Quebec, Oct. 14.
I am this moment arrived from a ramble down the river; but, a ship being just going, must acknowledge your last.
You make me happy in telling me my dear Lady H—— has given my place in her heart to so honest a fellow as Jack Willmott; and I sincerely wish the ladies always chose their favorites as well.
I should be very unreasonable indeed to expect constancy at almost four thousand miles distance, especially when the prospect of my return is so very uncertain.
My voyage ought undoubtedly to be considered as an abdication: I am to all intents and purposes dead in law as a lover; and the lady has a right to consider her heart as vacant, and to proceed to a new election.
I claim no more than a share in her esteem and remembrance, which I dare say I shall never want.
That I have amused myself a little in the dowager way, I am very far from denying; but you will observe, it was less from taste than the principle of doing as little mischief as possible in my few excursions to the world of gallantry. A little deviation from the exact rule of right we men all allow ourselves in love affairs; but I was willing to keep as near it as I could. Married women are, on my principles, forbidden fruit; I abhor the seduction of innocence; I am too delicate, and (with all my modesty) too vain, to be pleased with venal beauty: what was I then to do, with a heart too active to be absolutely at rest, and which had not met with it’sits counterpart? Widows were, I thought, fair prey, as being sufficiently experienced to take care of themselves.
I have said married women are, on my principles, forbidden fruit: I should have explained myself; I mean in England, for my ideas on this head change as soon as I land at Calais.
Such is the amazing force of local prejudice, that I do not recollect having ever made love to an English married woman, or a French unmarried one. Marriages in France being made by the parents, and therefore generally without inclination on either side, gallantry seems to be a tacit condition, though not absolutely expressed in the contract.
But to return to my plan: I think it an excellent one; and would recommend it to all those young men about town, who, like me, find in their hearts the necessity of loving, before they meet with an object capable of fixing them for life.