CHAPTER X

The First Mrs. Hawker—Her Influence over her Husband—Anxiety about her Health—His Fits of Depression—Letter on the Death of Sir Thomas D. Acland—Reads Novels to his Wife—His Visions—Mysticism—Death of his Wife—Unhappy Condition—Burning of his Papers—Meets with his Second Wife—The Unburied Dead—Birth of his Child—Ruinous Condition of his Church—Goes to London—Sickness—Goes to Boscastle—To Plymouth—His Death and Funeral—Conclusion.

Mrs. Hawkerwas a very accomplished and charming old lady, who thoroughly understood and appreciated her husband. She was a woman of a poetical, refined mind, with strong sense of humour, and sound judgment. The latter quality was of great advantage, as it was an element conspicuously absent in the composition of her husband.

She translated from the German, with great elegance, the story of Guido Goerres, theManger of the Holy Night; and it was published by Burns in 1847. The verses in it were turned with grace and facility. Another of her books wasFollow Me, a Morality from the German, published by Burns in 1844.

The author remembers this charming old lady now many years ago, then blind, very aged, with hair white as snow, full of cheerfulness and geniality, laughing over her husband’s jokes, and drawing him out with a subtle skill to show himself to his best advantage. In his fits of depression she was invaluable to him, always at his side, encouraging him, directing his thoughts to pleasant topics, and bringing merriment back to the eye which had dulled with despondency.

Ash Wednesday, 1853.My dear Mrs. M.——,—Among my acts of self-research to-day one has regarded you, the wife of one of the very few whom I would really call my friends. Since my days of sorrow came, and self-abasement, I have shrunk too much into myself, and too much regarded the breath that is in the nostrils of my fellows. But what have I not been made to suffer? But—and I have sworn it as a vow—if my God grants me the life of poor dear Charlotte, all shall be borne cheerfully. Beyond that horizon I have not a hope, a thought, a prayer. And now I feel relieved at having written this. It lifts a load to tell it to you, as I should long ago to your guileless husband had he been here to listen. But he is gone to be happier than we, and would wonder, if he read this, why I grieve. And then how basely have those who vaunted themselves as my friends dealt with me! All this I unfold to you for my relief. Do you please not to say a word about ... or anything to vex or harass Charlotte. She is, I thank God, well and quiet. We hardly ever go out, save for exercise, in the parish. My thoughts go down in MS., of which I have drawers full. But I print no more.

The friend to whose widow he thus writes died in 1846. He then wrote to a relative this note of sympathy:—

Your letter has filled us with deep and sincere sorrow. We feared that our friend was sincerely ill, but we were not prepared for so immediate an accession of grief. That he was ready to be dissolved, I doubt not, and to be with Christ I am equally satisfied. He, already, I trust, prays for us all effectually.

There was ever a sad undertone in Mr. Hawker’s character. He felt his isolation in mind from all around him. His best companions were the waves and clouds. He lived “the ever alone,” as he calls himself in one of his letters, solitary in the Morwenstow ark, with only the sound of waters about him. “The Lord shut him in.”

With all his brightness and vivacity, there was constantly “cropping up” a sad and serious vein, which showed itself sometimes in a curious fashion. “This is as life seems to you,” he would say, as he bade his visitor look at the prospect through a pane of ruby-tinted glass, “all glowing and hopeful. And this is as I see it,” he would add, turning to a pane of yellow, “grey and wintry and faded. But keep your ruby days as long as you can.”

He wrote on 2nd Jan., 1868:—

Wheresoever you may be, this letter will follow you, and with it our best and most earnest prayers for your increased welfare of earthly and heavenly hopes in this and many succeeding New Years. How solemn a thing it is to stand before the gate of another year, and ask the oracles what will this ensuing cluster of the months unfold! But, if we knew, perhaps it would make life what a Pagan Greek called it, “a shuddering thing.” We have had, through the approach to us of the Gulf Stream, with its atmospheric arch of warm and rarefied air, a sad succession of cyclones, or, as our homely phrase renders it, “shattering sou’westers,” reminding us of what was said to be the Cornish wreckers’ toast in bygone days:—

“A billowy sea and a shattering wind,The cliffs before, and the gale behind,”

“A billowy sea and a shattering wind,

The cliffs before, and the gale behind,”

but, thank God, no wrecks yet on our iron shore.

The following letter was written to Mrs. Mills, daughter of Sir Thomas D. Acland, on the death of her father; a letter which will touch the hearts of many a “West Country man” who has loved his honoured name.

