DEC: 30: 1892 My Darling Mary, / I cannot tell / you how thankful I am for your / letter of this morning - letting / me know that I may write to / you freely, and that your heart / has not closed its doors to others / because one of your dearest / has gone. I sent on all / you said to Margaret, & I / know that she will feel for / you with every fibre. She was / here last night, and I told her / I had heard of your loss, and / she was greatly troubled, The / whole news is very serious. / The details of the illness / must be full of care & anx- / iety, and I beg you to let me / know in some way how the / children and their maid go on. / Dear, up till now I / have felt that I was / more learned than you in the / school of sorrow & of life's ex- / perience of disappointment - / but now I feel that you are / wiser than I. Hitherto - death / has seldom touched me near- / by - the babe I lost went / from me before I was clear / enough from the delirium of / fever to realise anything - / I think of you almost with / awe, as having felt pain / that I do not know. ? It's / so true that the mere passage / of time is nothing - at this mo- / ment & in this experience you / are my elder. Yet, such / a trouble is not strange to the / imagination of anyone who has / thought at all, and I feel as / if I understood much of what you / must be passing through. It is a / thing that is always at the door, / and it is no use pretending to ig- / nore it. There is the keen / human pain, almost the animal, / of the lost delight of what we / love - and there is the awful / opening of the gate into a new / life. The old words of submission / of the "will of God" have fine- / ness & beauty in them - but a / new ? has come into the world / that his will is fulfillment & / not destruction of life, and we / can no longer bow blindly / to the stroke as a means for / the development of our own souls. / We recognise each untimely / death as the result of some / violation of the law of life, / whilst a timely death appears / completion and not loss. Your / little lamb breathed in some poison. - / one infection and his feebler powers / failed before it - so may I do / tomorrow - it is not chance, / nor, I believe, is the shortening / of any human life the sudden / exercise of divine power but / only obedience to fixed law. / When we realise this complete, / we shall strive to obey / the laws of nature as we dis- / cover them, and we shall live / out our span of life more / often than is done now. / Meanwhile there is the sorrow / of such loss as yours, and it is / as fresh every time as if it had / never been before. I dare not / trust myself to say to you the / things I think of about it - / the only comfort I can find / or can offer to you is in the / certainty that the power which / clothed that sweet little soul / with a human body will never / leave it unprotected. / The old religious / words are true, but not all / the meanings that have been / given to them. Dearest, he who / has so strangely made us / will give us strength - he does / not fail us. - the infinite / tenderness of the thought that a / little child opens & goes through / that mysterious door, leaving / the older & wiser to wait / behind! Never think of him / as lonely, dear, there is but / a handful of us on this ?- / earth compared with those / who have passed over the / river. His memory as a "holy / innocent" will never be dimmed / in your heart - he will never / vex you or you him. May / the others live and comfort you, / and yet no one of them will / take his place. Do what you / can to guard your own health / which is too fragile just now. / Your own soul will tell you / that there is many a bitterer / trouble in life, but now can / be more piercingly tender / than this. Yes, your grief / will be your mother's, as / well as all that she will / feel to be her own loss - but / I am glad you are with her. / What a new bond between you / and her, between you and your / husband. / My Mary darling you / will read between these stam- / mering lines the deep and warm / love and sympathy I have for / you. I cannot talk to you / in the usual way - I do not / think as I once did, but / into God's hands I commit / my own spirit and the spir- / its of those I love both in / life and death, without fear, / Your faithful and loving / Georgie