The Princess Edward of Saxe-Weimar, sister of the Duke of Richmond, conveyed a request from Bessie to the Duke and Duchess of Teck, whose interest she hoped to enlist for the annual meeting of 1872. They were abroad in the spring, but the Duke returned in time to preside at the June meeting. Bessie never dropped any of the links in her chain, and her early life at Chichester had given her many valuable allies.
In her long days of enforced inactivity she would recall to mind visits to Goodwood, to Arundel, interest expressed and shown in the objects she had at heart, and would redouble her efforts to raise up friends for the blind.
Meantime there was a steady deterioration in her own physical condition.
The malady which had been making insidious progress for so long was degeneration of the spinal cord. The disease is one that generally owes its origin to accident or injury, but so far as could be ascertained Bessie had never met with either.
The physicians who attended her throughout the last years of her life inclined to the view that the poison in the blood left by scarlet fever was the cause not only of the condition of the throat, from which she suffered throughout her whole life (it will be remembered that she could only drink in sips), but also of this degeneration of the spinal cord.
Looking back, the members of her family recalled to mind that her powers of motion had not for many years been free and unimpeded. The significant entries in diary and letters, as to her moving and walking better, will not be forgotten. But the true cause of this had not been suspected, except by Dr. Little; for mischief to the spinal cord may be carried very far before there is any outward sign to manifest it. The power of motion and merely animal functions are affected by it; but intelligence remains alert and the brain power unaffected. The symptoms which accompany it are at first attributed to weakness, overwork, physical fatigue, any of which would be sufficient to account for them before the disease has reached the stage in which its true nature is unmistakably revealed. Mental trouble will often accelerate the progress of this malady, and occasion its more rapid development. This cause had also been at work.