Morwenstow, July 27, 1861.My dear Mrs. Mills,—The knowledge of your great anguish at Killerton has only just reached us. How deeply we feel it, I need not tell: although long looked for, it smote me like a sudden blow. Yet we must not mourn “for him, but for ourselves and our children.” “It shall come to pass, at eventide there shall be light.” The good and faithful servant had borne the burden and the heat of the day; and at set of sun he laid him down and slept. My heart and my eyes are too full to write. May his God and our God bless and sustain yours and you! My poor dear wife, who is ill, offers you her faithful love; and I shall pray this night for him who is gone before, and for those who tarry yet a little while. I am, dear Mrs. Mills, yours faithfully and affectionately,

R. S. Hawker.

During his wife’s blindness and the gentle fading away of a well-spent, God-fearing life, nothing could be more unremitting than the attention of Mr. Hawker. He read to her a great part of the day, brought her all the news of the neighbourhood, strove in every way to make up to her for the deprivation of her sight.

He had a ten-guinea subscription to Mudie’s Library, and whole boxes of novels arrived at the vicarage; these he diligently read to her as she sat, her arm-chair wheeled to the window out of which she could no more see, or by the fireside where the logs flickered.

But though he read with his lips and followed with his eyes, his eager mind was far away in that wondrous dreamland where his mental life was spent. After he had diligently read through the three volumes of some popular novel, he was found to be ignorant of the plot, to know nothing of the characters, and to have no conception even of the names of hero and heroine. These stories interested him in no way: they related to a world of which he knew little, and cared less. Whilst he read, his mind was following some mystic weaving of a dance, in the air, of gulls and swallows; tracing parables in the flowers that dotted his sward; or musing over some text of Holy Scripture. To be on the face of his cliff, to sit hour by hour in his little hut of wreck-wood, with the boiling Atlantic before him, sunk in dream or meditation, was his delight. Or, kneeling in his gloomy chancel, poring over the sacred page, meditating, he would go off into strange trances, and see sights: Morwenna, gleaming before him with pale face, exquisitely beautiful, and golden hair, and deep blue eyes, telling him where she lay, drawing him on to chivalrous love, like Aslauga in Fouqué’s exquisite tale. Or, he saw angels ascending and descending in his dark chancel, and heard “a noise of hymns.”

A gentle sound, an awful light!Three angels bear the holy Grail.With folded feet, in stoles of white,On sleeping wings they sail.Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!My spirit beats her mortal bars,As down dark tides the glory slides,And star-like mingles with the stars.

A gentle sound, an awful light!Three angels bear the holy Grail.With folded feet, in stoles of white,On sleeping wings they sail.

A gentle sound, an awful light!

Three angels bear the holy Grail.

With folded feet, in stoles of white,

On sleeping wings they sail.

Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!My spirit beats her mortal bars,As down dark tides the glory slides,And star-like mingles with the stars.

Ah, blessed vision! blood of God!

My spirit beats her mortal bars,

As down dark tides the glory slides,

And star-like mingles with the stars.

We have seen hitherto the sparkling merriment of his life; but this was the surging of the surface of a character that rolled on its mysterious, unfathomable way.

To him the spiritual world was intensely real: he had in him the makings of a mystic. The outward world, the carnal flesh, he looked upon with contempt, with almost the disgust of a Manichæan. The spiritual life was the real life: the earthly career was a passing, troubled dream, that teased the soul, and broke its contemplations. The true aim of man was to disentangle his soul from the sordid cares of earth, and to raise it on the wings of meditation and prayer to union with God. Consequently the true self is the spiritual man: this none but the spiritual man can understand. The vicar accommodated himself to ordinary society, but he did not belong to it. His spirit hovered high above in the thin, clear air, whilst his body and earthly mind laughed, and joked, and laboured, and sorrowed below. Trouble was the anguish of the soul recalling its prerogative. The fits of depression which came on him were the moments when the soul was asserting its true power, pining as the captive for its home and proper freedom.

It will be seen that nothing but his intense grasp of the doctrine of the Incarnation saved him from drifting into the wildest vagaries of mysticism.

He would never open out to any one who he thought was not spiritually minded.

A commonplace neighbouring parson, visiting him once, asked him what were his views and opinions.

Mr. Hawker drew him to the window. “There,” said he, “is Hennacliff, there the Atlantic stretching to Labrador, there Morwenstow crag, here the church and graves: these are my views. As to my opinions, I keep them to myself.”

The flame, after long flickering in the breast of his dearly loved wife, went out at length on 2nd Feb., 1863. She died at the age of eighty-one.

He had a grave—a double grave—made outside the chancel, beside the stone that marks where an ancient priest of Morwenstow lies, and placed over her a stone with this inscription:—

HERE RESTS THE BODY OFCHARLOTTE E. HAWKER,FOR NEARLY FORTY YEARS THE WIFE OF ONE OF THEVICARS OF THIS CHURCH.She died Feb. 2, 1863.There is sprung up a light for the righteous, and joyful gladnessfor such as are true-hearted.

