The wounds that never heal

Henry Clay loses a daughter

Readers of this column know I consider the study of history a quest for understanding what it means to be human. How have men and women experienced the challenges of human existence? Is there such a thing as human nature? Is it constant or has it varied over the centuries and millennia?

There are few human challenges more universal than dealing with the death of a loved one. Those of us who are spared this trial are those who themselves die early, becoming the object of grief rather than the subject. Long life is judged a blessing, and so it is. But one of its drawbacks is the greater grief it exposes us to.

Henry Clay had a long life for his era. He was born in 1777 and died in 1852. He was one of the most distinguished men of his time, serving in Congress during the first six decades of the nineteenth century and guiding the country through three constitutional crises: over the admission of Missouri as a state in 1820-21, over South Carolina’s threat to leave the Union in 1832-33, and over California’s admission in 1850. No visitor’s tour of Washington was considered complete without a sighting of Henry Clay, ideally from the gallery of the Senate when his speaking mesmerized the chamber for hours at a time.

Clay experienced disappointment in his political career. Three times a candidate for president, three times he lost. He consoled himself by saying he would rather be right than president.

But there was no consoling him on the more painful and numerous losses he suffered by the deaths of his children. Clay and his wife, Lucretia, had eleven: six girls and five boys. Seven died before their parents did. Anne was the last living daughter, until December 1835. Henry Clay wrote to Lucretia as soon as he heard of her death.

Alas! my dear wife, the Great Destroyer has come, and taken from us our dear, dear, only daughter! My worst forebodings are realized. From the time of her confinement, seeing that she had been nervous and did not sleep well, I have had constant fears, anxieties and forebodings about her.

But on the day when I took leave of her—and she never looked upon me more sweetly or affectionately—she had passed the critical period. Still, I left home with strong apprehensions about her. They continued to write me that although occasionally ill, she was getting better.

Even yesterday evening, the first letter that I opened from the western mail assured me that she was much better and would be able in a week or two to accompany Mr. Irwin to New Orleans. But the next, of the same date, from Bishop Smith told me the fatal and melancholy fact.

I have prayed for this dear child; night and morning have I fervently prayed for her; but oh! my prayers have not been heard. If the thunderbolt of heaven had fallen on me—unprepared as I fear I am—I would have submitted, cheerfully submitted, to a thousand deaths to have saved this dear child. She was so good, so beloving and so beloved, so happy and so deserving to be happy. 

Then, she was the last of six dear daughters, most of them at periods of the greatest interest and hope taken from us. Ah! how inscrutable are the ways of providence! I feel that one of the strongest ties that bound me to earth is broken, forever broken. My heart will bleed as long as it palpitates. Never, never, can its wounds be healed.”

Henry Clay’s wounds never did heal. He suffered another when Henry Jr., his and Lucretia’s third son, died in battle in the war against Mexico.

Possibly human nature changes in other respects. But no parent who has lost a child, and no parent who has imagined losing a child, as all parents do imagine from time to time, won’t immediately recognize the feelings Henry Clay articulated almost two centuries ago. It’s hard to believe parents weren’t feeling this way twenty centuries ago. Or two hundred.