LETTER CI.101.
To Mrs. Temple, Pall Mall.
Silleri, March 25.
Your brother, my dear Lucy, has made me happy in communicating to me the account he has received of your marriage. I know Temple; he is, besides being very handsome, a fine, sprightly, agreable fellow, and is particularly formed to keep a woman’s mind in that kind of play, that gentle agitation, which will for ever secure her affection.
He has in my opinion just as much coquetry as is necessary to prevent marriage from degenerating into that sleepy kind of existence, which to minds of the awakened turn of yours and mine would be insupportable.
He has also a fine fortune, which I hold to be a pretty enough ingredient in marriage.
In short, he is just such a man, upon the whole, as I should have chose for myself.
Make my congratulations to the dear man, and tell him, if he is not the happiest man in the world, he will forfeit all his pretensions to taste; and if he does not make you the happiest woman, he forfeits all title to my favor, as well as to the favor of the whole sex.
I meant to say something civil; but, to tell you the truth, I am not en train; I am excessively out of humor: Fitzgerald has not been here of several days, but spends his whole time in gallanting Madame La Brosse, a woman to whom he knows I have an aversion, and who has nothing but a tolerable complexion and a modest assurance to recommend her.
I certainly gave him some provocation, but this is too much: however, ’tis very well; I don’t think I shall break my heart, though my vanity is a little piqued. I may perhaps live to take my revenge.
I am hurt, because I began really to like the creature; a secret however to which he is happily a stranger. I shall see him to-morrow at the governor’s, and suppose he will be in his penitentials: I have some doubt whether I shall let him dance with me; yet it would look so particular to refuse him, that I believe I shall do him the honor.
Adieu!
Your affectionate
A. Fermor.
26th, Thursday, 11 at night.
No, Lucy, if I forgive him this, I have lost all the free spirit of woman; he had the insolence to dance with Madame La Brosse to-night at the governor’s. I never will forgive him. There are men perhaps quite his equal!equals!—but ’tis no matter—I do him too much honor to be piqued—yet on the footing we were—I could not have believed—
Adieu!
I was so certain he would have danced with me, that I refused Colonel H——, one of the most agreable men in the place, and therefore could not dance at all. Nothing hurt me so much as the impertinent looks of the women; I could cry for vexation.
Would your brother have behaved thus to Emily? but why do I name other men with your brother! do you know he and Emily had the good-nature to refuse to dance, that my sitting still might be the less taken notice of? We all played at cards, and Rivers contrived to be of my party, by which he would have won Emily’s heart if he had not had it before.
Good night.