The Letters of Jane Austen: Selected from the compilation of her great nephew, Edward, Lord BradbourneAusten, Jane
General
The Letters of Jane Austen: Selected from the compilation of her great nephew, Edward, Lord Bradbourne
Austen, Jane
Austen, Cassandra, 1773-1845; Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Correspondence; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence
You know me too well to be at all afraid that I should suffer materially
from my feelings; I am perfectly conscious of the extent of my
irreparable loss, but I am not at all overpowered and very little
indisposed,--nothing but what a short time, with rest and change of air,
will remove. I thank God that I was enabled to attend her to the last,
and amongst my many causes of self-reproach I have not to add any wilful
neglect of her comfort.
She felt herself to be dying about half an hour before she became
tranquil and apparently unconscious. During that half-hour was her
struggle, poor soul! She said she could not tell us what she suffered,
though she complained of little fixed pain. When I asked her if there
was anything she wanted, her answer was she wanted nothing but death,
and some of her words were: "God grant me patience, pray for me, oh,
pray for me!" Her voice was affected, but as long as she spoke she was
intelligible.
I hope I do not break your heart, my dearest Fanny, by these
particulars; I mean to afford you gratification whilst I am relieving my
own feelings. I could not write so to anybody else; indeed you are the
only person I have written to at all, excepting your grandmamma,--it
was to her, not your Uncle Charles, I wrote on Friday.
Immediately after dinner on Thursday I went into the town to do an
errand which your dear aunt was anxious about. I returned about a
quarter before six, and found her recovering from faintness and
oppression; she got so well as to be able to give me a minute account of
her seizure, and when the clock struck six she was talking quietly to
me.
I cannot say how soon afterwards she was seized again with the same
faintness, which was followed by the sufferings she could not describe;
but Mr. Lyford had been sent for, had applied something to give her
ease, and she was in a state of quiet insensibility by seven o'clock at
the latest. From that time till half-past four, when she ceased to
breathe, she scarcely moved a limb, so that we have every reason to
think, with gratitude to the Almighty, that her sufferings were over. A
slight motion of the head with every breath remained till almost the
last. I sat close to her with a pillow in my lap to assist in supporting
her head, which was almost off the bed, for six hours; fatigue made me
then resign my place to Mrs. J. A. for two hours and a half, when I took
it again, and in about an hour more she breathed her last.
I was able to close her eyes myself, and it was a great gratification to
me to render her those last services. There was nothing convulsed which
gave the idea of pain in her look; on the contrary, but for the
continual motion of the head she gave one the idea of a beautiful
statue, and even now, in her coffin, there is such a sweet, serene air
over her countenance as is quite pleasant to contemplate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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