SPRINGFIELD, NEWNHAM, CAMBRIDGE, _30th March 1870_.
MY DEAR MISS GILBERT--I hope you will permit me to write you a few lines on the subject which I hear from many quarters has caused you much additional sorrow in regard to the death of our dear father in God. I mean your absence from Chichester during the last fortnight of his life. I really do not know that you should regret it: because it was really of God's appointment: you were engaged over your work for Him: your sisters over their work for Him: your dear father over his work for Him: each and all to the best of your powers, and why should you repine if it pleased God to remove him so quietly, so gently, so lovingly, without telling you beforehand that He was going thus to take him? May you not rejoice rather that his last days of consciousness were filled with thoughts that you were able to go on with that work in which he took so deep an interest, that some have thought that the best memorial of the love of the diocese to him would be an effort to strengthen your hands in that work? Of course I have often thought of the way in which my dearest father and dearest mother were taken away from me. I was absent from both: but I could not regret my absence. Mrs. Swainson was present at the removal of both her parents: but was not all this of God's appointment? When we ask Him to guide us day by day, may we not leave it to Him how He guides us? I am sure you will excuse me writing thus: the loss is indescribable, the centre of your earthly affections removed: on this I need not speak. But I feel sure that you need not and you should not take any blame to yourself, because your work carried you away at the time when God, who so arranged it, was pleased to call your father home.--Believe me to be, my dear Miss Gilbert, ever yours very truly, C. A. SWAINSON.
The Bishop of Rochester wrote, "His course, ever since he has been a bishop, has been so straightforward, so true, that he has won everybody's admiration and respect."
These and other tributes Bessie preserved and treasured. They helped her, and after a time they comforted her. In May we have one of the first letters written by her own hand, and speaking of her own feelings. It is addressed to a dear friend of the early Oxford days.
