Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph / Extracted from her own Journal, and now first published

by Frances Chamberlaine Sheridan

I thank you, sir, thank you from my heart, for your friendship, and beg you will not think me ungrateful for having thus long deferred to pay you my acknowlegements for the signal favours I have received at your hands. I am sensible, Sir, that it was owing to your compassion, your generosity, and disinterested nobleness of mind, that I was once indebted for the greatest blessing of my life. To you I owe the vindicating of my suspected faith, and the being restored to the affection of my dear husband. For this goodness I have never ceased to bless and pray for you, and shall continue to do so while I live. But oh! Sir, while you have given me so much cause for gratitude and esteem, why will you leave one heart to sigh for your unkindness? a heart that admires, that loves, that adores you! a heart worthy of your acceptance, and which has a right to demand all your tenderness. Need I name the amiable possessor of this heart? I need not; there is but one woman in the world who owns this description: for her let me become an advocate; she has won me to her party: indeed. Sir, she, and she only, deserves your love. Her’s, I am sure, you have ever possessed unrivalled, though her youth, beauty, and charming accomplishments, must have made her the object of every one’s wishes who saw her. ’Tis above four years since you first won her virgin affections. What has been her portion since that fatal time? Tears, solitude, and unremitting anguish. How can a mind like yours, susceptible as it is of pity for the woes of others, condemn such a woman to perpetual sorrow? How can that generosity, which has been so active on other occasions, droop and languish where there is such a cause to call forth all its exertions?

Do, Mr Faulkland, permit pity to plead in your bosom for the dear Miss Burchell. I should urge paternal affection too; but to the voice of nature you cannot be deaf. Your sweet little son calls upon you to do him and his mother justice; the injured lady herself implores your compassion; my mother, who equally admires and loves her, intreats you; I, whom you once esteemed, conjure you; the secret monitor in your own soul must join in our sollicitations. Why, then, why will you shut your ears against the united voice of reason, of conscience, and of gratitude? You cannot, you will not do it. Miss Burchell’s merit and sufferings must be rewarded; and I shall bless Mr Faulkland as the guardian of the injured, the patron of the afflicted, the assertor of his own, as well as of my honour. This is the light, and this only, in which I shall rejoice to see him.

Mr Faulkland’s Answer

You do well, Madam, you do well to anticipate my suit; and, with so much cruel eloquence, to bid me despair. Yes, I see Miss Burchell has won you to her party; but what have I done to merit such a malevolent fate, that you, you of all created beings, should become her advocate? I little thought Mrs Arnold would make such a barbarous use of her power. Tell me, thou dear tyrant, how have I deserved this? Would it not have been kinder to have said at once, Faulkland, do not hope; I never will be yours; I hate, I despise you, and leave you to your fate? Oh! no; you are artful in your cruelty; you would prevent even my wishes, and cut off my hopes in their blossom, before they dare to unfold themselves to you.

But you have furnished me with weapons against yourself, and I will use them with as little mercy as you have shewn to me. If four years are past since I won Miss Burchell’s affections, is it not also as long that I have loved you with an ardor—Oh thou insensible! Were you not mine by your own consent, with your mother’s approbation? Was not the day, the hour fixed, that I was to have led you to the altar? Miss Burchell’s hopes were never raised to such a pitch as mine, when an avenging fiend snatched the promised blessing from my grasp. Think what were then my sufferings. I saw you afterwards in the arms of another. Miss Burchell never suffered such torture. Had I seen you happy, I might have been consoled. If Miss Burchell loved me as I have loved you, she would rejoice in the prospect of my felicity. I should have done so in your’s, Heaven is my witness! Had you been happy, I should not have thought myself miserable, though you were lost to my hopes.

Why do you compel me to urge an ungrateful truth in regard to Miss Burchell? Madam, she has no claim to my vows: my gratitude, my compassion, she has an ample right to, and she has them. More might by this time have been her’s, if I had never seen Mrs Arnold.

Remember, I do not yet desire permission to throw myself at your feet; I revere you too much to make such a request; but do not banish me your presence. I cannot always be proof against such rigours. Indulge me at least in the hope that time may do something in my favour. I will not desire you to tell me so; but do not forbid it. Lady Bidulph knows I respect her; but she is still obdurate. If she relented, would not you madam, do so too?

I am, &c.

How this man distresses me, my dear! What a difficult task have I undertaken! yet I will go through with it. I am fearful of letting Miss Burchell see his answer, so discouraging as it is for her; yet how can I withhold it from her sight? ’Tis necessary I should conceal nothing from her on this occasion; she confides in me, and I must not give her cause for suspicion. She has no right to his vows. This he always said. It is necessary the lady should be quite explicit with me. I doubt she has not been altogether sincere in what she has said to my mother on this subject. I shall see her presently, and discourse with her more particularly on this head than I have ever yet done....

I have had a conference with Miss Burchell, a long one, and in private; for I told my mother I wished to talk with her alone.