Woodbourne, March 10, 1860.
My Dear Friend,
— I have not written to you since the death of Eliza,* an event in
which our hearts were blended. Her affection has been a precious boon to both
our lives, her life full of rich memories, her character a light from heaven — an
assurance of immortality, so much is there in it of that vitality which death can
not touch. I have not experienced in her death any thing of that
tremulousness, that clouded perception, that failure of faith, that recoiling
from the extinguishing touch of death that I sometimes am haunted with; partly,
perhaps, because I did not witness the process of mortality. I heard of her
illness only the day before I heard of her death, and I would not look at her
after the light of her glowing eye was veiled, so that to my perception she
passed over the gulf and into her inheritance. I did not see her after I came
to Woodbourne. I was purposing to go over to Brookline, but put it off with
that reckless delay which, in spite of experience, clings to us to the last, as
if we had a secure grant of the future. She wrote to me an earnest invitation
to go with her to her annual festival.† I declined it, assigning to her the
true reason, that I shrunk from being with her on an occasion to her of the
most elevating excitement which I did not partake. My feelings (perhaps I
should say my judgment) would recoil when hers flowed on with the force of
ocean waves to high-water mark. The last time she ever put pen to paper — the
pen that has done so much blessed work — was with the intention of kindly
convincing me I was wrong. Her frame was then shivering with premonitory ague,
her hand was weak, and after writing one common note-paper page she could write
no farther, and stopped at “our festival” — words fitly her last, for her heart
was in them. You will not misunderstand me, my dear Susan, nor imagine that I
do not feel heartily in the great question of humanity that agitates our
people. It seemed to me that so much had been intemperately said, so much
rashly urged on the death of that noble martyr, John Brown, by the
Abolitionists, that it was not right to appear among them as one of them. * * * * I wish I could know that you were as well and
strong as I am, we so much need health in our old age. As the Irishman said of
the sun, “What is the use of it in the day?” So youth might spare a little of
what is so essential to age. But if we can learn to resign contentedly, to live
cheerfully in our narrowed quarters, and to await in tranquillity our Father's
last dealings on earth with us, we may still hear those blessed words, “She
hath done what she could.” You have doubtless the two last great books,
Hawthorne's and Florence Nightingale's — the last, one that will scatter
blessings through the land. Like light and air, it is for universal good. It is
rare for a person who has Miss Nightingale's wonderful powers of execution to
write with such force, directness, and pithiness. I have but just begun the “Marble
Faun.” I am sure you will feel, as I do, that it pours a golden light into the
dim chambers of memory, and revivifies the scenes that we, too, once enjoyed. *
* * *
_______________
* Mrs. Eliza Cabot Follen.
† The meeting of the Anti-slavery Society.
SOURCE: Mary E. Dewey, Editor, Life and Letters of Catherine M. Sedgwick, p. 377-8
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