy days that are flown.

There is an austerity in my mother’s grief, which, in a great measure, keeps us silent in her presence. We see my father cheerful, and fear to open afresh the wound of his heart, by even alluding to any thing which must recall the image of her he has lost. So, in these summer heats, we hasten to the mulberry shade. It is there that her name is ever on our lips. We recollect her looks, her voice, her gesture, her sentiments. We search for the passages in our poets of which she was most enamoured, and her accents return upon our ear as we read them; and thus do we extract the bitterness with which unpartaken sorrow broods over the laceration of its tenderest ties.

How comfortable is it that we can pass many hours of every day exempt from the intermixture of society with indifferent people, who would soon be tired of this eternal looking-back to the past, and recalling the image of the everlasting absent! They would fancy it right to force our thoughts into other channels. Mistaken idea! which yet, against experience, maintains its ground.

We are never weary of our heart-affecting theme, equally interesting to all the three. It, in some measure, restores to us the angelic friend we have lost. She seems yet to mix in our conversations. We take delight in assuring ourselves that her spirit hovers round us, and receives a part of its happiness from the consciousness how tenderly she is yet beloved, how incessantly remembered by those who were dearest to her on earth. Ah! I hope they will one day be re-united to her in a state, the felicity of which will have its completion in the conviction of its permanence!

Early next week I shall accompany my father to Eyam, his living in Derbyshire. During the last week of our residence there, Mr Porter means to join us, whom we left behind with his sister. After he has passed some days with us there, we shall all re-assemble at Lichfield.—Changed Lichfield! Ah! how miserably changed! With what different sensations, to what I used to feel, shall I catch the first glimpse of its spires from the neighbouring hills!—those spires, never till then, after absence, beheld with less than rapture.

But, as to Derbyshire, I shall feel a mournful sweetness in returning to the mountain-heights of that village, in whose bosom my sister and myself first saw light, and where we sported away the hours of infancy till I was six, she five, years old; and which we have re-visited together of late years, passing frequently some of the summer months in that romantic retreat.

Much, however, shall I lose in not having Honora with me, whom my mother cannot spare, since my father has no gratification in recalling the past, in “overtaking the wings of Time,” and in bringing back, arrayed in all the softening hues of recollection,

I am afraid that men, in general, feel little of all this. Ah! rather than my destiny should ever be united to one whose spirit is proof against these pensive luxuries, may I never change the name my Sally bore! lest the habit of suppressing sensibilities which cannot be partaken, change the nature of that heart, on whose softness her image, and the remembrance of her virtues, is so deeply impressed, and to which you are unalienably dear.

P. S. This letter is short, but you shall hear from me more at large after I get to Eyam.

Eyam, Derbyshire, July, 1764.

The fortnight, passed beneath my native rocks, has not elapsed without interest. Little as I expected gratifications of that sort, the sorrows of my heart have been soothed by sympathy.

There are some liberal-minded people in this village, by no means a small one. Mr L—— is an excellent young man, intelligent and familiar with the writings of our best authors. He was often the companion and guide of our exploring rambles in this romantic country, when my father used to be here during some weeks of the former summers, with both his daughters. Mr L—— indulges me in recalling traces of my Sally amid the rocks, and in the shady depths of those sequestered vallies which were so dear to her taste.

But I have met with sympathy yet more animated and indulgent, in another gentleman here, whose more advanced life, and the gayer manner in which his youth was spent, little promised this softness of spirit. He is the eldest son of the esquire of our village. The late Duke of Devonshire procured him an ensign’s commission when he was only sixteen, and made him page to the duchess when himself became lord-lieutenant of Ireland.

It happened that he was always with the regiment when I went to Eyam after I grew up. Indeed I never, till now, saw him since the commencement of my existence, when my father, in the triumph of parental pleasure, took him, then a military youth scarce twenty, into the nursery, and put me into his arms before I had been born three hours. After a series of military services, behaving gallantly as aid-de-camp to General Howard, in the last war, and obtaining the rank of major, Mr W—— beat his sword into a ploughshare, and lives as a private gentleman and justice of the peace, chiefly upon the income for which he sold his commission, since a very large family, and his father’s expensive habits, have left his patrimonial property small. He is joint house-keeper with his sister, a widow lady of genteel fortune, whose life has been eventful, and called forth uncommon exertions of that prudence, spirit, and virtue, which adorn her character.

* * * * * * * * *

I spoke to you of our ride home last night by moonlight. Major W——, and his sister, Mrs T——, accompanied my father and myself to dine and sup with a friendly old bachelor, whose mansion is situated behind yonder large and rocky mountain, that fronts, a quarter of a mile distant, the window of the apartment in which I am now writing.

The good old bachelor’s retreat is defended on the west from wintry storms by this immense hill, which rises immediately from the back part of his house.—The house stands on a terrace, about half way down the hill, shaded by that hill, and by the umbrage of luxuriant plantations, from these scorching heats, which, since our arrival here, have been so intense, and which are now darting their noon-tide fervours over our mountains.

The front of Mr Oxley’s bowery little mansion overlooks a sweet romantic, though narrow valley. The opposite hill is covered very richly with woods, beautifully intermixed with sloping corn fields.—Above that hill a vast ridge of rocks arises, over whose summits stretches the black and dreary East Moor, which seems to give stern protection to the cultivated and smiling scene beneath. My favourite river, the Derwent, rolls its clear and amber waves in the bosom of this valley. The Derwent waters are said to receive that tinge from the peculiar colour of the clay on the hills amid which they rise. The banks of this river, along its course through our romantic country, are every where shaded by a fringe of shrubby underwood, alders, and nut-trees, whose overhanging branches touch the waves as they wander by. The amber tint of the river becomes this dark foliage, which is so luxuriant upon its banks, and which changes a defect into a beauty.

The rural mansion I am describing, is low-roofed and long. It stands on the brink of this lovely valley, which has a back-ground so wild, desert, and sublime. A pretty grassy terrace, about ten yards broad, and an hundred long, extends parallel with the front of the house, and then the hill descends abruptly, and almost perpendicularly, to the river side. Upon this terrace, and under the parlour windows, stand a row of bee-hives. I am sure you love bees, for I love them infinitely. Their cheerful, active industry; the order and regularity with which, in their different departments, they promote the common good, must have attracted the pleased attention of every mind which has any congeniality to qualities so estimable.

When my sister and myself used to pass serene days in my uncle Astley’s patriarchal habitation at Famhorn, near Lichfield, we often brought chairs and our work upon the grass-plot, and sat by the hives, attentive to the little busy creatures, and all their various occupations. We were delighted to observe the legs of one loaded, as they returned to the hive, with yellow wax; another with globules of water about their head, legs, and wings; another with the richer, and more glutinous honey which these insects draw up the tubes of the flowers with their little proboscis.

It was then that we used so frequently to repeat those beautiful lines in Milton which describe a beehive and its virtuous commonwealth:

What a divine poet is Milton!—The grace with which he speaks of common and minute objects equals in its degree the sublimity of his demoniac and angelic descriptions.

Picturesque scenery abounds every where in this country. Our own village wants not its striking features, and boasts a Salvatorial dale and glen; but attempting to describe them now, this letter would be longer than suits my swiftly-wasting interval of leisure.

* * * * * * * * *

Lichfield, Aug. 1764.

