[
194]
for if your time allows of a little delay, I would wait a little in hopes of being rather more free from violent pain.
Believe me, dear sir, yours sincerely,
I have been very ill for the last month.
To this,
Mr. Garrison replied that he hesitated to intrude on her in her invalid condition; but she quickly responded: “However unwell, I would not on any account not see you,”
Ms.
June 24. and she requested him to come to luncheon at Chiswick House, and sent her carriage for him and his
1 children.
She was still too unwell to leave her room, and the
Duke and
Duchess of
Argyll and
Marquis of
Lorne entertained her guests at luncheon, and did the honors of the house.
Mr. Garrison was ushered without delay into the chamber of the
Duchess, by her daughter, and welcomed with great warmth and feeling.
She made him bring his children in to see her, after luncheon, and when the house, with its treasures of art, its rooms in which
Fox and
Canning had died, and its beautiful grounds with their superb cedars of
Lebanon, had been shown them by their attentive hosts, and they were about to return to the city,
Mr. Garrison was again taken to his staunch friend for the parting which was final for this life.
The
Duchess died in the following year.
2
Under the escort of
Mr. F. W. Chesson (
Mr. Thompson's son-in-law),
Mr. Garrison visited the House of Commons,
3 and was introduced to John Stuart Mill and
James Stansfeld, Jr., the latter the son-in-law of his old friend,
Wm. H. Ashurst; and at Stansfeld's house, a few evenings later,
4 he renewed with delight his acquaintance with
Joseph Mazzini.
‘Of course,’ he afterwards wrote,
a quarter of a century5 makes perceptible changes in us all—changes which are rendered the more striking by a separation for so long a term.
But Mazzini's altered appearance affected me sadly.
There were, indeed, the same finely shaped head; the same dark, lustrous eyes; the same classical features; the same grand intellect; the same lofty and indomitable spirit; the same combination of