Chapter XII: English Pleasures and Roman Trials (7)

"5-1/2 P.M.--'Oh, let it be. It could not be better--no doubt, no
difficulty.... All the good things of this world, what are they?...
soon pass away--pride, vanity, vexation of spirit; but oh! love!
love!' It was after saying these words that my darling's face
became quite radiant, and that she looked upward with an expression
of rapture. 'I see a white dove,' she said, 'oh, such a beautiful
white dove, floating towards me.' Soon after this she exclaimed,
'Oh, Lord Jesus, oh, come quickly'.... When she opened her eyes,
'What a wilful child you are! you will not let your mother depart,
and she is _so_ ready.'--'Is it he who keeps you?' said C. L. 'No,
a better One; but let me go or let me stay, O Lord, I have no will
but Thine.'"[369]

"2 A.M. _March 5._--During the night she has prayed constantly
aloud for various relations and friends by name, and often for me.
Once she said, 'Ever upright, ever just, sometimes irritable, weak
in temperament, that others should love him as I have done ... and
a good wife, that is what I have always thought.'

"8 P.M. _March 5._--Twice to-day there has been a sudden sinking of
nature, life almost extinct, and then, owing to the return of
fever, there has been a rally. She became excited if I left her
even for a moment, so through last night and to-day I have
constantly sat behind her on the bed, supporting her head on a
pillow in my arms.

"10 P.M.--Emma Simpkinson is come for the night, but there is a
strange change. My mother is asleep! quietly asleep--the fever is
reduced after the aconite which I insisted upon, and which the
homœopathic doctor said _must_ end her life in half-an-hour.

"_Friday evening, March 6._--All day there has been a rally, and
she has now power to cough again. Grilli had given the case up, so
at noon to-day I had no scruple in sending for Dr. Topham, writing
full explanation of the strange case. He says it is the most
extraordinary he has ever seen and a most interesting
study--'Before such a miracle of nature, science can only sit
still.' Life still hangs on a thread, but there is certainly an
improvement. She knows none but me."

"_Saturday evening, March 7._--What a quiet day of respite we have
had after all the long tension and anxiety. My darling's face has
resumed a natural expression, and she now lies quite quiet,
sleeping, and only rousing herself to take nourishment."

I have copied these fragments from my journal of two terrible weeks, written upon my knees by my mother's side, when we felt every hour _must_ be the last, and that her words, so difficult to recall afterwards, would be almost our only consolation when the great desolation had really fallen. But no description can give an idea of the illness--of the strange luminousness of the sunken features, such as one reads of in lives of Catholic saints--of the marvellous beauty of her expression--of the thrilling accents in which many words were spoken, from which her sensitive retiring nature would have shrunk in health. Had there been physically any reason for hopefulness, which there was not--had the doctors given any hope of recovery, which they did not, her appearance, her words, her almost transfiguration would have assured us that she was on the threshold of another world. I feel that those who read must--like those who saw--almost experience a sort of shock at her being given back to us again. Yet I believe that God heard my prayer in St. Peter's for the two years more. During that time, and that time only, she was spared to bless us, and to prepare me better for the final separation when it really came. She was also spared to be my support in another great trial of my life, to which we then never looked forward. But I will return to my journal, with which ordinary events now again entwine themselves.

"_March 10, 1868._--My darling is gradually but slowly regaining
strength, the doctor saying he can give no medicine, but that he
can only stand still in awe before the marvels of nature, whilst
we, the watchers, are gradually rallying from the great strain and
tension of the last week.

"Yesterday was Santa Francesca Romana's day. I went to her house,
the old Ponziani Palace, now the Ezercizii Pii, hung outside for
the day with battered tapestry and strewn within with box. The
rooms inside are the same as when the Saint lived in them, with
raftered ceilings, and many of them turned into chapels. Downstairs
is the large room which she turned into a hospital, and there is a
bright open courtyard planted with orange-trees, though certainly
nothing of the 'magnificent Ponziani Palace' described by Lady
Georgiana Fullerton in her book.

"Thence to the Tor de' Specchi, where a cardinal, a number of Roman
ladies, and a crowd of others were passing through the bright old
rooms covered with frescoes and tapestry, and looking into the
pleasant courtyards of the convent with their fountains and
orange-trees. Upstairs is a fine chapel, where the skeleton of the
Saint lies under the altar, dressed as an Oblate (with the face
exposed), but in a white veil and white gloves! The living Oblates
flitting about were very interesting picturesque-looking women,
mostly rather old. Several relics of Santa Francesca are preserved.
On a table near the entrance was the large flat vase in which she
made ointment for the poor, filled with flowers.

"On Sunday, when many ladies went to the Pope, he made them a
little sermon about their guardian angels and Sta. Francesca
Romana."

"_March 15._--My sweet Mother is in almost exactly the same
state--a sort of dormouse existence, and so weak that she can
scarcely hold up her head; yet she has been twice wheeled into the
sitting-room.

