THE REV. JOHN RUSSELL 343 



Again, in 1882, the staghounds saw him 

 booted and spurred at the cover-side, still cheery 

 and enjoying the sport ; but, as his friends 

 observed, much broken, and showing manifest 

 tokens of failing strength. With the fall of the 

 leaf, however, on the 15th of October, he wrote 

 as follows to his old friend at Bath : — " I am 

 going to London on Tuesday morning to marry 

 Mr. Curzon, the Duchess of Beaufort's nephew, 

 to Miss Bassett-Williams, of Pilton House ; the 

 ceremony is to take place in Curzon Chapel, 

 May Fair. When it is over I shall turn my 

 head homewards, and should like, if you and 

 the missus will have me, to break the journey 

 at 26, Circus, for one night only. But I am 

 more fit for bed than a railway carriage." 



The wedding took place two days after, but 

 the knot was tied by other hands. On that 

 day, the 17th, a letter from his faithful house- 

 keeper, Mary Cocking, reached Bath instead of 

 Russell ; it ran thus : "I am grieved to say my 

 dear master is very unwell, and in bed since 

 Sunday. Three doctors are attending him, and 

 I fear they think him i'cry, very ill." 



The attack was a critical and a dangerous 

 one — the beginning of the end, as his friends 

 rightly conjectured — but such had been his 

 temperate habits and fine constitution that, aided 

 as he was by the assiduous and scientific 

 attention of Dr. Linnington Ash, his medical 



