Chapter V: The Illness and Death of Lady Scott12

(1826)

_Abbotsford, April 16, 1826._--I am now far ahead with _Nap_.[13] I wrote a little this morning, but this forenoon I must write letters, a task in which I am far behind. Lady Scott seems to make no way, yet can scarce be said to lose any. She suffers much occasionally, especially during the night. Sleeps a great deal when at ease; all symptoms announce water upon the chest. A sad prospect.

_April 19._--Two melancholy things. Last night I left my pallet in our family apartment, to make way for a female attendant, and removed to a dressing-room adjoining, when to return, or whether ever, God only can tell. Also my servant cut my hair, which used to be poor Charlotte's personal task. I hope she will not observe it.

_April 21._--Had the grief to find Lady Scott had insisted on coming down-stairs and was the worse of it. Also a letter from Lockhart, giving a poor account of the infant. God help us! earth can not.

_May 2._--I wrote and read for three hours, and then walked, the day being soft and delightful; but alas! all my walks are lonely from the absence of my poor companion. She does not suffer, thank God, but strength must fail at last. Since Sunday there has been a gradual change--very gradual--but, alas! to the worse. My hopes are almost gone. But I am determined to stand this grief as I have done others.

_May 4._--On visiting Lady Scott's sick-room this morning, I found her suffering, and I doubt if she knew me. Yet, after breakfast, she seemed serene and composed. The worst is, she will not speak out about the symptoms under which she labors. Sad, sad work; I am under the most melancholy apprehension, for what constitution can hold out under these continued and wasting attacks.

_May 6._--The same scene of hopeless (almost) and unavailing anxiety. Still welcoming me with a smile, and asserting she is better. I fear the disease is too deeply entwined with the principles of life. Yet the increase of good weather, especially if it would turn more genial, might, I think, aid her excellent constitution. Still laboring at this _Review_, without heart or spirits to finish it.

_May 10._--To-morrow I leave my home. To what scene I may suddenly be recalled, it wrings my heart to think.

_Edinburgh, May 11._--Charlotte was unable to take leave of me, being in a sound sleep, after a very indifferent night. Perhaps it was as well. Emotion might have hurt her; and nothing I could have exprest would have been worth the risk. I have foreseen, for two years and more, that this menaced event could not be far distant. I have seen plainly, within the last two months, that recovery was hopeless. And yet to part with the companion of twenty-nine years when so very ill--that I did not, could not foresee. It withers my heart to think of it, and to recollect that I can hardly hope again to seek confidence and counsel from that ear to which all might be safely confided. But in her present lethargic state, what would my attentions have availed? and Anne has promised close and constant intelligence. I must dine with James Ballantyne to-day _en famille_. I can not help it; but would rather be at home and alone. However, I can go out too. I will not yield to the barren sense of hopelessness which struggles to invade me. I past a pleasant day with J. B.,[14] which was a great relief from the black dog which would have worried me at home. We were quite alone.

_May 15._--Received the melancholy intelligence that all is over at Abbotsford.

_Abbotsford, May 16._--She died at nine in the morning, after being very ill for two days--easy at last.

I arrived here late last night. Anne is worn out, and has had hysterics, which returned on my arrival. Her broken accents were like those of a child, the language, as well as the tones, broken, but in the most gentle voice of submission. "Poor mama--never return again--gone forever--a better place." Then, when she came to herself, she spoke with sense, freedom, and strength of mind, till her weakness returned. It would have been inexpressibly moving to me as a stranger--what was it then to the father and the husband? For myself, I scarce know how I feel, sometimes as firm as the Bass Rock, sometimes as weak as the wave that breaks on it.

I am as alert at thinking and deciding as I ever was in my life. Yet, when I contrast what this place now is, with what it has been not long since, I think my heart will break. Lonely, aged, deprived of my family--all but poor Anne, an impoverished and embarrassed man, I am deprived of the sharer of my thoughts and counsels, who could always talk down my sense of the calamitous apprehensions which break the heart that must bear them alone. Even her foibles were of service to me, by giving me things to think of beyond my weary self-reflections.

I have seen her. The figure I beheld is, and is not, my Charlotte--my thirty years' companion. There is the same symmetry of form, tho those limbs are rigid which were once so gracefully elastic--but that yellow mask, with pinched features, which seem to mock life rather than emulate it, can it be the face that was once so full of lively expression? I will not look on it again. Anne thinks her little changed, because the latest idea she had formed of her mother is as she appeared under circumstances of sickness and pain. Mine go back to a period of comparative health. If I write long in this way, I shall write down my resolution, which I should rather write up, if I could. I wonder how I shall do with the large portion of thoughts which were hers for thirty years. I suspect they will be hers yet for a long time at least. But I will not blaze cambric and crape in the public eye like a disconsolate widower, that most affected of all characters.

_May 18._--Another day, and a bright one to the external world, again opens on us; the air is soft, and the flowers smiling, and the leaves glittering. They can not refresh her to whom mild weather was a natural enjoyment. Cerements of lead and of wood already hold her; cold earth must have her soon. But it is not my Charlotte, it is not the bride of my youth, the mother of my children, that will be laid among the ruins of Dryburgh, which we have so often visited in gaiety and pastime. No, no. She is sentient and conscious of my emotions somewhere--somehow; _where_ we can not tell; _how_ we can not tell; yet would I not at this moment renounce the mysterious yet certain hope that I shall see her in a better world, for all that this world can give me. The necessity of this separation--that necessity which rendered it even a relief--that and patience must be my comfort. I do not experience those paroxysms of grief which others do on the same occasion. I can exert myself and speak even cheerfully with the poor girls. But alone, or if anything touches me--the choking sensation. I have been to her room: there was no voice in it--no stirring; the pressure of the coffin was visible on the bed, but it had been removed elsewhere; all was neat as she loved it, but all was calm--calm as death. I remembered the last sight of her; she raised herself in bed, and tried to turn her eyes after me, and said, with a sort of smile, "You all have such melancholy faces." They were the last words I ever heard her utter, and I hurried away, for she did not seem quite conscious of what she said. When I returned, immediately (before) departing, she was in a deep sleep. It is deeper now. This was but seven days since.