"I have been with the Fitzmaurices to the Castle of S. Angelo, very
curious, and the prisons of Beatrice Cenci and her stepmother, most
ghastly and horrid. There are between seven and eight hundred men
there now, and many prisoners. Over the prison doors passers-by had
made notes in chalk: one was 'O voi che entrate qui, lasciate ogni
speranza;' another, 'On sait quand on entre, on ne sait pas quand
on sort;' another, 'Hôtel des Martyrs.'

]

"On Friday evening I rushed with all the world to the receptions of
the new cardinals--first to the Spanish Embassy, then to the
Colonna to see Cardinal Bonaparte,[371] who has a most humble
manner and a beautiful refined face like Manning at his best; and
then to the Inquisition, where Cardinal de Monaco was waiting to
receive in rooms which were almost empty."

"_March 30._--The dear Mother makes daily progress. She has the
sofa in her bedroom, and lies there a great deal in the sunny
window.

"I went to Mrs. Lockwood's theatricals, to which, as she said, 'all
the people above the rank of a duchess were asked down to the
letter M.' The play, _L'Aïeule_, was wonderfully well done by
Princess Radziwill, Princess Pallavicini, Princess Scilla, Duca del
Gallo, and others, a most beautiful electric light being let in
when the grandmother steals in to give the poison to the sleeping
girl."

"_May 8._--We leave Rome to-morrow--leave it in a flush of summer
glory, in a wealth unspeakable of foliage and flowers, orange
blossoms scenting our staircase, the sky deep blue.

"All the last fortnight poor Emma Simpkinson[372] has been terribly
ill--a great anxiety to us as to what was best to be done for her,
but we hope now that she may be moved to England, and I must go
with my restored Mother, who is expanding like a flower in the
sunshine.

"This afternoon, at the crowded time, the young Countess Crivelli,
the new Austrian Ambassadress, drove down the Corso. At the Porta
del Popolo she met her husband's horse without a rider. Much
alarmed, she drove on, and a little farther on she found her
husband's dead body lying in the road. She picked it up, and drove
back down the Corso with the dead man by her side."

Amongst the many English who spent this spring in Rome, I do not find any note, in my diaries, of Lord Houghton, yet his dinners for six in the Via S. Basilio were delightful. His children were real children then, and his son, Robin,[373] a boy of wonderful promise. Lord Houghton was never satisfied with talking well and delightfully himself; his great charm was his evident desire to draw out all the good there was in other people.

JOURNAL.

"_Venice, May 10, 1868._--We had a terribly hot journey by Spoleto
and Ancona, and came on to Este. It is a long drive up from the
station to the primitive little town close under the Euganean
Hills, with the ruined castle where the first Guelph was born. The
inn (La Speranza) is an old palace, and our sittingroom was
thirty-four feet long. The country is luxuriance itself, covered
with corn and flax, separated by rows of peach and fig trees, with
vines leaping from tree to tree. I drove to Arqua, a most
picturesque village in a hollow of the hills. In the little court
of the church is Petrarch's tomb, of red Verona marble, and on the
high ridge his house, almost unaltered, with old frescoes of his
life, his chair, his chest, and his stuffed cat, shrunk almost to a
weasel."

"_Augsburg, May 24._--From Venice we saw Torcello--the Mother, Lea,
and I in a _barca_ gliding over those shallow mysterious waters to
the distant island and its decaying church, where we sat to draw
near Attila's marble chair half buried in the rank growth of the
mallows.

]

"We came away by an early train to Verona, and drove in the
afternoon to San Zenone, and then to the beautiful Giusti gardens
for the sunset. Mother was able to climb up to the summer-house on
the height, and the gardener gave us pinks and roses.

"On the 24th we came on to Trent, a most attractive place, with an
interesting cathedral, fine fountains, beautiful trees, and
surroundings of jagged pink mountains tipped with snow. Cheating
the Alps by crossing the Brenner, we went by Salzburg to
Berchtesgaden, where we found quiet rooms with a splendid view of
the snow-clad Watzmann. We were rowed down the Königsee as far as
the waterfall, Lea dreadfully frightened on the lake."

]

From Augsburg we went to Oberwesel on the Rhine, where we were very happy in a primitive hotel amid the vines and old timberhouses. On our second morning there, while I was drawing on the shore of the river, a strange and terrible presentiment came over me of some great misfortune, some overwhelming grief which was then taking place in England. I threw down my drawing things and hurried back to the hotel to my mother. "Never," I said, "have these sudden presentiments come to me without meaning. I am sure you will listen to me when I say that we ought to be in England directly."--"Yes," she said, "I quite believe it; let us go at once;" and then and there, in the hot morning, we walked down to the train. We travelled all night, and at daybreak we were in England. I confess that, as we travelled, the detailed impression which I had from my presentiment was wrong. I thought of what would have affected my mother most. I fancied that, as I was sitting on the Rhine shore, Arthur Stanley had died at Westminster. But John Gidman met us with our little carriage at Hastings, and as we drove up to Holmhurst he told me the dreadful truth--that, at the very moment of my presentiment, my sister Esmeralda had expired.

I still feel the echo of that terrible anguish.