365.
To his Stepmother.
Bentinck Street, Jan. 7th, 1779.
Dear Madam,
You will pity rather than blame me when I tell you that all last week I have been a good deal indisposed. The changes of weather brought a severe cold, accompanied with some degree of fever. I was confined to my room several days, and the state of my spirits as well as that of my health would have rendered the effort of writing very painful to me. The effort would have been still more painful with regard to the subject of your two last letters. I feel your happiness so much connected with mine, that the account of your sentiments and situation must disturb the enjoyments and encrease the anxiety of my own life. I feel it the more deeply as I am sensible that it is not in my power to remove the two causes of your present uneasiness.
I know not how to offer advice, and I am incapable of giving any efficacious help. I have easily perceived in my successive visits to Bath that a dislike of the place, of public life, and of mixed Society was insensibly gaining ground in your mind: and as I know that our happiness must always depend on our opinions and habits, I never presumed to prescribe for the constitution of another. Business and pleasure, Society or no Society, town or country, have undoubtedly their respective merits, and every one must on those subjects think and judge and act for themselves. The gay hurry of Bath or the silent retirement of Mrs. Massey's in Essex may alike be enjoyed by the mind to which they are adapted, and the only advice which I could think of offering, would be, not to engage yourself rashly in a connection of which you might afterwards repent. I have always considered marriage as a very serious undertaking, and the agreement of any friends to live together in the same house is a sort of marriage. If they have passed several years in different modes of life, their manners, their opinions, their sentiments on almost every subject must have contracted a different colour, and every little circumstance of hours, &c., will prove the cause of mutual restraint or mutual dissatisfaction.
But I now find, what indeed I have sometimes feared, that your design of retiring from Bath is not entirely the effect of choice and inclination; that a stronger power, the power of necessity or at least of prudence, urges you to take that resolution, and that in a word you find the place too expensive. You do not explicitly say what income would support your present establishment, and I am not so stupid or so ungrateful as not to feel the generous delicacy of your behaviour. If my own circumstances were affluent, the obligations and friendship of twenty years would instantly prompt me to gratify my own inclinations in the performance of sacred duty. I am not insensible that in my present situation, you have a substantial and even legal claim upon me to a very considerable amount, and while I feel the value of your tenderness on this occasion, I must lament that it is not in my power to attain even the humble though indispensable virtue of Justice.
LESS INCOME THAN EXPENSES.
Without recurring to any recollections which would be painful to us both, I may appeal to the anxious regard which you have always felt and expressed for my interest. You know the distressed embarrassed situation in which my affairs were left, and though I have always been directed by the advice of Mr. H., I have hitherto been disappointed in every attempt to extricate myself by the sale of Lenborough Estate. The prospect of public affairs and the universal want of money forces me at present to suspend every idea of a sale, and all credit is so compleatly dead, that in the most pressing exigency I should be at a loss how to borrow a thousand pounds. In the mean time I have been paying five per Cent. interest on a Estate which hardly produced three per Cent.; and in the very moment when I could the least afford it, the madness of my Buriton tenant has involved me in new scenes of vexation and expence. My desires have always been moderate and my domestic economy has been conducted with tolerable prudence. Yet my income has never been quite adequate to my expences, and those expences, unless I retired from Parliament—from London and from England—it would be impossible for me to retrench. When I look back I cannot find much to censure or regret in my own conduct, but when I look forwards, I am sometimes alarmed and perplexed. I should indeed find room to despond, if my spirits were not supported by the resources which I derive from my litterary character, and by the well grounded hopes which I build on the assistance of a tried and powerful friend.
I cannot on this head explain myself more particularly by letter, but I have the strongest reasons to believe that the year which we have just begun will not end without producing a material improvement in my situation. If you have not already taken any decisive steps about leaving Bath, I could wish that you would suspend them till I can have the pleasure of conversing with you in the Easter holidays. If you still persist in your design, why should you bury yourself at Mrs. Massey's? Some pleasant village retirement at a moderate distance from London, where I could frequently visit you, might be consistent with your plan of expence, and you might there find yourself at once delivered from the costly and tasteless vanities of a fashionable life. Whatever resolution you adopt, let me hear from you soon, and always believe me with the most unalterable affection,
Ever yours,
E. G.
I can say nothing of public affairs. Men of all parties—Ministers themselves—think them bad enough; but I do assure you that I have not any claims to the injurious epithet of 'a Patriot.' The apprehension of a Dutch War, though it is now blown over, was real and serious.