LETTER CXXXVII.139.
To Mrs. Temple, Pall Mall.
Silleri, May 20.
I confess the fact, my dear; I am, thanks to papa, amazingly learned, and all that, for a young lady of twenty-two: yet you will allow I am not the worse; no creature breathing would ever find it out: envy itself must confess, I talk of lace and blond like another christian woman.
I have been thinking, Lucy, as indeed my ideas are generally a little pindaric, how entertaining and improving would be the history of the human heart, if people spoke all the truth, and painted themselves as they really are: that is to say, if all the world were as sincere and honest as I am; for, upon my word, I have such a contempt for hypocrisy, that, upon the whole, I have always appeared to have fewer good qualities than I really have.
I am afraid we should find in the best characters, if we withdrew the veil, a mixture of errors and inconsistencies, which would greatly lessen our veneration.
Papa has been reading me a wise lecture, this morning, on playing the fool: I reminded him, that I was now arrived at years of indiscretion; that every body must have their day; and that those who did not play the fool young, ran a hazard of doing it when it would not half so well become them.
A propos to playing the fool, I am strongly inclined to believe I shall marry.
Fitzgerald is so astonishingly pressing—Besides, some how or other, I don’t feel happy without him: the creature has something of a magnetic virtue; I find myself generally, without knowing it, on the same side the room with him, and often in the next chair; and lay a thousand little schemes to be of the same party at cards.
I write pretty sentiments in my pocket-book, and carve his name on trees when nobody sees me: did you think it possible I could be such an ideot?
I am as absurd as even the gentle love-sick Emily.
I am thinking, my dear, how happy it is, since most human beings differ so extremely one from another, that heaven has given us the same variety in our tastes.
Your brother is a divine fellow, and yet there is a sauciness about Fitzgerald which pleases me better; as he has told me a thousand times, he thinks me infinitely more agreable than Emily.
Adieu! I am going to Quebec.
Yours,
A. Fermor.