230 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xvi 



without suffering, is a most merciful dispensation. She 

 could neither make herself nor others happy, and I dreaded 

 the future (which must necessarily have darkened more 

 and more on her as she advanced) so much, that it seems 

 to me as if a great evil was withdrawn from me, in its being 

 denied to her. If she could have got Fanny [her daughter] 

 out to her I think she had some vague notion of never re- 

 turning. The suspicion of this, that the pains in her limbs 

 were exaggerated for this purpose, made me slow to per- 

 ceive her real ails and hardened my feelings towards her. 

 The event has shown how unjust I was in my suspicions, 

 and I now believe she made very light of the fore-running 

 symptoms of her terrible disorder. Here, dearest Bessy, 

 is my remorse, and that is really my sorrow for her, and not 

 that she has escaped from a life her many virtues and her 

 great means of happiness failed of making happy to her. 

 The disorder had been stealing on all the winter and was 

 clearly no one stroke. . . . 



Mrs Josiah Wedgwood to her sister Madame Sismondi. 



MAER, 17 June, 1830. 



... I feel exactly as you do. I go back to think over 

 what I could have done to have made her happier, and I 

 am sad when I think that she was less cordial to me the last 

 year, and that I might have done more for her. But for 

 you, my beloved, it is the hardest thing in the world that 

 you should suffer from these feelings. If any suspicion 

 crossed your thoughts that there was more perverseness 

 than malady in our poor sister's state, it must have been 

 involuntary, and if you never gave it vent to herself, it 

 cannot be a matter of reproach to you. I am witness that 

 as far as one could judge from her letters she was perfectly 

 satisfied with everything at your house, and I grieve now 

 at having burnt her last letter, because it was written in 

 BO cheerful a mood that I should now derive comfort in 

 reading it, perfectly collected and expressing but one regret 

 that Fanny had not joined her. . . . 



