Death
By 1895, he was heavily addicted to opium and alcohol and moved back to Brighton to convalesce at his mother's house, Withdeane Hall, on the London Road, where he seems to have spent a lot of time in his room with the curtains drawn, burning candles in front of images of Buddha and the poet Shelley. He died during a drunken argument with his stepfather, Sir Francis Mowatt, then Permanent Secretary of the Treasury. Stenbock was waving a poker and toppled over and killed himself on the fireplace.
He was buried at the Brighton Catholic Cemetery on May 1 "in the presence" (said the Brighton Examiner) "of a large number of relatives and friends". Before burial the heart was extracted and sent to Estonia, where it was placed among the Stenbock monuments in the church at Kusal. It was preserved in some fluid in a glass urn in a cupboard built into the wall of the church. At the time of his death, it was reported that his uncle and heir, far away in Esbia, saw an apparition of his tear-stained face at his study window.
Read more about this topic: Eric Stenbock
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“And anyone is free to condemn me to death
If he leaves it to nature to carry out the sentence.
I shall will to the common stock of air my breath
And pay a death tax of fairly polite repentance.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“and so this tree—
Oh, that such our death may be!—
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again:
From which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved guitar;”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)