HERE RESTS THE BODY OF

CHARLOTTE E. HAWKER,

FOR NEARLY FORTY YEARS THE WIFE OF ONE OF THE

VICARS OF THIS CHURCH.

She died Feb. 2, 1863.

There is sprung up a light for the righteous, and joyful gladness

for such as are true-hearted.

The text had reference to her blindness.

At the bottom of the stone is a blank space left for his own name, and a place was made by his own orders at the side of his wife for his own body.

Morwenstow, Oct. 16, 1864.My dear Mrs. M——,—I have intended every day to make an effort, and go down to Bude to see you, and to thank you for all your kindness to me in my desolate abode; but I am quite unequal to the attempt. If you return next year, and you will come, you will find me, if I am alive, keeping watch and ward humbly and faithfully by the place where my dead wife still wears her ring in our quiet church. If I am gone, I know you will come and stand by the stone where we rest. My kindest love to Mr. M—— and your happy little children.

After the death of Mrs. Hawker, he fell into a condition of piteous depression. He moped about the cliffs, or in his study, and lost interest in everything. Sciatica added to his misery; and to relieve this he had recourse to opium.

He took it into his head that he could eat nothing but clotted cream. He therefore made his meals, breakfast, dinner and tea, of this. He became consequently exceedingly bilious, and his depression grew the greater.

He was sitting, crying like a child, one night over his papers, when there shot a spark from the fire among those strewn at his feet. He did not notice it particularly, but went to bed. After he had gone to sleep, his papers were in a flame: the flame communicated itself to a drawer full of MSS., which he had pulled out, and not thrust into its place again; and the house would probably have been burnt down, had not a Methodist minister seen the blaze through the window, as he happened to be on the hill opposite. He gave the alarm, the inmates of the vicarage were aroused, and the fire was arrested.

Probably much of his MS. poetry, and jottings of ideas passing through his head, were thus lost. “Oh, dear!” was his sad cry, “if Charlotte had been here this would never have happened.”

The vicar had brain fever shortly afterwards, and was in danger; but he gradually recovered.

MORWENSTOW PARISH CHURCH.

ANCIENT FONT IN MORWENSTOW CHURCH.

“PARSON HAWKER,” OF MORWENSTOW.

THE CHURCH AND VICARAGE, MORWENSTOW.

A friend tells me that during the time that he was a widower, the condition he was in was most sad. His drawing-room, which used to be his delight, full of old oak furniture, and curiosities from every corner of the world, was undusted and neglected. The servants, no longer controlled by a mistress, probably did not attend properly to the comforts of the master.

However, a new interest grew up in his heart. It was fortunate that matters did not remain long in this condition. It was neither well nor wise that the old man should linger on the rest of his days without a “helpmeet for him,” to attend to his comforts, be a companion in his solitude, and a solace in his fits of depression. The Eastern Church is very strong against the second marriage of priests. No man who has had a second wife is admitted by the orthodox communion to holy orders. But Mr. Hawker was about, and very fortunately for his own comfort, in this matter to shake off the trammels of his Orientalism.

Previous to the death of his first wife, he had some good stories to tell of men, who, when the first wife was dead, forgot her speedily for a second. One belongs to the Cornish moors, and may therefore be here inserted.

A traveller was on his way over the great dorsal moorland that runs the length of Cornwall. He had lost his way. It was a time of autumn equinoctial storm. The day declined, and nothing was to be seen save sweeps of moor, broken only by huge masses of granite; not a church tower broke the horizon, not a dog barked from a distant farm.

After long and despairing wanderings in search of a road or house, the traveller was about to proceed to a pile of granite, and bury himself among the rocks for shelter during the night, when a sudden burst of revelry smote his ear from the other side of the hill. He hasted with beating heart in the direction whence came the sounds, and soon found a solitary house, in which all the inhabitants were making merry. He asked admission and a lodging for the night. He was invited in, and given a hearty welcome. The owner of the house had just been married, and brought home his bride. The house, therefore, could furnish him with plenty of food; saffron cakes abounded: but a bed was not to be had, as brothers and cousins had been invited, and the only place where the traveller could be accommodated was a garret. This was better than a bed on the moor, and the stormy sky for the roof; and he accepted the offer with eagerness.

