He remained a Whig, however, and two years later received
appointment to the post of Consul-General at Lisbon.
Its duties were not arduous, and allowed him to cross
the Atlantic half a dozen times with Lady Vyell and
revisit Eagles, where Miss Quiney held faithful stewardship.
He never completely recovered his health. The
pressure under which he had lain during those three
terrible hours had left him with some slight curvature
of the spine. It increased, and ended in a constriction
of the lungs, bringing on a slow decline. In
1767 he again retired to Bath, where next year he
died, aged fifty-one years. His epitaph on the
wall of the Abbey nave runs as follows:—
“To the memory of Sir Oliver
Hastings Pelham Vyell of Carwithiel, Co.
Cornwall, Baronet, Consul-General for many years
at Lisbon, whence he came in hopes of Recovery from
a Bad State of Health to Bath. Here, after
a tedious and painful illness, sustained with
the Patience and Resignation becoming to a Christian,
he died Jan. 11, 1768, in the Fifty-second Year of
his Life, without Heir. This Monument is erected
by his affectionate Widow, Ruth Lady Vyell.”
Ruth Lady Vyell stood in the empty minster beneath
her husband’s epitaph, and conned it, puckering
her brow slightly in the effort to keep her thoughts
collected.
She had not set eyes on the tablet since the day the
stonemasons had fixed it in place; and that was close
upon eight years ago. On the morrow, her pious
duty fulfilled, she had taken post for Plymouth, there
to embark for America; and the intervening years had
been lived in widowhood at Eagles until the outbreak
of the Revolution had forced her, early in 1775, to
take shelter in Boston, and in the late fall of the
year to sail back to England. For Eagles, though
unravaged, had passed into the hands of the “rebels”;
and Ruth, though an ardent loyalist, kept her old
clearness of vision, and foresaw that King George
could not beat his Colonists; that the stars in their
courses fought against this stupid monarch.
This pilgrimage to Bath had been her first devoir
on reaching England. She had nursed him tenderly
through his last illness, as she had been in all respects
an exemplary wife. Yet, standing beneath his
monument, she felt herself an impostor. She could
find here no true memories of the man whose look had
swayed her soul, whose love she had served with rites
a woman never forgets. This city of Bath did
not hold the true dust of her lord and love.
He had perished—though sinning against her,
what mattered it?—years ago, under a fallen
pillar in a street of Lisbon. Doubtless the site
had been built over; it would be hard to find now,
so actively had the Marquis de Pombal, Portugal’s
First Minister, renovated the ruined city. But
whether discoverable or not, there and not here was
written the last of Oliver Vyell.
