LETTER XXXVIII.38.
To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.
Quebec, Oct. 15, evening.
I am returned, my dear, and have had the pleasure of hearing you and my mother are well, though I have had no letters from either of you.
Mr. Temple, my dearest Lucy, tells me he has visited you. Will you pardon me a freedom which nothing but the most tender friendship can warrant, when I tell you that I would wish you to be as little acquainted with him as politeness allows? He is a most agreable man, perhaps too agreable, with a thousand amiable qualities; he is the man I love above all others; and, where women are not concerned, a man of the most unblemished honor: but his manner of life is extremely libertine, and his ideas of women unworthy the rest of his character; he knows not the perfections which adorn the valuable part of your sex, he is a stranger to your virtues, and incapable, at least I fear so, of that tender affection which alone can make an amiable woman happy. With all this, he is polite and attentive, and has a manner, which, without intending it, is calculated to deceive women into an opinion of his being attached when he is not: he has all the splendid virtues which command esteem; is noble, generous, disinterested, open, brave; and is the most dangerous man on earth to a woman of honor, who is unacquainted with the arts of man.
Do not however mistake me, my Lucy; I know him to be as incapable of forming improper designs on you, even were you not the sister of his friend, as you are of listening to him if he did: ’tis for your heart alone I am alarmed; he is formed to please; you are young and inexperienced, and have not yet loved; my anxiety for your peace makes me dread your loving a man whose views are not turned to marriage, and who is therefore incapable of returning properly the tenderness of a woman of honor.
I have seen my divine Emily: her manner of receiving me was very flattering; I cannot doubt her friendship for me; yet I am not absolutely content. I am however convinced, by the easy tranquillity of her air, and her manner of bearing this delay of their marriage, that she does not love the man for whom she is intended: she has been a victim to the avarice of her friends. I would fain hope—yet what have I to hope? If I had even the happiness to be agreable to her, if she was disengaged from Sir George, my fortune makes it impossible for me to marry her, without reducing her to indigence at home, or dooming her to be an exile in Canada for life. I dare not ask myself what I wish or intend: yet I give way in spite of me to the delight of seeing and conversing with her.
I must not look forward; I will only enjoy the present pleasure of believing myself one of the first in her esteem and friendship, and of shewing her all those little pleasing attentions so dear to a sensible heart; attentions in which her lover is astonishingly remiss: he is at Montreal, and I am told was gay and happy on his journey thither, though he left his mistress behind.
I have spent two very happy days at Silleri, with Emily and your friend Bell Fermor: to-morrow I meet them at the governor’s, where there is a very agreable assembly on Thursday evenings. Adieu!
Yours,
Ed. Rivers.
I shall write again by a ship which sails next week.