After the festivities of the evening were over, he retired to his attic, and lay down on a bed of hay, shaken for him on the floor. But he could not sleep. The moon shone in through a pane of glass let into the roof, and rested on a curious old chest which was thrust away in a corner. Somehow or other, this chest engrossed his attention, and excited his imagination. It was of carved oak, and handsome. Why was it put away in a garret? What did it contain? He became agitated and nervous. He thought he heard a sigh issue from it. He sat up on the hay, and trembled. Still the moonbeam streaked the long black box.

Again his excited fancy made him believe he heard a sigh issue from it. Unable to endure suspense any longer, he stole across the floor to the side of the garret where stood the box, and with trembling hand he raised the lid. The moonbeam fell on the face of a dead woman, lying in her winding-sheet in the chest. He let the lid drop with a scream of fear, and fainted away. When he came to himself, the bride and bridegroom, brothers and cousins, surrounded him in the attic, in somewhatdégagécostume, as they had tumbled from their beds, in alarm at the shriek which had awakened them.

“What is it? What have you seen?” was asked on all sides.

“In that chest,” gasped the traveller, “I saw a corpse!”

There was a pause. Slowly—for the mind of an agriculturist takes time to act—the bridegroom arrived at a satisfactory explanation. His face remained for three minutes clouded with thought, as he opened and explored the various chambers of memory. At length a gleam of satisfaction illumed his countenance, and he broke into a laugh and an explanation at once. “Lor’, you needn’t trouble yourself: its only my first wife as died last Christmas. You see, the moors were covered with snow, and the land frozen, so we couldn’t take her to be buried at Camelford, and accordinglywe salted her intill the thaw shu’d come;and I’m darned if I hadn’t forgotten all about her, and the old gal’s never been buried yet.”

“So, you see,” Mr. Hawker would say, when telling the story, “in Cornwall we do things differently from elsewhere. It is on record that the second wife is wedded before the first wife is buried.”

There is a Devonshire version of this story told of Dartmoor; but it wants the point of the Cornish tale.

The Rev. W. Valentine, vicar of Whixley in Yorkshire, bought Chapel House, in the parish, in the October of 1863, and, having obtained two years’ leave of absence from the Bishop of Ripon, came there into residence. He brought with him, as governess to his children, a young Polish lady, Miss Kuczynski. Her father had been a Polish noble, educated at the Jesuit University of Wilna, who, having been mixed up with one of the periodical revolts against Russian domination, had been obliged to fly his native country and take refuge in England. He received a pension from the British Government, and office under the Master of the Rolls. He married a Miss Newton, and by her had two children, Stanislaus and Pauline.

On the death of Count Kuczynski, his widow married a Mr. Stevens, an American merchant. He lost greatly by the war between the Northern and Southern States, and Miss Kuczynski was obliged to enter the family of an English clergyman as governess to his children.

Mr. Hawker, as vicar of the parish in which Chapel stands, made the acquaintance of this lady of birth and education. A sunbeam shone into his dark, troubled life, and lighted it with hope. He was married to her in December, 1864, “by a concurrence of events manifestly providential,” he wrote to a dear friend. “Her first position was in the family of Mr. Valentine, who so recently arrived in my parish of Morwenstow. There I saw and understood her character; but it was not her graceful person and winning demeanour that so impressed me, as her strong intellect, high principle and similitude of tastes with my own. She won my people before she won me; and it was a saying among my simple-hearted parishioners: ‘Oh, if Miss Kuczynski would but be mistress at vicarage!’ Her friends, as was natural, objected to the marriage; but I went to town, saw them, and returned hither Pauline’s husband.”

His marriage had a good effect on him immediately. He for a time gave up opium-eating. His spirits rose, and he seemed to be entirely, supremely happy.

In November, 1865, he was given a daughter, to be the light and joy of his eyes. He says in a letter dated 30th Nov., 1865:—

The kind interest you have taken in us induces me to think that you may be glad to hear, that, just before midnight on Monday, I was given a daughter—a fair and gentle child, who has not up to this time uttered a single peevish sound. As is very natural, I think her one of the loveliest infants I ever took in my arms. Both child and mother are going on very well, and the happiness which the event has brought to my house is indeed a blessing. The baby’s name is to be Morwenna Pauline.

A second daughter was afterwards given to him, Rosalind; and then a third, who was baptised Juliot, after a sister of St. Morwenna, who had a cell and founded a church near Boscastle. The arrival of these heaven-given treasures, however, filled the old man’s mind with anxiety for the future. The earth must soon close over him; and he would leave a widow and three helpless orphans on the world, without being able to make any provision for them. This preyed on his mind during the last year or two of his life. It was a cloud which hung over him, and never was lifted off. As he walked, he moaned to himself. He saw no possibility of securing them a future of comfort and a home. He could not shake the thought off him: it haunted him day and night.