How strange is it that I returned to Lichfield a whole month ago, and have not written to you in the interim; not even acknowledged one of the kindest and dearest of your letters! Alas! my averseness to take up the pen yet remains undiminished.

You express a desire to know how we bore the tearing-open, as you emphatically call it, of our recent wound, by a re-entrance beneath this roof, over which the shadows of death had so lately brooded. We were all of us deeply, my mother terribly, affected.

Those charming lines of Lord Lyttleton’s are as a mirror, in which you will see reflected the feelings of your Anna’s heart on returning to the mansion of her youth and happiness; yet you needed it not; your heart would suggest, your sensibility paint them.

But the pleasure of seeing my Honora again, of weeping upon her neck, and of mingling our tears, was, and yet remains, a great and increasing consolation.

It was an extreme effort of resolution to resume my apartment—the scene, during many years, of pleasing hopes and perfect confidence; during thirteen succeeding days and nights, the scene of dread suspense; of the struggles of improbable hope against despair; of parental anguish; of fond compassion, torturing because unavailing; of blasted expectation; of expiring loveliness!

Immediately on my arrival, I desired my mother to allot me some other room, for I should never, I said, be able to inhabit that again. She observed, it was a charming apartment, and, consisting of three rooms, was very convenient for my employments; that it would be better if I could teach my heart to find satisfaction in seeing Honora occupy what once was Sally’s dressing-room. I perceived the justness of the remark, and felt a foretaste of the consolation which would result from that last circumstance.

The dear girl, who was present, said, with a tender smile, “It may be melancholy, but it will not be lonely; and surely the sooner you get over the first shock of re-entering that apartment, the better; let us go to the room your sister loved!”

Ah! exclaimed I, and wept, but it must be immediately then; long preparation and reflection will but increase my reluctance.

We went up stairs; I hurried through the passage, moulding, in the throes of anguish, Honora’s arm, on which I leaned. On opening the door, the bed! the chairs! the bureau! the dressing-table! every separate piece of furniture seemed to bear the stamp and image of her we have lost.

We sat down, and wept during some time in passionate silence. Honora then led me to the window, and made me observe how beautifully the setting sun had gilded those spires, whose illumination our departed friend used to contemplate with delight. She pointed out to me from those windows, every pleasing object that my sister used to observe, and said, “We will love them more than ever for her sake.”

At that instant I felt that in this apartment, of all other places, I should be most contented, most consoled.

Honora proposed requesting my mother’s permission, as she had her friend Miss Hammond with her, that we might sup where we were, without quitting the room for an instant till the next morning.

With what an insight into the human passions is this dear creature born! All that others gain from experience seems hers by intuition.

I inclose an elegy[3] which I wrote upon the late sad event, in the course of a few days after my return home. Most part of it was composed upon that pleasant terrace where we used to read and work on the calm summer days!

Lichfield, Sept. 1764.

A silence longer than I proposed is, on my part, the less regretted, because I have a near prospect of conversing with you personally. In October, my long-existing wish is to be indulged of seeing the great Babylon. It is true this desire slumbered the instant my Sally sickened, but it has awakened beneath my mother’s proposal, that Nannette and myself, accompanied by her father and Mrs A. S——, should pass a few months in London. We are to have lodgings near your brother’s house in —— Square.

Curiosity has no wish so fervent and interesting on this occasion, as the hope of seeing and conversing with you, and of sharing with yourself and Nannette the gratifications of the ear and eye. I shall leave my mother with confidence, in the tender care and attention of Honora.

You will not expect to hear from me again in the interim, since I am to set out, in a few days, for the habitation of one of the most interesting and agreeable of women, with whom I shall reside till the bustle of our races is overpast. On my return home, there will be a necessity for my writing to several friends whom I am not soon to see.

You are not personally acquainted with this engaging Mrs L——, to whom I am going, and who has changed her situation and place of abode, without having changed her name, married, as she is, to her cousin, Mr L——.

She was, during many years, some of which were prior to my existence, the soul of every thing that was gay and agreeable at Lichfield. Eclipsing all the women, she had many enemies amongst her own sex; and, to say truth, though her temper was remarkably sweet, her wit was a little unmerciful. She could not resist the temptation of amusing herself and her company, with the awkwardness, the singularity, the foibles, and the faults of her acquaintance. She could not spare them even in those whom she loved, and with whose distress, of every kind, she could sincerely sympathize.

A combination so uncommon, of softness and irony, gave rise to almost universal accusations of insincerity from her own sex. The men forgave, and indeed understood her better; imputing these sallies of raillery, which spared no one’s absurdity, to their true cause, an irresistible propensity to amuse the present company, and to inspirit the passing moment.

Both sexes were drawn to her as by fascination; even those women who were loudest in their invectives against the satire they dreaded. But she was the model of them all respecting dress and fashion; and, in her presence, envy and resentment were soothed, or laughed out of all their acrimony.

She has married her kindred spirit as to wit. He has more than any person I know, except herself.—In him it is such an absorbing propensity, that, for my life, I could never find out whether or not he had knowledge or taste for the arts, or for works of genius. He always gives a jocose and generally a ludicrous turn to every subject, as it arises. Such, at least, I have ever found him; but she can be as agreeably serious as she is enchantingly lively; has read much more than the generality of women; and, though without poetic talent, or critical attention to that charming art, is alive to the beauties of poetic composition.

Mr L——, the farthest in the world from being an enthusiast in any other part of his character, has, from the time he was fourteen, loved her with the Quixotism of former ages. Without hope for himself, he beheld her successively engaged by several different rivals. David Garrick was the lover of her early youth. When he quitted Lichfield to become a theatrical adventurer, he had her promise to be his the instant his situation became profitable, and brilliant enough to outweigh, in the breast of her uncle, the objections to his profession. This uncle had declared he would give his favourite niece five thousand pounds, if she married with his consent. That is said to be the fortune which some years afterwards he left her.

Contrary to her advice, the lover made premature proposals, and was rejected with a disdain which his high spirit could not brook, though the probable consequence of his own indiscretion. Ungenerously did he resent her desire of postponing their union, rather than disoblige one of the kindest friends and guardians, in her indulgent uncle, since she foresaw that every proud objection would, in time, be over-borne and lost in the blaze of his growing celebrity. But unreasonably mortified pride on the part of the lover, and the charms of the fair Violetta, obliterated the remembrance of those graces, once so passionately adored. I was not in being at this period, but I learned the circumstances, partly from my mother, and partly from Mrs L—— herself, some years before she married, when, in my dawning womanhood, she honoured me with her friendship and confidence.

After David Garrick’s marriage, from amidst an herd of admirers, and several rejected lovers, she resigned her attention to two gentlemen in succession, who would either of them have been an eligible connection. What prevented their taking place, I do not exactly know; but imagine, that, being conscious of possessing an heart as capable of feeling passion as her talents and graces were of inspiring it, she durst not, when standing on the brink, dare to leap the matrimonial gulph, unassisted by that potent little deity ordained to rule her fate.

Behold this heart of hers once again delivered, with all its vivacity, and all its softness, to a Mr Y——s, one of the most lovely and engaging of men; but he had a rich, covetous, and obstinate old relation, who, declaring that gentleman his heir, had other and higher views for him.

As he was old and invalid, our lovers thought it prudent to wait an event that seemed probable and near, rather than disoblige a wretch who would assuredly have revenged the offence by disinheritance.

