CHAPTER XXXVIII. ALFRED'S THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND
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CHAPTER XXXVIII
ALFRED'S THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND
Assiduous all his wishes to attend,
Deprived of much, he yet may boast a friend.
--GEORGE CRABBE.
TWO days after the farewell gathering mentioned in the last chapter, Alfred started on his journey to England. When a little three-year-old grandchild, named Rhoda in honour of her grandmother, heard that he was going across the sea, she appeared to think that he was preparing to swim the distance that separates England from New Zealand, for she said with much solicitude, as she fixed her blue eyes anxiously on his face, "But what about the sharks, grandfather?"
Alfred laughed heartily at this remark; but perhaps he knew that the childish words would haunt some of his children until they heard of his safe arrival in England, and, on his homeward journey, he lost no opportunity of communicating with them, and assuring them of his continued health and comfort. From San Francisco he sent on to them the following letter that he had received there from his sister Ellen:
"Dear Alfred! To think of really having you ! It is like a dream. You will find us very much gone down in the way of handsomeness, but your loving eyes will regard us as the old like to be regarded. There is much besides our faces that will interest you, and I recall yours as one calculated to freshen us all up. If the sharks do have you, Theosophy would put you very high in the next state. Samuel would say that the sharks can't deface your spiritual body. But I feel certain that Providence means me to have you before they do. Ever your loving sister Ellen."
On his arrival in England, Alfred went first to his sister Mary's home, and was delighted to find her quite
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unexpectedly well, and able to converse with him as easily as she had ever done. He wrote from his brother Samuel's house in his native village of Lavington:
"The affectionate warmth with which all my relations in England have greeted me seems almost like a continuation of the great kindness that I received in New Zealand before I left."
From Lavington Alfred went to Southampton to visit his cousins Ann and Sarah Box. Here he had a very severe attack of the hemorrhage from which he had, for some years, been occasionally liable to suffer. He wrote to his two youngest daughters:
"Whatever happens to me now or hereafter, you may be quite sure that I shall want for nothing that the kindest woman could do or the bravest woman attempt.
"My heart leans hard on you, more even in weakness than in health, but don't for a moment think that I am lonely or forsaken. My faith is still that God is good and the Supporter of those who try to follow His guidance, however weakly and imperfectly. I quite expect to be writing much more brightly next month. Good-bye, my good girls, I know you will never forget me. God bless you."
Sarah Box, who was making a satisfactory recovery after her operation, gave the playmate of her childhood a very warm welcome, and, a few months later, on October 6th, 1899, she and Alfred were married. She made her cousin a splendid wife, interesting herself in all his pursuits and nursing him with tender care through several serious illnesses. The sisters had a beautiful home, and here Alfred had the great happiness of entertaining, not only his English relatives, but many of his New Zealand friends. Mr and Mrs Rolleston, Sir John Hall and his son, Mr Seddon and his wife and daughters, Mrs May and Mr Joseph Herrick, were all welcomed to Firgrove House by Sarah with as much hospitable warmth as if they had been her own particular lifelong friends. But the crowning joy of Alfred's five years in England was a long visit from his much loved son Edward. This son left England in March, 1903, to take up land in Africa, and Alfred wrote, after his departure:
"My neighbours here are all agog to form a company and go all together to start a settlement on a big piece
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of land in Africa, and, ridiculously weak and helpless as I am, I long to be at something of that sort too, and often go to Africa in my dreams."
Alfred's last year in England was a very sad one. It was found necessary for his wife to undergo another operation, and in November, 1903, he wrote:
"Sarah's operation was not successful. She may linger on for some time, they say, but I shall never again hear her light feet going cheerily about the house on their constant errands of love and mercy."
Some months afterwards, on June 30th, 1904, Alfred wrote:
"I have had no sleep for the last thirty hours and am still unable to sleep, so that you will expect nothing but a very poor letter from me to-day. The events of the past nine months have made me feel strongly what a blessing sudden death, with all its shock, is, compared to long protracted suffering, and the more lovely the sufferer the greater the pain to her loved ones. Our dear Sarah is dead. Although hope fluctuated as to the time she might be spared to us, there has never, since her operation, been the slightest hope that she could ever be restored to the enjoyment and usefulness of her valuable, beneficent life. Almost every day she seemed to lose the ability to do something for us that we had learned to expect, but her natural instinct to be thinking of other persons' troubles more than her own shone out so pathetically to the last."
