While in Japan, Parkes's wife became known, in 1867, as the first non-Japanese woman to ascend Mount Fuji. She fell ill and died in London in November 1879 while making preparations for her family to come home. Although he was summoned urgently by telegraph, Parkes did not manage to reach London until four days after her death. He wrote to Frederick Victor Dickins, "She hoped to the last that I should have reached in time. I have now six children to take charge of, and feebly indeed shall I replace her in that charge, while the Legation will have lost that bright and good spirit to which it owed whatever attention it possessed."