Several years elapsed in this suspense, till, at length, death exchanged it for certainty. But alas! the capricious tyrant of the tomb suffered this withered and worthless weed.

Thus was the heart of this charming woman a second time lacerated; the then disappointment proved more severe, because it had no resources in the dignity and exertion which a sense of injury inspires. Many were the tears with which, in secret, she embalmed the memory of this unfortunate lover. I have seen her shed them passionately over a miniature picture of Mr Y——s’, which presented the most beautiful and interesting countenance I ever beheld. Yet, in company, her native vivacity and playful spirit continually burst, like the sun, through the clouds of her sorrows.

When time began to blunt the sharpness of this secret grief, then it was that her engaging cousin first perceived the gleams of hope breaking in upon the gloom of fruitless and concealed wishes. I ought to have informed you, that, during their ungenial empire, he was said to have been as grave as he afterwards became gay; but I knew him not till he had resumed his native hilarity, beneath the warm influence of mutual love.

Miss L——, no longer young, did not cease to be eminently attractive. Her lover was in his bloom, and very handsome, with graceful and insinuating, though gay manners. Yet was it three or four years before she could so far forget him she had lost, as to reward a constancy so distinguished.

At length she married Mr L——; and, losing her, our little city became the field of dead souls, instead of dead bodies, which, as you have heard, is the real meaning of its name, derived from the legendary battle fought in the time of the Romans, upon a hill near the town, where three contending kings, with their armies, lost their lives, and strewed the field with their dead.

You know with how much devotion our Lichfield Minerva, your ingenious and excellent friend, Miss B——d, has been attached to Mrs L——, from the moment they first met, three years prior to the marriage of the latter. This attachment, which seems to pass the bounds of friendship and the love of women, is extraordinary in a disposition so generally even and placid as Miss B——d’s, and considering the striking dissimilarity of character in the two friends. In one respect, it has been a disadvantage to that young lady, since, with an elevated and solid understanding, it has injured her native manners, by producing a studied imitation of what cannot happily be imitated,—those peculiar graces which adorn Mrs L——; whose form is elegant; whose features, though never beautiful, were always infinitely agreeable; whose good-humour delights; whose lively spirits hazard every thing for wit; whose melting pity for all one’s inquietudes, with its bewitching vouchers, her April tears, make it impossible to remember having been the victim of her irony; whose air is modest, even to shyness, yet whose address is gay; whose virtues are genuine; whose reputation malice and envy could never lastingly impeach, yet whose conversation is often almost libertine; who felt with enthusiasm those tender passions which she continually amused her circles, by placing in a ridiculous and burlesque point of view, at whatever expence of delicacy that view was obtained; and in whom these contrarieties were so happily blended, as to render all she said and did graceful and becoming.

You see that, of a character so curiously original, no imitation is likely to be fortunate. Miss B——d’s imitative aim is confined only to the air of person, the look, and manner of speaking; but it is a too visibly studied resemblance to please.

Miss B——d has a more nervous understanding, more extensive knowledge of books, and a more elevated imagination; but she has no portion of that arch and playful wit which is so native in her friend; neither will her mild, yet inflexible principles of delicacy and discretion permit her those agreeable foibles that give grace and ease to the air and address which she has so faithfully, though (since not suited to her more solid character) not fortunately copied.

Mrs L——, from the time I was fourteen to the present hour, invariably indulged me with testimonies of her partial tenderness. Stability, where she has no duties to fulfil, is not reckoned amongst the number of her virtues.

This apparent fickleness probably arises from her friends not having taught themselves to take her as she is,—to their groundless expectation of being exempted, because she loves them, from the sallies of her wit. Often have people said to me, “You flatter yourself about Miss L——, and have faith in her professions of friendship; be assured, she diverts herself and her company as much at your expence as at any person’s.” My reply was generally to this effect,—“Inevitably! the leopard cannot change her spots, neither would she be so beautiful without them. I give Miss L—— leave to laugh at me, so long as she will give herself leave to love me.”

Lichfield, Feb. 13, 1765.

I wish in vain for a Claude, and Salvatorial pencil, to delineate the promised landscape of my native rocks and hills in Derbyshire. Take it, however, in the best tints of your friend’s recollection.

Eyam, though but a village, is near a mile in length, and considerably populous. It sweeps, in a waving line, among the mountains, upon a kind of natural terrace, perhaps a quarter of a mile in breadth. From the stupendous Middleton, or Eyam-Dale, for the two places contend which of their names it shall bear, and which dale lies in the road between Buxton and Chatsworth, we ascend to Eyam up a steep and narrow lane, about 300 yards, and enter near the middle of the village. On the right hand, to its eastern termination, the mountain, in whose bosom it stands, is crossed by another, and still higher mountain. This mountain rises opposite the back part of the parsonage, new-fronted by my father, who made it an excellent house to little purpose, having never been his home since it was finished.

The top of this eastern elevation, so majestic and picturesque amidst all its barren brownness, presents us, on ascending it, with the eagle’s view of several lovely vallies, separated from each other by a number of smaller hills, winding down to the right, along the range of those vales; and, at about four miles distance, the eye perceives the palace of Chatsworth, rising, in golden beauty, from beneath its dark and pendant woods, which are flanked by a ridge of grey, stony, and bleak mountains. The epithet golden for Chatsworth, is, as to appearance, literally just, since the yellowish colour of the beautiful stone of which it is built, and the gilt window frames, make the edifice, even at that distance, when the sun shines upon it, seem as if it were built of pale gold.

Though Chatsworth has not apartments[4] sufficiently spacious for a ducal palace, yet is its exterior the most elegantly magnificent I have ever beheld. Here are no wings or bow-windows, which, however internally pleasant, seem to me excrescent deformities on the outward appearance. Here is no frittering into parts, no obtrusive grandeur of appertaining offices, but the eye, at once, perceives one fair and perfect whole. Its mingled lightness and strength, the invariable result of exquisite proportion, recall to my memory Milton’s description of Pandæmonium, whenever I first discern Chatsworth from the neighbouring hills:

Stoke, Mr Simpson’s light and beautiful villa, is another Chatsworth, in miniature; it has the same simple grace, the same exemption from protuberant parts, and from the impertinent grandeur of offices; is built also of the same warm-tinted stone. It stands upon a green surrounding lawn, half way down the other side of this East Mountain, to whose top I have led you.

At Stoke we find all the romantic beauties of mountainous scenery, except that there are no cataracts. The steeply-sloping walks of the sylvan gardens wind their course down the remainder of the hill. At its foot, the rocky channel of the rapid and frothing Derwent produces, by its frequent shallows, a hoarse murmur of waters, audible in every apartment of that thrice-lovely villa, and to which we find so much pleasure in listening during the summer heats.

Horace has a charming ode, in which he speaks of his own villa, near the loud falls of the river Anio, and upon the banks of the Albunean Lake. He calls it “the resounding house of Albunea.” Stoke always reminds me of that villa, whose situation is finely introduced when Lord Lyttleton enumerates the haunts of the muses, in his beautiful Monody. After observing that they left their Grecian and Latian shades to open all their stores to the mind of his Lucy, beneath the mountains of Campden, he proceeds:

But see what prevalence have these more polished orders of sublimity and beauty to seduce us from the ruder scenes of unassisted nature! Let us return to the village, now that we have had a distant view of Chatsworth, and a nearer one of Stoke.

