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Read Ebook: John Forster By One of His Friends by Fitzgerald Percy
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Ebook has 58 lines and 24185 words, and 2 pages
Once, on a Sunday in Dublin, I brought Forster to the cathedral in Marlborough Street to hear the High Mass, at which Cardinal Cullen officiated. He sat it out very patiently, and I remember on coming out drew a deep sigh, or gasp, with the remark, "Well, I suppose it's all right."
The faithful Quain was with his friend to the last moment. Poor Forster was being gradually overpowered by the rising bronchial humours with which, as he grew weaker, he could not struggle with or baffle. It was then that Quain, bending over, procured him a short reprieve and relief in his agony, putting his fingers down his throat and clearing away the impeding masses.
Once, when he and his family were staying close to Ipswich, I asked him to order me a photograph of the Great White Horse Inn, noted as the scene of Mr. Pickwick's adventure, and to my pleasure and astonishment found that he had commissioned an artist to prepare a whole series of large photographs depicting the old inn, both without and within, and from every point of view. In this handsome way he would oblige his friends. He was in immense demand as a cheerful diner out.
I was amused by a cynical appreciation of a friend and patient of his, uttered shortly after his death. We had met and were lamenting his loss. "Nothing, nobody can fill his place," he said.--"It is sad to lose such a friend."--"Indeed it is," said my companion, "I don't know what I shall do. No one else ever understood my constitution. I really don't know whom I am to go to now"--and he went his way in a pettish mood, as though his physician had rather shabbily deserted him. Alas, is there not much of this when one of these pleasant "specialists" departs?
His faithful devotion to his old friend Forster during that long illness was unflagging. He could not cure, but he did all that was possible by his unwearying attention to alleviate. How often have I found the red chariot waiting at the door, or when I was sitting with him would the door open and the grave manservant announce "Sir Rich-hard QUAIN." His talk, gossip, news, was part of the alleviation.
After all that must have been an almost joyous moment that brought poor Forster his release from those awful and intolerable days and nights of agony, borne with a fortitude of which the world had no conception. Eternal frightful spasms of coughing day and night, together with other maladies of the most serious kind. And yet, on the slightest respite, this man of wonderful fortitude would turn gay and festive, recover his spirits, and look forward to some enjoyment, a dinner it might be, where he was the old Forster once more, smiling enticingly on his favourite ladies, and unflinchingly prepared to go back to the night of horrors that awaited him!
Mrs. Forster, as her friends knew well, was one of the sweetest women "under the sun," a sweetness brought out by contrast with the obstreperous ways of her tempestuous mate. Often when something went wrong, rather did not go with the almost ideal smoothness at one of his many banquets , it was piteous to see her trying to smooth away the incident with the certainty of inflaming the dictator, and turning his wrath upon herself.
Such was John Forster.
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