His church also was fallen into a piteous condition of disrepair: the wooden shingle wherewith he had roofed it some years before was rotten, and let in the water in streams. The pillars were green with lichen, the side of the tower bulged, and discoloured water oozed forth. A portion of the plaster of the ceiling fell; storms tore out the glass of his windows.

In 1872 he sent forth the following appeal to all his friends:—

Jesus said: “Ye have done it unto me!”

The ancient church of Morwenstow, on the northern shore of Cornwall, notwithstanding a large outlay of the present vicar, has fallen into dilapidation and disrepair. A great part of the oak shingle roof requires to be relaid. The walls must be painted anew, and the windows, benches and floor ought to be restored. To fulfil all these purposes, a sum amounting to at least £500 will be required. In the existing state of the Church-rate law, it would be inexpedient and ineffectual to rely on the local succour of the parishioners, although there is reason to confide that the usual levy of a penny in the pound per annum (sixteen pounds), now granted in aid of other resources, would never be withheld. But this church, from the interest attached to its extreme antiquity and its striking features of ecclesiastical attraction, is visited every year by one or two hundred strangers from distant places, and from Bude Haven in the immediate neighbourhood. It appears, therefore, to the vicar and his friends, that an appeal for the sympathy and the succour of all who value and appreciate the solemn beauty and the sacred associations of such a scene might happily be fraught with success. A committee, to consist of the vicar and churchwardens, of J. Tarratt, Esq., late of Chapel House, Morwenstow, and W. Rowe, Esq., solicitor, Stratton, will superintend the disposal of the contributions, under the control of a competent builder, and account to the subscribers for their outlay.

And the benediction of God the Trinity will assuredly requite every kindly heart and generous hand that shall help to restore this venerable sanctuary of the Tamar side.

A voluntary rate raised £32; and offertory, £2 2s.10-1/2d.; and he had donations of about £150 from various friends.

In 1874 he went to London for his health. He was very much broken then, suffering in his heart and from sciatica. At the same time he resolved to preach in such churches as were open to him, for the restoration fund of St. Morwenna’s sanctuary.

He wrote to me on the subject:—

16 Harley Road, South Hampstead, April 20, 1874.My dear Sir,—I am here in quest of medical aid for my wife and myself. I am so far better that I can preach, and I am trying to get offertories here for the restoration of my grand old Morwenstow Church. Only one has been granted me thus far—last night at St. Matthias, Brompton, where I won an evening offertory “with my sword and with my bow,” twenty-two pounds eighteen shillings, whereas the average for two years at evensong has been under five pounds. But I find the great clergy shy to render me the loan of their pulpits. Do you know any one of them? Can you help me? And about St. Morwenna. Cannot I see your proof sheets of mySaint’s Life, or can you in any way help me in the delivery of her legend to London ears? At all events, do write. I seem nearer to you here than at home. If you come up, do find us out. I write in haste.

Yours faithfully,

R. S. Hawker.

The previous October he had written to me from his “sick-room, to which I have been confined with eczema for full two months.” In November he wrote: “Ten days in bed helpless.” I had been in correspondence with him about St. Morwennanotbeing identical with St. Modwenna; his answer was: “I have twice received supernatural intimation of her identity, by dream and suggestion.” Such an answer was clearly not that of a man of well-balanced mind.

16 Harley Road, Hampstead, March 10, 1874.My dear Mrs. M——,—You may well be astonished at my address; but our journey hither was a matter of life or death to both of us, and so far I am the only gainer. Dr. Goodfellow, after a rigid scrutiny, has pronounced me free from any perilous organic disease, and is of opinion that with rest and a few simple remedies, “there is work in me yet”....

Yours faithfully,

R. S. Hawker.

But the grand old man was breaking. There was pain of body, and much mental anxiety about his family. He could not sleep at night: his brain was constantly excited by his pecuniary troubles, and the sufferings he endured from his malady. By the advice of his doctor, I believe, it was that he had recourse to narcotics to allay the pain, and procure him rest at night. Mr. C. Hawker wrote to me:—

Towards the close of his life, my brother (I am grieved to state it) renewed a habit he had contracted on the death of his first wife, but had abandoned—of taking opium. This had a most injurious effect on his nerves: it violently excited him for a while, and then cast him into fits of the most profound depression. When under this influence he wrote and spoke in the wildest and most unreasonable manner, and said things which in moments of calmer judgment, I am sure, he bitterly deplored. He would at times work himself into the greatest excitement about the most trivial matters, over which he would laugh in his more serene moments.