The south side of my native mansion, the parsonage, (which stands by the church, in nearly the centre of the village) looks upon a mountainous knoll, whose surface is always green; the sheep which feed upon it have made it glossy and smooth as a bowling-turf. From childhood have I delighted to observe, amidst the gradual clearing of a foggy-day, the mists which had enveloped the head of this round and lesser mountain, rolling away by degrees, and its bright green summit peeping through them, and imbibing the soft gilding of the sun-beams. Its height, above the village, is moderate. It is called the Cliff, and its top affords a level and lawny walk, of about an hundred and fifty yards extent, before it descends. The summit overlooks that stupendous Middleton, or, more properly, Eyam-Dale, so well known to those who make excursions from Buxton. This dale is narrow, and the vast and sterile rocks rise, on each side, to a sublime height. No beauty of wood or field softens the barren grandeur of the scene. It is here that the sterner graces have built their aeries; here that the seasons suffer no visible alteration, except when the craggy steeps are covered with snow, and shoot forth millions of their pensile and of their horrent icicles. The towers and turrets of these lofty rocks are, however, continually growing less and less distinct, picturesque, and noble; broken and ravaged, as from time to time they are, and will farther be, for the purposes of building, and of making and mending roads, and this by the force of gunpowder, and by the perpetual consumption of the ever-burning lime-kilns. They, and the smelting-houses in this dale, sully the summer skies with their convolving smoke; but, in the night, they are very fine, emitting their lurid flames, which seem so many small volcanos. The great turnpike road between Buxton and Matlock passes through this dale, on the edge of a clear and sparkling rill, that huddles through its white limestone channel.

The middle part of our long-extended village stands on the brink of a dell, which has different and softer features. It is deep, abrupt, and rocky, still narrower than the savage dale, but grassy and sylvan, the haunt of the vernal linnet, and of the autumnal red-breast. The descent from the village, though extremely steep, is a smooth green turf, interspersed with the straggling nut-tree, the alder, and mountain-ash. The bottom is scarcely five yards wide, so immediately rise the perpendicular rocks on the opposite side, curtained with wild shrubs, only that a few bare parts appear, in fantastic points, and perforated arches, through which, by glimpses, we catch the horizon. In wet weather, a small rill passes along the bottom of this dell; but, in summer, its channel is generally dry, and its pebbles are left to bleach in the sun. Pines wave over the tops of these opposite rocks, and cliffs and fields descend from them gradually to the farther and right-hand termination of the village, which is considerably higher than its centre.

This grassy dingle curves round to the left, till it meets the sterner and frowning dale, which seems to say to its verdure and its umbrage,—“Here shall your wanton growth be arrested, dried up, and withered.”

The village of Eyam was one of the last, if it were not the very last place in England visited by that dire contagion in 1666, the year after that in which, in the city of London, Death, on his pale horse, trampled on three thousand victims in one ghastly night. Mr Mompesson was then rector of Eyam, and in the vigour of his youth. He had married a beautiful young lady, by whom he had a boy and girl, of three and four years old. The plague was brought thither in patterns of cloth sent from London to a tailor in our village. It raged with great violence, and swept away four-fifths of the inhabitants. This village is now much more thinly peopled, owing to the exhausted state of the lead-mines. Their wealth, during the last century, and early part of the present, occasioned the environs of Eyam, their thick-sown little towns and hamlets, to swarm with inhabitants.

On the commencement of the contagion, Mrs Mompesson threw herself, with her babes, at the feet of her husband, to supplicate his flight from that devoted place, but not even the tears and entreaties of a beloved wife could induce him to desert his flock in these hours of danger and dismay. Equally fruitless were his persuasions that she would retire with her infants. The result of this pathetic contest was a resolve to remove their children, and abide together the fury of the pestilence.

My father is in possession of authentic copies of three letters[5] from Mr Mompesson, taken, as appears by the dates, at the time the originals were written. One of them is to his children, designed for their perusal in riper years; the other to his patron, Sir George Saville; and the third to his uncle, Mr Beilby, of York. The two first were written during the rage of the distemper, the last after it had subsided. Mr Mompesson, constantly visiting and praying by the sick,

From a rational belief, that assembling in the church for public worship during the summer heats, would spread and increase the infection, he agreed with his afflicted parishioners that he should read prayers to them three times in the week, and deliver his two sermons on the Sabbath from one of the perforated arches in the rocks of the verdant dingle, before described. By his directions, they ranged themselves on the grassy declivity, near the bottom, a yard distant from each other; the dell being so narrow, a speaker from that rock might be distinctly heard.

Do you not see this dauntless minister of God stretching forth his hands from the rock, and preaching to his alarmed and distressed flock in that little wilderness? How solemn, how pathetic, must have been his exhortations in those terrific hours!

The church-yard soon ceased to afford room for the dead, which were afterwards buried in a heathy hill above the village. Curious travellers[6] take pleasure in visiting those tumuli, and in examining their yet distinct remains; also in descending from the cliffs, which brow the summit of the dingle, into the excavated rock from which Mr Mompesson performed divine service during that awful visitation. The consecrated rock is called Cucklet Church, by the villagers, to this day.

We find, from united medical testimony, that the effects of the plague are very various; sometimes producing a parched, raging, and delirious fever;—sometimes profuse and caustic perspiration, in which life dissolves. In other instances, the tokens, as they are called, formed by a livid spot, about the breadth of half-a-crown, and of impenetrable hardness, appear when the patient is in apparent health, and mark the grave’s inevitable victim; since, when the tokens wear that appearance, the infected never survive longer than a very few hours, and often remain without perceptible disorder till the moment of expiration. If they are only discoloured, without being hard, if they suppurate, the patient generally recovers.

Mr Mompesson remained in health during the whole time of the contagion; but Providence saw fit to put his fortitude to severer trial than if he had seen the plague-spot indurated upon his own body.

Amongst other precautions against the disease, Mrs Mompesson had prevailed upon her husband to suffer an incision to be made in his leg, and kept open. One day she observed appearances in the wound which induced her belief that the contagion had found a vent that way, and that, consequently, the danger was over as to him; the digestion of the sore being a certain sign of recovery. Instead of being shocked that the pestilence had entered her house, and that her weakness, for she was not in health, must next endure its fury, she expressed the most rapturous gratitude to Heaven for the apprehended deliverance of him, whom more than her life she loved. His letters, though he seems to think her conviction groundless concerning his having taken the disease, make grateful mention of that disinterested joy.

Mrs Mompesson, however, soon after sickened of the plague, and expired in her husband’s arms, in the 27th year of her age. Her monument is now in Eyam church-yard, protected by iron rails, and with the inscription distinct. Her great grand-daughter’s pious visit to the tomb of her excellent ancestress, when I was at Eyam with my father in my 16th year, proved the commencement of a friendship between that very accomplished lady and myself, which I think will cease only with the life of one of us.[7]

Upon the first appearance of the pestilence in Eyam, Mr Mompesson wrote to the then Earl of Devonshire, residing at Chatsworth, to say, that he believed it possible to prevail upon his parishioners to confine themselves within the limits of the village, provided his grace would exert himself to induce the country round to supply them with necessaries, leaving such provisions as might be requested, in appointed places, and at appointed hours, upon the neighbouring hills.

