O Heavens! your brother and Fitzgerald! I fly. The dear creatures! my life has been absolute vegetation since they absented themselves.
Adieu! my dear,
Your faithful
A. Fermor.
LETTER LVI.56.
To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.
Silleri, Jan. 24.
We have the same parties and amusements we used to have, my dear, but there is by no means the same spirit in them; constraint and dullness seem to have taken the place of that sweet vivacity and confidence which made our little society so pleasing: this odious man has infected us all; he seems rather a spy on our pleasures than a partaker of them; he is more an antidote to joy than a tall maiden aunt.
I wish he would go; I say spontaneously every time I see him, without considering I am impolite, “La! Sir George, when do you go to Montreal?” He reddens, and gives me a peevish answer; and I then, and not before, recollect how very impertinent the question is.
But pray, my dear, because he has no taste for social companionable life, has he therefore a right to damp the spirit of it in those that have? I intend to consult some learned casuist on this head.
He takes amazing pains to please in his way, is curled, powdered, perfumed, and exhibits every day in a new suit of embroidery; but with all this, has the mortification to see your brother please more in a plain coat. I am lazy. Adieu!
Yours, ever and ever,
A. Fermor.