Whilst Mr. Hawker was in London, he called one day on some very kind friends, who had a house in Bude, but were then in town. Mrs. M——, thinking that the old man would be troubled at being away from his books, very considerately offered to lend him any from her own library which he might take a fancy to read. But he said: “All I want is a reference Bible. If I have that I care for no other books.” And he carried off a Bagster’s Polyglot that lay on the table.

From London Mr. Hawker returned to Morwenstow, to fresh suffering, disappointment, and anxieties. I give a few of his last letters to one whom he regarded as his best friend.

Morwenstow, Sept. 22, 1874.My dear Valentine,—You brought to my house the solitary blessing of my life. My three daughters came to me through you, as God’s instrument. I must write to you. You will not have many more letters from me.... My mind has been so racked and softened that I shall never be myself again. My health, too, is gone. My legs are healed, but the long drain has enfeebled me exceedingly. Money terrors, too, have reached a climax. I have so many claims upon me, that I cannot regard my home as sure, nor my roof certain to shelter my dear ones. On the school-building account I am responsible for seventy pounds odd, more than I have collected from subscribers.... I have to pay the master twelve pounds ten shillings quarterly. But there is one thing more—the curate, whom I must have, for I cannot go on serving both churches as I do now, with daily service here. T——, and his mother, will give me one-half, or nearly his salary. But besides Dean Lodge there is no house that he can live in. Let him rent it until you sell it. I implore you, grant this last kindness to me whom you once called a friend. My heart is broken. It is a favour you will not have to grant me long, as my pausing pulse and my shuddering heart testify. Oh, God bless you!

Mr. Valentine came to Chapel House, Morwenstow, in October, 1874, and renewed his old warm friendship with the vicar. Had there been any change in the views of Mr. Hawker, it would certainly have been made known to his most intimate friend of many years. But Mr. Valentine found him the same in faith, though sadly failing in mental and bodily power.

Nov. 13, 1874.My dear Valentine,—You will be sorry to hear that over-anxieties and troubles are incessant. First of all, no curate. A Mr. H—— came down from Torquay. He had all but agreed to come, but when he saw Dean Lodge he declined. He thought it too far to walk to church. I have advertised in three papers, but only one applicant. I have invited him to come and see for himself, but he has not yet appeared or written. We are so remote and forlorn that unless a man be verysincere and honestthere is no inducement. No sphere for strut or grimace, or other vanity. Another trouble that we have is scarlet and typhus fever both, in several parts of the parish.... And now I am compelled to remind you that you promised me this month your subscriptions to our charities. I want to pay the schoolmaster, this next week, his quarter’s salary. This will make the adverse balance run to nearly fifty pounds against me. It is most ruinous. Upon the school-building account I am responsible for sixty-eight pounds beyond the subscriptions....

What a life this is to lead in the flesh! Mine has been indeed a martyrdom.

Nov. 17, 1874.My dear Valentine,[42].... One part of your letter has troubled our earnest hope. If you would but fulfil your suggestion, and come to Dean Lodge, the advantages to me would be incalculable. You would not, I know, object to help me in the church once a Sunday. I cannot, by any effort, obtain a curate. The work—thrice a day on Sunday—is killing me, and your presence would soothe the dreadful depression into which I am sinking fast. Make any effort, I do entreat you, to come. The cry after your last appearance in church[43]was, that no sermon had been heard in church for a long time equal to yours: not very complimentary to me, but that I don’t mind. Come! anything you want at Dean, that we have, you are most welcome to have from us. Your presence in the parish will be ample compensation. Come, I do entreat you, and gladden us by deciding at once, and telling us so. I shall have hope then of getting over the winter, which now I cannot realise. My great terror is that I have all but lost the power of sleep. I cannot rest in bed quietly above two or three hours. Now, it would be cruel to awaken hope, and crush it again. You shall have horses and carriage, and anything you want.

At Christmas he was very ill, and thought that life’s last page was being turned, and that before the daisies reappeared in Morwenstow churchyard he would be resting in his long home.

But he got slowly better. On 28th April, 1875, he was still in trouble about a curate, and wrote to Mr. Valentine, begging him to allow him to take Dean Lodge, and make it a cottage for his curate. “Write to me at once,” he said, “to relieve my poor broken mind of one of thepressureswhich are now dragging it down. Pray write immediately, because my second letter must have apprised you how unable I am in my present shattered state. And mind, I rely on you for standing by me in these, my last trials.”

In June Mr. Hawker went for change, with his wife and children, and a lady, the companion of Mrs. Hawker, who was staying with them, to Boscastle, to visit his brother at Penally.