The proposal was punctually complied with; and it is most remarkable, that when the pestilence became beyond conception terrible, not a single inhabitant attempted to pass the deathful bounds of the village, though a regiment of soldiers could not, in that rocky and open country, have detained them against their will; much less could any watch, which might have been set by the neighbourhood, have effected that infinitely important purpose.

By the influence of this exemplary man, the result of his pious and affectionate virtue, the rest of the county of Derby escaped the plague; not one of the very nearly neighbouring towns, hamlets, or even a single house, being infected beyond the limits of Eyam village, though the distemper remained there more than seven months.

Dr Mead, in the last edition of his book on poisons, has recorded the prudence of Mr Mompesson’s conduct in the care he took to prevent, as much as possible, the contagion from spreading, and by his exertions to procure the most approved medicines from the faculty in London, for the use of his infected parishioners.

Some years afterwards, Mr Mompesson obtained the prebend of York and Southwell, and the rectory of Eakring, in Nottinghamshire. He married his second wife in 1679, Mrs Nuby, widow of Charles Nuby, Esq. by whom he had two daughters. She was a remarkably ingenious woman. The deanery of Lincoln was offered to him, but he declined it in favour of his friend, Dr Fuller, to whom he had promised his interest, and by which interest the doctor obtained that deanery. Thus were piety, fortitude, honour, and generosity, blended in his character. He died in the year 1708. His memory ought never to die; it should be immortal as the spirit which made it worthy to live.

Your heart will expand over this faithful picture of elevated worth,

In the summer 1757, five labouring men, inhabitants of Eyam, were digging amongst the plague-graves on the heathy mountain above the village, to make potatoe-ground for a cottage which had been built there. They came to something which had the appearance of having once been linen. Conscious of its situation, they instantly buried it again; but, in a few days, they all sickened of a putrid fever, and three out of the five died. It was so contagious, that the sick could procure no attendance out of their own family. The disease proved mortal to seventy persons of Eyam.

My father, who had two years before been appointed canon of Lichfield, was residing with his family in that city, at the period when the subtle, unextinguished, though much abated power of this superlatively dreadful disease awakened from the dust, in which it had slumbered ninety-one years.

All is silence from Shrewsbury. Mr S—— is gone to Bath, which surely he would not have done, if his daughter’s health had seemed in an alarming state. But O! why is she silent?—she said she would write to me. Adieu! adieu!

Lichfield, Feb. 25, 1765.

No wish shall be disappointed which you can form, and I can gratify. This packet brings you the requested copies of Mr Mompesson’s letters. You will find them pious, affectionate, mournful, and pathetic, though without the grace of elegant style: we often meet in them a stiff and quaint phraseology. At that period, English prose had not attained the easy flow which adorns it without diminishing its strength; and which, from the habit of graceful expression and harmonious period, clothes the rising ideas in spontaneous eloquence.

I grow more and more alarmed about Nanette, from her yet continued and portentous silence. O! I hope she will not swell the instances of the ambition of Death,

[From the Rev. William Mompesson, Rector of Eyam, in Derbyshire, to his children, George and Elizabeth Mompesson. Written during the time of the plague being in that village.]

Eyam, August, 1666.

Dear Hearts,

This brings you the doleful news of your dearest mother’s death; the greatest loss that could befall you. I am deprived of a kind and loving consort, and you are bereaved of the most indulgent mother that ever poor little children had. But we must comfort ourselves in God, with this consideration,—the loss is only ours; our sorrow is her gain, which should sustain our drooping spirits. I assure myself that her rewards and her joys are unutterable. Dear children, your blessed mother lived an holy life, and made a comfortable end, though by means of the sore pestilence, and she is now invested with a crown of righteousness.

My children, I think it may be useful to you to have a narrative of your dear mother’s virtues, that the knowledge thereof may teach you to imitate her excellent qualities. In the first place, let me recommend to you her piety and devotion, which were according to the exact principles of the church of England. In the next place, I can assure you, she was composed of modesty and humility, which virtues did possess her dear soul in a most exemplary manner. Her discourse was ever grave and meek, yet pleasant also; a vaunting and immodest word was never heard to come out of her mouth. Again, I can set out in her two other virtues, with no little confidence, viz. charity and frugality. She never valued any thing she had, when the necessities of a poor neighbour did require it, but had a bountiful spirit towards all distressed and indigent persons;—yet she was never lavish or profuse, but carefully, constantly, and commendably frugal. She never liked the company of tattling women, and abhorred the wandering custom of going from house to house, that wastefully spending of precious time, for she was ever busied in useful occupations. Yet, though thus prudent, she was always kind and affable; for, while she avoided those whose company could not instruct or benefit her, and would not unbosom herself to any such, she dismissed and avoided them with civility.

I do believe, my dear hearts, upon sufficient grounds, that she was the kindest wife in the world, and think, from my soul, that she loved me ten times better than she did herself; for she not only resisted my earnest entreaties, that she would fly with you, dear children, from this place of death, but, some few days before it pleased God to visit my house, she perceived a green matter to come from the issue in my leg, which she fancied a symptom that the distemper, raging amongst us, had gotten a vent that way, from whence she assured herself that I was passed the malignity of the disease, whereat she rejoiced exceedingly, amidst all the danger with which her near approach to me was attended, whom she believed to be infected.

Now I will tell you my thoughts of this business. I think she was mistaken in the nature of that discharge which she saw; certainly it was the salve that made it look so green; yet her rejoicing on that account was a strong testimony of her love to me; for it is clear she cared not for her own peril, so I were safe.

Farther, I can assure you, my sweet babes, that her love to you was little inferior to that which she felt for me; since, why should she thus ardently desire my longer continuance in this world of sorrows, but that you might have the protection and comfort of my life?

You little imagine with what delight she used to talk of you both, and the pains that she took when you sucked your milk from her breasts, is almost incredible. She gave a strong testimony of her love for you, when she lay upon her death-bed. A few hours before she expired, I brought her some cordials, which she told me plainly she was not able to take. I entreated she would take them, for your dear sakes. At the mention of your names, she, with difficulty, lifted herself up and took them, which was to let me understand, that, while she had any strength left, she would embrace an opportunity of testifying her affection to you.

Now I will give you an exact account of the manner of her death. It is certain she had, for some time, had symptoms of a consumption, and her flesh was considerably wasted thereby. However, being surrounded with infected families, she doubtless got the distemper from them. Her natural strength being impaired, she could not struggle with the disease, which made her illness so very short. Upon being seized, she shewed much contrition for the errors of her life, and often cried out,—“One drop of my Saviour’s blood, to save my soul!”

At the beginning of her sickness, she earnestly desired me not to come near her, lest I should receive harm thereby; but I can assure you I did not desert her, but, thank God, stood to my resolution not to leave her in her sickness, who had been so tender a nurse to me in her health. Blessed be God, that he enabled me to be so helpful and consoling to her, for which she was not a little thankful.

No worldly business was, during her illness, any disturbance to her; for she only minded making her call and election sure; and she asked pardon of her maid-servant for having sometimes given her an angry word.

