LETTER CLI.155.
To Mrs. Temple, Pall Mall.
Silleri, June 10, Evening.
My poor Rivers! I think I felt more from his going than even from Emily’s: whilst he was here, I seemed not quite to have lost her: I now feel doubly the loss of both.
He begged me to shew attention to Madame Des Roches, who he assured me merited my tenderest friendship; he wrote to her, and has left the letter open in my care: it is to thank her, in the most affectionate terms, for her politeness and friendship, as well to himself as to his Emily; and to offer her his best services in England in regard to her estate, part of which some people here have very ungenerously applied for a grant of, on pretence of its not being all settled according to the original conditions.
He owned to me, he felt some regret at leaving this amiable woman in Canada, and at the idea of never seeing her more.
I love him for this sensibility; and for his delicate attention to one whose disinterested affection for him most certainly deserves it.
Fitzgerald is below, he does all possible to console me for the loss of my friends; but indeed, Lucy, I feel their absence most severely.
I have an opportunity of sending your brother’s letter to Madame Des Roches, which I must not lose, as they are not very frequent: ’tis by a French gentleman who is now with my father.
Adieu! your faithful,
A. Fermor.
Twelve at night.
We have been talking of your brother; I have been saying, there is nothing I so much admire in him as that tenderness of soul, and almost female sensibility, which is so uncommon in a sex, whose whole education tends to harden their hearts.
Fitzgerald admires his spirit, his understanding, his generosity, his courage, the warmth of his friendship.
My father his knowledge of the world; not that indiscriminate suspicion of mankind which is falsely so called; but that clearness of mental sight, and discerning faculty, which can distinguish virtue as well as vice, wherever it resides.
“I also love in him,” said my father, “that noble sincerity, that integrity of character, which is the foundation of all the virtues.”
“And yet, my dear papa, you would have had Emily prefer to him, that white curd of asses milk, Sir George Clayton, whose highest claim to virtue is the constitutional absence of vice, and who never knew what it was to feel for the sorrows of another.”
“You mistake, Bell: such a preference was impossible; but she was engaged to Sir George; and he had also a fine fortune. Now, in these degenerate days, my dear, people must eat; we have lost all taste for the airy food of romances, when ladies rode behind their enamored knights, dined luxuriously on a banquet of haws, and quenched their thirst at the first stream.”
“But, my dear papa—”
“But my dear Bell—”
I saw the sweet old man look angry, so chose to drop the subject; but I do aver, now he is out of sight, that haws and a pillion, with such a noble fellow as your brother, are preferable to ortolans and a coach and six, with such a piece of still life and insipidity as Sir George.
Good night! my dear Lucy.