The letter which Richard Curran wrote to “M.” about his dead sister was printed by her twenty-three years after. In it was enclosed a fragment of Sarah’s own:—
“RADISH’S HOTEL, ST. JAMES’S STREET, “LONDON, _May 8, 1808_.
“MY DEAR MADAM: I know how heartily you’ll participate in the feelings with which I announce to you the death of your poor friend, my lamented Sarah. I would willingly spare myself this distressing office; but I cannot expose one whom she so loved to the risk of stumbling inadvertently in a public paper on a piece of intelligence so affecting.... I wish also to convey to you a testimony that her thoughts never strayed from you, and that to the hour of her death you were the object of her affection. The enclosed unfinished letter is the last she ever wrote. In it you will find a very mitigated statement of her sufferings. I can anticipate the satisfaction you will derive from the strong sense of religious impressions which marks her letters; and I at the same time congratulate and thank you for having cultivated in her the seeds of that consoling confidence which cheered her departing moments, and stripped death, if not of its anguish, yet of its greatest horrors. The hopes held out by her physicians were, alas! more humane than well-grounded: she expired at half-past five, on the morning of the 5th inst., of a rapid decline. To describe my sorrow would be but to write her eulogy. You know all the various qualities with which she was so eminently gifted, and the consequent pangs I must feel at so abrupt and calamitous a dispensation. I am now on my way, with her afflicted widower, accompanying her remains, which she wished to lie in her native land. I enclose you a lock of her hair; it was cut off after her death. Adieu, my dear madam. I make no apology for this melancholy intrusion, and I beg to assure you that one in whose acquirements and disposition she found so much that was kindred to her own, can never cease to be an object of most respectful esteem and attachment to a brother that loved her as I did.—I remain, your obliged friend and humble servant, RICHARD CURRAN.”
“MY DEAR M——: I suppose you do not know of my arrival from Sicily, or I should have heard from you. I must be very brief in my detail of the events which have proved so fatal to me, and which followed our departure from that country. A most dreadful and perilous passage occasioning me many frights, I was, on our entrance into the Channel, prematurely delivered of a boy, without any assistance save that of one of the soldiers’ wives, the only woman on board except myself. The storm being so high that no boat could stand out at sea, I was in imminent danger till twelve next day, when at the risk of his life a physician came on board from one of the other ships, and relieved me. The storm continued, and I got a brain fever, which, however, passed off. To be short: on landing at Portsmouth, the precious creature for whom I had suffered so much God took to Himself. The inexpressible anguish I felt at this event, preying on me, has occasioned the decay of my health. For the last month the contest between life and death has seemed doubtful; but this day, having called in a very clever man here, he seems not to think me in danger. My disorder is a total derangement of the nervous system, and its most dreadful effects I find in the attack on my mind and spirits. I suffer misery you cannot conceive. I am often seized with icy perspirations, trembling, and that indescribable horror which you must know, if you have ever had the fever. Write instantly to me. Alas, I want everything to soothe my mind. O my friend! would to Heaven you were with me: nothing so much as the presence of a dear female friend would tend to my recovery. But in England you know how I am situated: not one I know intimately. To make up for this, my beloved husband is everything to me. His conduct, throughout all my troubles, surpasses all praise. Write to me, dear M——, and tell me how to bear all these things. I have, truly speaking, cast all my care on the Lord; but ah, how our weak natures fail; every day, every hour, I may say. On board the ship, when all seemed adverse to hope, it is strange how an overstrained trust in certain words of our Saviour gave me such perfect faith in His help, that although my baby was visibly pining away, I never doubted his life for a moment. ‘He who gathers the lambs in His arms,’ I thought, would look down on mine, if I had faith in Him. This has often troubled me since——”