I gave her several sweating antidotes, which had no kind operation, but rather scalded and inflamed her more, whereupon her dear head was distempered, which put her upon many incoherencies. I was much troubled thereat, and propounded to her several questions in divinity, as by whom, and upon what account, she expected salvation, and what assurances she had of the certainty thereof. Though in all other things she talked at random, yet, to these religious questions, she gave me as rational and welcome answers as I could desire; and, at those times, I bade her repeat after me certain prayers and ejaculations, which she always did with much devotion, which was no little comfort and admiration to me, that God should be so good and gracious to her.

A little before her dear soul departed, she desired me to pray with her again. I went to her, and asked her how she did? Her answer was, that she was but looking when the good hour should come. Thereupon we went to prayers, and she made her responses from the common prayer-book as perfectly as if she had been in perfect health, and an amen to every pathetic expression. When we had ended our prayers for the visitation of the sick, we made use of those out of the Whole Duty of Man; and when I heard her say nothing, I urged,—My dear, dost thou mind? She answered, “Yes,” and it was the last word she spoke.

I question not, my dear hearts, that the reading of this account will cause many a salt tear to spring from your eyes; yet let this comfort you,—your dear mother is a saint in heaven.

I could have told you of many more of her excellent virtues; but I hope you will not in the least question my testimony, if, in a few words, I tell you that she was pious and upright in all her conversation.

Now, to that most blessed God, who bestowed upon her all these graces, be ascribed all honour, glory, and dominion, the just tribute of all created beings, for evermore! Amen!

William Mompesson.[8]

Eyam, August 31, 1666.

[From the Rev. William Mompesson, Rector of Eyam, in Derbyshire, to his patron, Sir George Saville, afterwards Lord Halifax. Written when the plague was in that village.]

Eyam, Sept. 1, 1666.

Honoured and dear Sir,

This letter brings you the saddest tidings that ever my pen could write. The “destroying angel” has been in my habitation;—my dearest wife was stricken, and is gone to her everlasting rest, invested, as I trust, with a crown of glory, having made a most pious and happy end.

Indeed, had she loved herself as well as she loved me, she had fled, at my entreaty, with her sweet babes, from the pit of destruction; but she was resolved to die a martyr to my interest. My drooping spirits are much refreshed with her joys, which, I assure myself, are unutterable.

This paper, sir, is to bid you an hearty farewell for ever, and to bring you my thanks for all your noble favours; and I hope you will believe a dying man, that I have as much love as honour for you;—that I bend my feeble knees to the God of Heaven, that you, my dear lady, her children, and their children, may be blessed with happiness external, internal, and eternal; and that the same blessings may fall upon my Lady Sunderland and her family.

Dear sir, let your dying chaplain recommend this truth to you and yours,—that no happiness or solid comfort can be secured in this vale of tears, but from living a pious life. I pray you, dear sir, to retain this rule—Never to do that thing upon which you dare not first ask the blessing of God upon the success thereof.

Sir, I have made bold with your name in my will for an executor; and I hope you will not take it ill. Others are joined with you, that will take from you all the trouble. Your favourable aspect will, I know, be a great comfort to my distressed orphans. I am not desirous that they should be great, but good; and it is my earnest request, that they may be brought up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Sir, I thank God that I am willing to shake hands, in peace, with all the world; and I have comfortable assurances that he will accept me for the sake of his Son, and I find God more good than ever I imagined, and wish that his goodness were not so much abused and contemned.

I desire you would be pleased to make choice of an humble, pious man to succeed me in this parsonage. Could I see your face before I depart hence, I would inform you which way I think he may live comfortably among these people, which would be a satisfaction to me before I die.

Dear sir, I beg your prayers, and those of your family, that I may not be daunted or appalled by the powers of hell; that I may have dying graces, and be found in a dying posture; and, with tears, I entreat, that when you are praying for fatherless and motherless infants, you would then remember my two pretty babes.

Sir, pardon the rude style of this paper, and if my head be discomposed, you cannot wonder at me; however, be pleased to believe that I am,

[From the Rev. William Mompesson, Rector of Eyam, in Derbyshire, to his uncle, John Beilby, Esq. of York.]

Eyam, Nov. 20, 1666.

Dear Sir,

I suppose this letter will seem no less than a miracle, proving that my habitation is inter vivos.—Being unwilling to affright you with a paper from my own hands, I have gotten a friend to transcribe these lines.

I know you are sensible of my lone condition, of my loss of the kindest wife in the world, whose life was truly inimitable, and her end most comfortable. She was in an excellent posture of preparation when Death gave the summons, which fills me with assurances that she is now invested with a crown of righteousness.

By too sad experience, I find the maxim verified, “Bonum magis carendo quam fruendo cemitur.” Had I been as thankful as my condition did deserve of me, I might yet have had my dearest in my bosom. But now, farewell all happy days! and God grant that I may repent of my great ingratitude!

The condition of this place hath been so dreadful, that I persuade myself it exceeded all history and example. I may truly say, our town was become a Golgotha, the place of sculls; and, had there not been a small remnant of us left, we had been as Sodom, and like unto Gomorah. My ears never heard such doleful lamentations,—my nose never smelt such noisome smells,—and my eyes never beheld such ghastly spectacles. Here have been seventy-six families visited within my parish, out of which died 259 persons.

Blessed be God, our fears are now over, none having died of the infection since the 11th of October, nor is there any one under present suspicion; and all the pest-houses have been several weeks empty.

I intend, if it please God, to spend most of this week in seeing all woollen-clothes fumed and purified, as well for the satisfaction as for the safety of the country. Here hath been such burying of goods, as the like was surely never known; and, indeed, I think in this we have been too precise. For my own part, I have hardly left myself apparel to shelter my body from the cold, and have wasted more than need, for example’s sake merely.

As to myself, I never was in better health than during the whole time of this dreadful visitation; neither can I think that I have had any certain symptom of the disease. My man-servant had the distemper. Upon the tumour appearing, I gave him several chemical antidotes, which had a very kind operation; and, with the blessing of God, they kept the venom from the heart, and after the tumour broke, he was very well. My maid hath continued in health, which was a great mercy; for, had she quailed, I should have been ill set to have washed and got provisions for myself.

I know I have had your prayers, and question not but I have fared the better for them; and conclude that the prayers of good people have rescued me from the jaws of death. Certainly I had been in the dust, if omnipotency had not been conquered by holy violence.[9]

I have largely tasted the goodness of my Creator; since, blessed be God, the grim looks of Death did never yet affright me. I always had a firm faith that my dear babes would do well, which made me willing to leave this unkind and froward world. Yet I hope I shall esteem it a mercy that my desires of being, like my dear wife, translated to a better place, were frustrated. God grant that I may wait with patience for my change, and make a right use of his punishments, and of his mercies; for, if the first have been severe, so have the last been sweet and comfortable!

I perceive, by a letter from Mrs Newby, that you have much and most kindly concerned yourself for my welfare. Indeed, I made no question of possessing your true affection. Be assured, that, in the midst of my great troubles, you were often in my thoughts.

Be pleased, sir, to accept the grateful presentment of my kindest respects, imparting the same to your good wife, and to all my dear relations.

A line from your hand would be welcome to, dearest sir,

Your sorrowful, and truly affectionate nephew,

William Mompesson.

[The former series of Letters resumed.]

Lichfield, March 27, 1764.