They are arranging the chamber of death; that which was long the apartment of connubial happiness, and of whose arrangements (better than in richer houses) she was so proud. They are treading fast and thick. For weeks you could have heard a foot-fall. Oh, my God!

_May 21._--Our sad preparations for to-morrow continue. A letter from Lockhart; doubtful if Sophia's health or his own state of business will let him be here. If things permit he comes tonight. From Charles not a word; but I think I may expect him. I wish to-morrow were over; not that I fear it, for my nerves are pretty good, but it will be a day of many recollections.

_May 22._--Charles arrived last night, much affected of course. Anne had a return of her fainting-fits on seeing him, and again upon seeing Mr. Ramsay, the gentleman who performs the service. I heard him do so with the utmost propriety for my late friend, Lady Alvanley, the arrangement of whose funeral devolved upon me. How little I could guess when, where, and with respect to whom I should next hear those solemn words. Well, I am not apt to shrink from that which is my duty, merely because it is painful; but I wish this day over. A kind of cloud of stupidity hangs about me, as if all were unreal that men seem to be doing and talking about.

_May 23._--About an hour before the mournful ceremony of yesterday, Walter arrived, having traveled express from Ireland on receiving the news. He was much affected, poor fellow, and no wonder. Poor Charlotte nursed him, and perhaps for that reason she was ever partial to him. The whole scene floats as a sort of dream before me--the beautiful day, the gray ruins covered and hidden among clouds of foliage and flourish, where the grave, even in the lap of beauty, lay lurking and gaped for its prey. Then the grave looks, the hasty important bustle of men with spades and mattocks--the train of carriages--the coffin containing the creature that was so long the dearest on earth to me, and whom I was to consign to the very spot which in pleasure-parties we so frequently visited. It seems still as if this could not be really so. But it is so--and duty to God and to my children must teach me patience.

_May 24._--Slept wretchedly, or rather waked wretchedly, all night, and was very sick and bilious in consequence, and scarce able to hold up my head with pain. A walk, however, with my sons did me a great deal of good; indeed their society is the greatest support the world can afford me. Their ideas of everything are so just and honorable, kind toward their sisters, and affectionate to me, that I must be grateful to God for sparing them to me, and continue to battle with the world for their sakes, if not for my own.

_May 26._--Were an enemy coming upon my house, would I not do my best to fight, altho opprest in spirits; and shall a similar despondency prevent me from mental exertion? It shall not, by Heaven!

_May 30._--This has been a melancholy day--most melancholy. I am afraid poor Charles found me weeping. I do not know what other folks feel, but with me the hysterical passion that impels tears is a terrible violence--a sort of throttling sensation--then succeeded by a state of dreaming stupidity, in which I ask if my poor Charlotte can actually be dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: From Chapter XXXIII of "The Bride of Lammermoor."]

[Footnote 8: From Chapter LV of "Guy Mannering."]

[Footnote 9: From Chapter XXIII of "Rob Roy." Scott's celebrated character was a real person, his name being Robert MacGregor, or, as he chose to call himself, Robert Campbell. He was born in 1671 and died in 1734, and was a son of Donald MacGregor, a lieutenant in the army of James II, from whom after the accession of William of Orange, Robert obtained a commission. Afterward he became a freebooter. He was included in the Act of Attainder, but continued to levy blackmail on the gentry of Scotland while in the enjoyment of the protection of the Duke of Argyle.]

[Footnote 10: From "Kenilworth," which in general is founded on actual occurrences, altho there are many incongruities in the story as to time and circumstances. Queen Elizabeth's actual visit to Kenilworth took place in 1575. The castle is now one of the most picturesque ruins in England. It was dismantled under Cromwell.]

[Footnote 11: Kenilworth, which dates from 1120, was long a royal residence. Here in 1327 Edward III was imprisoned. It was afterward granted to John of Gaunt, "time-honored Lancaster," and in 1562 to the Earl of Leicester.]

[Footnote 12: From "The Journal." Lady Scott died in the midst of Scott's financial misfortunes. She was Charlotte Mary Carpenter, daughter of a French refugee, Jean Charpentier.]

[Footnote 13: The "Life of Napoleon."]

[Footnote 14: James Ballantyne was the printer of Scott's books and his partner in the firm of James Ballantyne & Co., which failed in 1826, in consequence of being involved in the bankruptcy of the publishing house of Constable & Co., with which also Scott was connected.]

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

Born in 1772, died in 1834; educated at Cambridge, but was
not graduated; formed an unsuccessful scheme for a
communistic settlement on the Susquehanna River, in
Pennsylvania; married a sister of Southey's wife in 1795;
published at Bristol a volume of poems in 1796; "The Ancient
Mariner" in 1798; settled at Keswick with Southey and
Wordsworth in 1800; lectured in London to fashionable
audiences, becoming in 1816 the guest of Mr. Gillman, a
London physician, at Highgate, where he spent the remainder
of his life; published "Christabel" in 1816, "Aids to
Reflection" in 1825, his "Literary Remains" appearing in
1836-39.