Did any prevision of what would take place pass before his mind’s eye ere he left his beloved Morwenstow? Had he any thought that he was taking his last look at the quiet combe, with its furze and heather slopes, the laughing, sparkling, blue sea that lashed the giant cliffs on which St. Morwenna had planted her foot, cross in hand? We cannot tell. It is certain that it had been all along his wish to lay him down to rest in his old church. The grave made for his wife was, by his orders, made double; a space was left on the stone for his name; and he often, at all events before his second marriage, spoke of his desire to be laid there, and made a friend promise, that, should he by accident die away from Morwenstow, he would fetch his body, and lay him there.

When he heard that it was illegal to be buried inside the church, he pointed out a place under the east wall of his chancel where he wished to be laid; but he hoped that, owing to the remoteness of Morwenstow, no difficulty would be raised about his being laid in the grave he had prepared for himself in the church where he had ministered so long.

However, later on, he often quoted St. Monica’s last prayer: “Lay my body anywhere—only do not forget to remember me at the altar of God.”

Is it to be wondered at, that now there are Morwenstow people who say, that, since his death, they have seen the old man standing at the head of the stone that covers his wife, looking mournfully at the blank space where he had hoped his name would be cut; and that others, who have not seen him, aver that they have heard his familiar sighs and moans from the same spot?

Whilst he was at Boscastle he was neither mentally nor bodily himself. His brother, Mr. Claud Hawker, wrote to me that he was often in a state approaching stupor. “When he came down here in August he was very ill, and certainly broken in his mind, nearly all the time he was here: he was often in a scarce-conscious state.”

Whilst Mr. Hawker and family were staying at Penally, Mr. Claud Hawker fell ill, and it was necessary for them to move out of the house. Mr. Robert Hawker would have returned to Morwenstow, had not the curate been in the vicarage: then he wished to take lodgings at Boscastle, but was persuaded by Mrs. Hawker to go to Plymouth.

His brother wrote to me: “Robert came down to see me ill in bed. I was ill at the time; but I could see he was not like himself in any way, and it was no act of his to go to Plymouth. He declined to do so for some time, until at last, most reluctantly, and against his better judgment, he was persuaded to do so.”

On the other hand, Miss E. Newton says that the visit to Plymouth was a planned thing, as Mr. Hawker was desirous of medical advice there.

They left on 29th June, and took lodgings in Lockyer Street, Plymouth. Mr. Robert S. Hawker was still very ill and failing.

The Rev. Prebendary Thynne, rector of Kilkhampton, a near and attached friend of sixteen years, was in Plymouth not long before the end, and saw the vicar of Morwenstow. He was then agitated because he had not been able to be present at the Bishop of Exeter’s visitation at Stratton, fearing lest the bishop should take it as a slight. The rector of Kilkhampton quieted him by assuring him that the bishop knew how ill he was, and that he was away for change of air. Then he brightened up a little, but he was anything but himself.

The curate of Kilkhampton wrote to me: “Mr. Hawker complained that we had not invited him to a retreat held by one of the Cowley Missioners in the same month in which he died. Of course we knew that he could not have come, and so did not ask him. But surely his making a kind of grievance of it is hardly consistent with the idea that even at that time he was in heart a Roman Catholic.”

On Sunday, 1st Aug., Mr. Hawker went with his wife to St. James Church, Plymouth, for morning service. The service was choral, and he much enjoyed it. Mrs. Hawker saw him home, and then went on to the Roman Catholic Cathedral, to high mass; and in the evening he accompanied her to benediction, and was pleased with the beauty of the service, which to him had all the attractions of novelty, as he had never travelled abroad, and so was unfamiliar with Roman Catholic ritual. The church was very solemn, and nicely cared for; and benediction is one of the most touching, popular and elastic of services.

He was so pleased, that he said he should be quite happy to spend a night in the church.

During the week he began to fail rapidly, and on Friday spent the greater part of the day on his bed. He suffered from great mental prostration. One evening he was got out of the house as far as to the Laira, a beautiful creek with the Saltram woods beyond, touching the water; but he was too weak in body and depressed in mind to go out for exercise again.

Feeling himself growing weaker, and, as Mrs. Hawker wrote to his niece, “with the truth really beginning to dawn upon him,” he became nervously impatient to get away from Plymouth as speedily as possible, and to return to the home he loved, hallowed by the feet of St. Morwenna, and rendered dear to him by the associations of more than forty years.

But before he left Plymouth, when all had been ordered to be in readiness for departure, and notice had been given that the lodgings would be left the ensuing week, a curious occurrence took place. His beloved St. Cuthbert’s stole was sent for from Morwenstow, and a biretta, a distinctively priest’s cap, was borrowed for him—a thing he never wore himself—and he had himself photographed in cassock, surplice, stole and biretta, as a priest. It was his last conscious act; and it is certainly very inconsistent with the supposition that at the time he disbelieved in his Orders. This photograph was taken on Saturday, 7th Aug.: on Monday, 9th Aug., he was struck down with paralysis.