With a sorrowing heart, a confused brain, and a trembling hand, I take up the pen to thank you, dearest Emma, for your kind, though mournful letter of yesterday. It arrived a few hours after the sad tidings came announcing the fatal period of our beloved friend’s indisposition, which, notwithstanding a few foreboding fears, rising at intervals in my mind, was apparently nothing more than a common cold and cough. Transient only were my apprehensions, and it is certain, neither her father, nor any of her friends at Shrewsbury, had an idea of her being in danger, till within a few days of her setting out.—Gen. Severn thought worse of her complaints than those who hourly beheld her, and persuaded the family she was in, to suffer him to take her with him to Bath, that her father, who was there, might carry her directly to Bristol. Alas! she lived not to reach its balmy springs! On alighting from the general’s chaise at Bath, she fainted away in her father’s arms; and, growing instantly too ill to be removed, died at three the ensuing morning. Alas! that father! my heart bleeds for him. O! that he had taken her to Bristol when he went to Bath, a week or two after we all left London! But who could foresee the sad necessity? She made so light of her complaints! I had a letter from him yesterday. It is full upon the sad circumstances. Blotted with his tears, the writing is already almost effaced by mine.

Alas! dear Emma, is it so soon come to this?—Little did I imagine that she, who so lately wept over my sister’s bier, would, ere the year came round, press her own. But one year since, we beheld them both in the bloom of sprightly youth,

gay and smiling, the delight of all that beheld them. “But now the spoiler is fallen upon their summer-fruits and upon their vintage.” No sighs, however, can recall the past!—no lamentation awake them from their deep, everlasting slumber. No! let us not say everlasting; for it ill becomes us, the heirs of immortal hope, to use that word, fit only for the lip of the cold despairing materialist.

Emma—if it is indeed (as surely it shall be) given us, in the world of light and life, to know and love the companions of our mortal state, let us think of her we have recently lost, emerging at once from the dimness of a mortal decline, and from the bitterness of death—a merciful God speaking pardon to all her frailties, and confirming her unalloyed and ever-during felicity! Imagine, amidst the bright angelic host, one gentle beatified spirit hailing the new inhabitant of heaven; imagine that she shall discover, amidst the encircling splendours of immortal beauty, the friend of her youth—the sweet companion of her innocent pleasures in this world; a world which had been to them, the few hours of preparatory sickness excepted, the pleasing, though the faint dawn of being, now brightened into that day which shall bring no sorrow, and which shall know no night.

How selfish then our murmurs!—Yet who, or what, can stifle the sighs of nature? or, at once, disperse the gloom arising from the consciousness, that, through a perhaps long course of delightless years, we shall not behold the beloved of our hearts?—Yet let us endeavour, by the solemn aids of reason and religion, to submit cheerfully to the doom which we cannot reverse—and, by the soft assistance of hope and tender imagination, to gild and irradiate even the dark mansions of the grave.

Another consolation remains to us from the early, and apparently premature death of those we love. Observation has already taught me, that youth, amidst all its rash hopes and giddy indiscretions, is, in general, more amiable than middle or advanced life.—

Quitting this mournful subject, let me observe, that scarce any thing, except our mutual loss, pressing forward to my pen, could thus long have prevented my expressing how welcome the assurance you give me, that, so soon as these March winds are over, you will come down to Lichfield, be our guest some weeks, and remain with your aunt in this city during the ensuing summer.

How delightful had this intelligence been, if ill health had not suggested the scheme, and if such tidings had arrived in cheerfuller hours! Dearly are they consoling even in these. Whatever our sorrows, whatever our consolations, it is, at least, sweet to reflect, that we shall share them together, as the vernal day rolls on.

“O Emma! I am sick of many griefs:”—My hopes for Mr T——’s happiness and my own are vanished as a dream. His guardians, somewhat incredibly, declare that the expences of his education, the purchase of his commissions, and the port at which he has lived since he went into the army, have reduced his original fortune to little more than half what it was. He is not yet twenty-four—has not been an officer more than four years—has never gamed, nor had libertine expences—and what is become of what ought to have been the savings of so long a minority?—But there is no redress.

By the officiousness of mistaken friends, I have endured needless vexation, and an added weight of grief. Their informations caused my father to question me upon this subject—to be angry at the correspondence which I acknowledged—to write an ill-judged letter to Mr T——, and violently to insist on the dissolution of an engagement which we had mutually agreed to renounce, of our own accord, if the guardian-eclaircissement proved what it does prove.

This storm arose in our little domestic atmosphere the day after I sent you the large packet with the Mompesson records. In the interval, your poor friend has been obliged to “abide the hourly shot of angry eyes;” and Mr T——’s delicacy has been wounded to no sort of purpose. My mother, however, behaved with extreme kindness in this business.—Of the particulars you shall know more when we meet.

Pray bring the letter with you which you received from our dear deceased friend since we all separated. Alas! she lived not to receive mine: it arrived at Shrewsbury the morning after she left it. Being sent to Bath, her father returned it to me with an unbroken seal. I wrote the instant I heard she was worse, expecting, from day to day, that she would herself write to me, being in my debt for a long epistle, written a little before we went to town, when she was upon a visit at B——. I hope to heaven she did not think I knew how ill she was, and continued silent—Yet, Oh! that I had written sooner!—Honora is extremely grieved for the loss of one so near and dear to her.

Adieu!—May I soon receive you in amended health and spirits; for joy, or even cheerfulness, must, till that moment, be unknown to the heart of your friend!

Lichfield, April 5, 1765.

From the date of my dear Emma’s letter, it ought to have reached me yesterday. As I flatter myself you will set out very soon, I write by return of post. Sorry am I that you are so much indisposed. We expected you every day this passed week, and grew impatient of a delay, which alarmed our apprehensions, and disappointed our hopes. Yet we would not that you should run hazards, by undertaking the journey before it is thought proper.

Amongst many sorrows, I ought to be thankful for enjoying, in so eminent a degree, what is allowed to be the primal blessing—a perfect state of health. It often astonishes me to perceive, that not all the anguish I endured for my sister’s illness and death—the regret I have felt from the wreck of my heart’s lately revived hopes—nor this additional affliction, in the loss of poor Nanette, have at all impaired my constitution. Let me thankfully acknowledge the preciousness of a gift which is bestowed thus liberally but on few, and for which many more worthy languish in vain.

It certainly enables us more speedily to conquer every unavailing grief; nay often dispels the gloom ere we wish it dispelled; for I have, at times, desired, alas! perhaps criminally, to keep my sorrows more incessantly waking, and loathed the returning dawn of my habitual cheerfulness, the probable result of invincible health:—Invincible I may well call it, which has stood the shock of such afflictions! Often have I exclaimed, in the words of Isaiah, “O that my head were as water, my eyes as a fountain of tears!” But it was very wrong.

Perhaps nothing is less reconcileable to reason than the immoderate grief of a Christian over the tomb of those he loves. Would it not be idle and ridiculous to lament for being a single hour absent from a friend with whom we were to pass our lives? Yet is the comparison inadequate; since how far a greater disparity, than that of a single hour to the longest life, is there between the most protracted period of human existence and the immeasurable space of eternity!

We know, we feel this; yet I am unhappy; and you, Emma, pine and droop beneath our late deprivation. Why, why is it so? Alas! it is the voice of Nature, that arbitrary contemner of our noblest reason—of our best hopes, that incessantly presses upon our attention one mournful image—

Too much in vain is it urged by religious faith, that the spirit is beatified—still does the frail mortal weep the dissolution of its kindred clay!

