"I do not know anything in the world that would make up to me at all for wanting the recollection of the days I spent with you lately,when I was amazed at the freshness and life of all your thoughts.It brought back far-distant years,in the strangest,most peaceful way.
I felt myself walking with you in Greenwich Park,and on the seashore at Sandgate;almost even I seemed a baby,with you bending over me.
Dear Mother,there is surely something uniting us that cannot perish.
I seem so sure of a love which shall last and reunite us,that even the remembrance,painful as that is,of all my own follies and ill tempers,cannot shake this faith.When I think of you,and know how you feel towards me,and have felt for every moment of almost forty years,it would be too dark to believe that we shall never meet again.
It was from you that I first learnt to think,to feel,to imagine,to believe;and these powers,which cannot be extinguished,will one day enter anew into communion with you.I have bought it very dear by the prospect of losing you in this world,--but since you have been so ill,everything has seemed to me holier,loftier and more lasting,more full of hope and final joy.
"It would be a very great happiness to see you once more even here;but I do not know if that will be granted to me.But for Susan's state,I should not hesitate an instant;as it is,my duty seems to be to remain,and I have no right to repine.There is no sacrifice that she would not make for me,and it would be too cruel to endanger her by mere anxiety on my account.Nothing can exceed her sympathy with my sorrow.But she cannot know,no one can,the recollections of all you have been and done for me;which now are the most sacred and deepest,as well as most beautiful,thoughts that abide with me.May God bless you,dearest Mother.It is much to believe that He feels for you all that you have ever felt for your children.
"JOHN STERLING."
A day or two after this,"on Good Friday,1843,"his Wife got happily through her confinement,bringing him,he writes,"a stout little girl,who and the Mother are doing as well as possible."The little girl still lives and does well;but for the Mother there was another lot.Till the Monday following she too did altogether well,he affectionately watching her;but in the course of that day,some change for the worse was noticed,though nothing to alarm either the doctors or him;he watched by her bedside all night,still without alarm;but sent again in the morning,Tuesday morning,for the doctors,--Who did not seem able to make much of the symptoms.She appeared weak and low,but made no particular complaint.The London post meanwhile was announced;Sterling went into another room to learn what tidings of his Mother it brought him.Returning speedily with a face which in vain strove to be calm,his Wife asked,How at Knightsbridge?"My Mother is dead,"answered Sterling;"died on Sunday:She is gone.""Poor old man!"murmured the other,thinking of old Edward Sterling now left alone in the world;and these were her own last words:in two hours more she too was dead.In two hours Mother and Wife were suddenly both snatched away from him.
"It came with awful suddenness!"writes he to his Clifton friend.
"Still for a short time I had my Susan:but I soon saw that the medical men were in terror;and almost within half an hour of that fatal Knightsbridge news,I began to suspect our own pressing danger.
I received her last breath upon my lips.Her mind was much sunk,and her perceptions slow;but a few minutes before the last,she must have caught the idea of dissolution;and signed that I should kiss her.
She faltered painfully,'Yes!yes!'--returned with fervency the pressure of my lips;and in a few moments her eyes began to fix,her pulse to cease.She too is gone from me!"It was Tuesday morning,April 18th,1843.His Mother had died on the Sunday before.
He had loved his excellent kind Mother,as he ought and well might:in that good heart,in all the wanderings of his own,there had ever been a shrine of warm pity,of mother's love and blessed soft affections for him;and now it was closed in the Eternities forevermore.His poor Life-partner too,his other self,who had faithfully attended him so long in all his pilgrimings,cheerily footing the heavy tortuous ways along with him,can follow him no farther;sinks now at his side:"The rest of your pilgrimings alone,O Friend,--adieu,adieu!"She too is forever hidden from his eyes;and he stands,on the sudden,very solitary amid the tumult of fallen and falling things."My little baby girl is doing well;poor little wreck cast upon the sea-beach of life.My children require me tenfold now.What I shall do,is all confusion and darkness."The younger Mrs.Sterling was a true good woman;loyal-hearted,willing to do well,and struggling wonderfully to do it amid her languors and infirmities;rescuing,in many ways,with beautiful female heroism and adroitness,what of fertility their uncertain,wandering,unfertile way of life still left possible,and cheerily making the most of it.A genial,pious and harmonious fund of character was in her;and withal an indolent,half-unconscious force of intellect,and justness and delicacy of perception,which the casual acquaintance scarcely gave her credit for.Sterling much respected her decision in matters literary;often altering and modifying where her feeling clearly went against him;and in verses especially trusting to her ear,which was excellent,while he knew his own to be worth little.I remember her melodious rich plaintive tone of voice;and an exceedingly bright smile which she sometimes had,effulgent with sunny gayety and true humor,among other fine qualities.
Sterling has lost much in these two hours;how much that has long been can never again be for him!Twice in one morning,so to speak,has a mighty wind smitten the corners of his house;and much lies in dismal ruins round him.