His action in this matter was the more extraordinary, as he had at one time manifested an extreme repugnance to having his likeness taken. He has told me himself that he would have inscribed on his tombstone: “Here lies the man who was never photographed.” For a long time he stubbornly refused the most earnest requests to be taken; and his repugnance was only overcome, at last, by Mrs. Mills bringing over a photographer from Bude, in her carriage, to Morwenstow, and insisting on having him stand to be taken.[44]

It was the old man’s last act, and it was a very emphatic and significant one. The photograph was taken on the very day on which Mrs. Hawker represented him as seeing that his end was drawing nigh. Every preparation was made for departure, the boxes were packed, and all was ready, on Monday; his impatience to be gone rapidly growing.

Mrs. Hawker wrote to his nephew at Whitstone, eight miles from Stratton, to say that they would lunch with him on Tuesday, the 10th, on their way back from Plymouth to Morwenstow, intending to drive the distance in the day.

He never came, nor was the reason known till it was too late for his nephew to see him.

On Monday evening, when all was ready for departure on the morrow, about seven o’clock, Mrs. Hawker saw her husband’s left hand turn dead, white and cold. Perceiving that he had a paralytic stroke, she sent immediately for a surgeon. On the morrow, Tuesday, the day on which the old man’s face was to have been turned homewards, it became evident that his face was set to go towards a happier and an eternal home.

It was then clear that there was no return for him to Morwenstow; and the lodgings were taken on for another week, which would probably see the close of the scene.

On that evening Mrs. Hawker wrote to his sister, Mrs. Kingdon, a very aged lady at Holsworthy, to tell her that her brother had had a stroke, and that the medical attendant had “forbid him doing any duty if he goes back to Morwenstow.... Of course the knowledge that he can be no longer of use at Morwenstow is a terrible blow to his mind.” She also requested Mrs. Kingdon to keep his sickness a profound secret from every one. At Whitstone he was in vain expected, day after day, for lunch. Nor were his brother and niece at Boscastle aware that his illness was serious, and that life was ebbing fast away, till all was over.

Mr. Claud Hawker informed me that even on that Tuesday, when he learned that he must not take duty again in his loved church, he was restless to be off, and would not have the things unpacked. On that day one of the arteries of the left arm with the pulse had stopped. On Wednesday the companion of Mrs. Hawker, who helped to nurse him, was satisfied that he knew her, and seemed to be pleased with her attentions. His wife ministered to him with the most devoted tenderness, and would allow no hired nurse near him, nor even one of the servants of the house to invade the room, so jealous is love of lavishing all its powers on the object of affection. On Thursday his pulse was weaker, and consciousness scarcely manifested itself. His solicitor from Stratton had been telegraphed for, and arrived on that day: he was informed by Mrs. Hawker that her husband was quite unconscious, and not fit to see any one. Understanding that there was no chance of Mr. Hawker recovering sufficiently to discuss final arrangements of money affairs, and that it was therefore useless to stay in Plymouth, he returned to Stratton.

Mrs. Hawker and her friend, finding themselves unable to raise the sick man in bed, sent for his servant-man from Morwenstow; and he arrived on Friday. His master recognised him, and gave tokens of pleasure at seeing him at his side. The same evening he knew the medical man who attended him, and said a word or two to him in a faint whisper; but his brain was in part paralysed, and he hovered between consciousness and torpor, like a flickering flame, or the state of a man between sleeping and waking.

On Saturday morning Mrs. Hawker informed him that she was going to send for the Roman Catholic Canon Mansfield to see him. She believed that he seemed pleased; and, as so often happens shortly before death, a slight rally appeared to have taken place. According to her statement she sent for the priest at his request. Mrs. Hawker, herself, was not, however, received into the Roman Catholic communion till after his death.

During the day he murmured familiar psalms and the “Te Deum.”[45]

In the evening at half-past eight o’clock he was visited. He was in a comatose condition; and, if able to recognise his visitor, it was only that the recognition might fade away instantaneously, and he lapsed again into a condition of torpor.

It was then clear that Mr. Hawker had not many hours to live. At ten o’clock at night Canon Mansfield was introduced into the dying man’s chamber; and the sacraments of baptism, penance, extreme unction and communion, four in all, were administered in succession.

During the night his groans were very distressing, and seemed to indicate that he was in great suffering. At eight o’clock next morning he was lifted up in his bed to take a cup of tea, with bread sopped in it. A change passed over his face, and he was laid gently back on the pillow, when his spirit fled.

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