I did not hear the fatal prognostic which, you say, our dear friend uttered to Mr M——, on the eve of our leaving town. If I had, it would have extremely shocked me. Doubtless he is much grieved, who could not behold her with indifference whose tender attention his pleasing qualities had deeply engaged.

Remember us all to your brother and sister: Her mild eyes, I well know, have paid the tribute of many tears to her departed friend and cousin.

It will not surely be long ere the soft Favonius shall breathe upon our vales—For thee may he arise with every healing power!

Gotham, Aug. 1767.

I write to you from the retired, and yet cheerful mansion of piety and peace, where our family have been in the habit of passing a month every two years; except my father, who contrives to be at some water-drinking place for his health, though generally so excellent, while the rest of us inhabit this scene, much too quiet and uniform for his lively spirits and social taste.

For myself, though truly I should never have chosen to quit Lichfield for Gotham, yet, when duty leads me thither, I can support its tranquillity without ennui. Here none come who are anxiously expected—none go away, for whom our sighs are responsive to the closing door. This is not the Abyssinian Hill—but it is the dear retreat which sheltered and soothed my desolation, when death had robbed me of an only sister, and when the wounds of that fatal stroke were all bleeding fresh.

The convenient old parsonage is uncommonly light and cheerful. Its fire-places have odd little extra windows near them, which are the blessings of employment in cold or gloomy days. A rural garden encircles the house. In its front, a short flagged walk divides two grass-plats, and leads to a little wicket-gate, arched over with ivy, that opens into the fold-yard. A narrow gravel walk extends along the front of the house, and under the parlour windows. Opposite them, and upon the larger grass-plat, stands that venerable and expansive mulberry tree, which shaded us from the summer heats, when, in the hours of sorrow, my cousin, Miss Martin, Honora, and myself, resorted thither to indulge our mournful recollections. Every other visit we have, through life, paid to this quiet scene, was, as it is now, in autumn.

Behind the house lies the kitchen-garden, and across it a pebbly path which leads into the churchyard. Ah! what a difference between our stately cathedral and this simple edifice—

When the tuneless bell calls us to Sunday’s service, what a contrast, in these rude and moss-greened walls, to the long and vaulted aisles—the pealing organ—the beautiful and full-voiced choir, and all the soul-exalting enthusiasm which results to a lover of music from choral devotion and Gothic magnificence!

But here the religious heart pours forth its unassisted devotion in the plain pews, and at the rustic altar, surrounded by humble villagers; their only finery the crowded posey, whose pinks and roses, mixed with flowering thyme and southernwood, are twisted closely round by a plenitude of packthread, and diffuse a fragrance more cheering and grateful to my sense than the cambric handkerchiefs of fashionable ladies, sprinkled with costly essence and perfumed water.

Nothing can be more uniform, more simple, than the manner in which we pass our time; and in which week after week glides smoothly, yet swiftly, away, and seems, on retrospect, to have been scarce so many days. This is from the want of various faces, varied employments, and of incidents, to mark the progress of time, and divide one day from another on the memory.

We rise at seven. At eight, my aunt and cousin, my mother, Honora, and myself, meet at our neat and cheerful breakfast. That dear, kind-hearted saint, my uncle, has his milk earlier, and retires, for the morning, to his study. At nine, we adjourn to my aunt’s apartment above stairs, where one reads aloud to the rest, who are at work. At twelve, my uncle summons us to prayers in the parlour. When they are over, the family disperses, and we young ones either walk or write till dinner. That appears at two. At four, we resume my aunt’s apartment. Its large and lightsome window commands, it is true, no other prospect than the churchyard over the garden wall, and the village below, which is broad and grassy, with houses thinly scattered. Now, in the latter end of August, the evening spectacle, from seven to eight, is truly pleasing and joyous. A majestic old elm stands in the middle of the green-sward, circled round by a mossy seat, and is the rendezvous of the village youths and maidens, when the labours of the day are past. Some of the young men wrestle; some play at quoits; and others sit on the bench, and talk to the lasses. It is impossible to express the satisfaction I have in beholding these natural and innocent pleasures,—

When we quit this dear apartment, to take an evening walk, it is always with a degree of reluctance, even when the sun shines golden on the little dark wood, a mile from us, and on Weldon Hill, which overlooks a rich valley, watered by the smooth and silver Trent, and crowned by the town of Nottingham and its stately castle. To this hill, when we can prevail on ourselves to quit our book, and the sight of these rural lovers, we generally walk; except the local attractions of our traditionary Cuckow-bush lead us a less pleasant way, through a narrow path, over a large ploughed field, to a clump of trees, resembling our Borocap hill, and which, ancient story says, the wise villagers planted to hedge in the cuckow. How I love these old tales, and to visit the places which are said to remain in their commemoration!

Have you read Churchill’s whimsical poem, which he named after this village—his Gotham? where we find the following odd burden recurring perpetually:

’Tis a strange random business, without plan, without story, without moral; but it contains beautiful, as well as unaccountable lines.—Instance:

What pity that a genius so animated, which ought to have lived for all times, and have been a citizen of the world, should have chosen to exist for a period only, by directing his whole attention to party satire, and wasting his glowing vigour upon personal philippics!

Many would think it a bathos in subject, to quit a satirized senate and its celebrated poet, to resume the diary of an obscure village, and to talk of its unassuming pastor—to tell you that the hour between supper and bed-time is enlivened, and turned to excellent mental account, by my uncle’s energetic conversation, which is always upon religious, literary, or moral subjects. At half past ten, he calls in his servants to join our vesper devotions, which close the peaceful and unvaried day, resigning us to sleep, as tranquil as itself.

Your agreeable image is often so obliging to visit my slumbers; a favour for which I am always grateful to her gentleman-usher, Mr Morpheus.

Gotham, Sept. 1767.

On my word, a constant visiter!—Mr N—— yesterday morning,—this morning,—and every morning! What say you to being a nabobess? Thou art the very woman to fascinate a luxurious Asiatic taste; full made; majestic, with the lillyan softness in thy long-cut eyes. Gold and silver muslins, and pearls and diamonds, will suit thy empress kind of figure. But has he, who can bestow them, made an interest in thy heart? If he has not, if he cannot, then disdain, I pray thee, the glittering baubles!

Your friend, Miss B——d, with her host of virtues, her reserved frankness and serene cheerfulness, with looks that promise a mine of excellence, of compliant duty, of ever varied intelligence, might, without hazard to her peace, or disappointment to her husband, marry with esteem only; her looks will not have flattered him; but you must never marry without impassioned preference. Eyes, that dwell with so much softness on their object, as to flatter a hermit, were he to be honoured with your attention, must, I insist upon it, have flattered a husband into tender expectations, which superior intelligence, cheerful acquiescence, and the most punctilious sense of duty, would be, of themselves, incompetent to satisfy. I mean, if he were himself attached to his bride with any thing resembling passion. It is true, the chances are extremely against a woman ever marrying, who resolves not to approach the altar of Hymen without she is led thither by a man whom she prefers to all the rest of his sex. But, to a female mind, that can employ itself ingeniously, that is capable of friendship, that is blessed with affluence, where are the evils of celibacy? For my part, I could never imagine that there were any, at least compared to the ennui, the chagrin, the preclusion, which hearts, cast in the warm mould of passion, must feel in a marriage of mere esteem.