But never yet was found deceit
Cou'd trick the Imagination.
With regard to her own compositions she writes in her Commonplace Book: "Grave verses have seldom, I think, dropt from my pen. Poor dear Jane Hamilton, afterwards Holman, used to say she was at a loss to decide whether the ground work of my character was seriousness embellished with gaiety; or a blythe, pleasant temper, shaded with very serious, and not seldom melancholy, reflexions."
The next letter, though undated, was evidently written before that dated 18th August, and within a few days of receiving Harriet Lee's verses.
I know not, my dear Girl, whether the great Dictionary is a good incentive to Love or no, but if agreable letters produce it the Gypsie prophecy towards you will not surely be long in completing. I never read any Book so interesting or entertaining, therefore recommend no Novels, but write again, and that directly....
Dear, lovely, sweet Siddons is better; and at last tolerably reconciled to parting with me for the relief of those whose anguish is of the soul, while hers, I thank God, is confined wholly to the beautiful clay that fits it so neatly with its truly well suited inclosure....
And now my beloved friends do not think me wanting in my duty about our Lorenzini; I never was remiss in bringing the subject forward, never lost sight on't but from thinking it prudent so to do; as Adriana says,
"It was a Copy of our Conference,
Alone it was the subject of our Theme,
In company I often glanc'd at it,
Still did I place it in his constant view."[4]
[4] Comedy of Errors, V. i, 62.
The verses I dispatched after them to Denbigh, which they cannot yet have reached, a proof I never shrunk one instant from the cause, and as this moment has brought me a cold, stiff letter from him, dated Shrewsbury,—this moment shall carry one back from me to tell him I think it such. Meantime you know I never said that it was likely he should marry in this manner unless from irresistible impulse; the obstacles I know to be all but, if not wholly insurmountable. Only my notion of his Love is stronger than yours can be, who have seen so little of him; and proportionable power will vanquish proportionable, or rather disproportionable resistance. If Gunpowder enough is put under Mont Blanc—it must give way. Such was my reasoning always, and I still think it just. The last evening he spent here, crying over Piozzi's Song, and applying every word on't, as I could see, mentally to his own situation; looking all the while like very Death, and never sleeping in the night, but employing himself in penning his Journal forsooth, which consisted only of tender sallies at the sight of the Bath Road; at thoughts of leaving Streatham; &c., till his very heart was breaking with passion, apparently increased instead of diminished by absence. Vindicate my hopes and even belief that he will relieve his anguish, when become totally insupportable, by a union which every natural friend he has in the world will certainly disapprove. As to the letters which he brought down to the Library in his hand the morning we left Streatham, they were letters he had himself written, not received: I suppose to say that he was resolved on remaining another year in England. They had, as he confes't, cost him even tortures to write them. O my sweet Sophy! I know most fatally from experience every pang that poor young man is feeling; yet I was an Englishwoman! of a country where no such aristocratic notions are acknowledged as taint his hotter soil; and yet three years did I languish in agony, absence, and lingering expectation. "If fortune," said he to me one day, (dancing to the tune in his own head, for I had not mentioned fortune,) "If fortune were the only obstacle, I hate it, I despise it; I have been offered fortunes enough, the first in Lombardy I may say; but I abhor them all." "One may see," was the reply, "you have no such mean notions." "My Father pleased himself," said he, "I made no objections. If people were generous! but——" "But what, my Lord?" quoth I. He put his handkerchief to his eyes, and changed the conversation. Who would have pressed him further to tell that which I know already, and which no power on earth can cure; the difference of Birth, Religion, and Country? If however he has but love enough, all those three things which would drown him if he tried to swim across, may be leaped over; and I, who have taken the jump before him, never cease to show him how well I feel myself after it. For the rest, he is now in bad company for our cause to be sure; but I shall have another sight of him at Shrewsbury, before he gets to Bath, and will send thither all the particulars....
Nuneham, Thurs. 18 Aug. 1791.
One more long letter, dearest Miss Weston, and then away to Shrewsbury, whither direct your next. This last has been just as long reaching Oxford, whence I almost see myself within five hours of you, as a letter yesterday received from Marquis Trotti at Wrexham, a place not less, surely, than 140 miles off. They make a mighty slow progress, which tires my spirits to follow; and seem exceedingly well amused, a thing I was not absolutely dying to hear. Meantime, what he has written, tho' cold, has pensive passages in it which keep my hopes alive; and 'tis not cold neither, but guarded. Now I tho't it my duty to keep Harriet ignorant of nothing I knew, and as I have told her every good and desirable symptom, so have I left in no doubt his present disposition, for the first letter I copied for her, and this last I enclosed.
Was there ever such a storm seen in England as this last dreadful one of the 15th? Our December lightning that frighted you so was nothing to it. Where was my poor Husband then, I wonder? Perhaps on Snowdon, incumber'd with a horse no less confounded than himself. We were all here much alarm'd indeed, though Mrs. Siddons has mended ever since, I think....
Now for more public concerns, of which your last letter but one gives me the best information. It does really appear, contrary to my predictions, that all Europe will joyn to re-instate a descendant of that House of Bourbon, which, when represented by his ancestor Louis Quatorze, all Europe united to humble: but this should be considered as justice, not caprice. That last mentioned Prince sought openly to seize the rights of others, while his wretched successor has been cruelly deprived of his own; and the world will not look on, it seems, while the Crown of France is trampled on, though none stir'd a step even when the Sacred head of an English monarch was sever'd from his body by the Democrats of that day.
Helena Williams is a courageous damsel, and will, I hope, never be a distressed one in consequence of that conduct, which, if anything happens but good to her, will be condemned as rashness; and if she returns safe will be applauded as curiosity after the great objects in life, while we are listening only to hear how go the small ones. I find that fierce doings are expected, and I am much delighted with your nine thousand men: 'tis an admirable anecdote of old Marshal Saxe, and to me a new one. It will, may be, divert you to hear that he married a Lady he did not much like, merely because her name was Victoria, and that when he died, one of the female French wits said, what a pity it was that no De Profundis should be said for him who had so often made France sing Te Deum. He was a Lutheran, you know.
You never sent me word you liked my Verses, and they were really ingenious ones too; did Harriet ever shew them to you? If much applause ensues, I shall be tempted to copy over some stanzas made for pretty Siddons's little red book, where she keeps everything yt has been ever said or sung in her praise, unprinted....
I expect a letter from my Travellers before I send this: meantime Heaven forefend that I should meet the Marquis at Shrewsbury. He will quit my Master at Denbigh, sure, and go thro' S. Wales to Bristol. Say everything that expresses esteem, love, and gratitude, to Mr. and Mrs. Whalley, and tell Miss Seward how valuable her health is even to me, who see so little of her: if she neglects it, she is doing public injury, and is worse than a Democrate....
French affairs, as reported in England at this juncture, were no doubt very confusing. The King's attempt to leave Paris in July had been frustrated, but he had been making overtures to most of the crowned heads in Europe, and intervention on the part of some of them must have appeared imminent.
It seems likely that Mrs. Piozzi made the acquaintance of Helen Maria Williams through their common friend, Dr. Moore. She was a girl of great natural ability, but of scanty education; for though born in London, she was brought up at Berwick-on-Tweed. She returned to town with her mother in 1781, being then about twenty years of age, bringing with her a romantic poem, "Edwin and Eltruda," which, like several subsequent works, met with considerable success. In 1788 she went with her mother to France, on a visit to a sister who had married a Swiss Protestant minister; and having enthusiastically adopted the principles of the Revolution, she made that country her home, and wrote a good deal on French politics, as will be noticed later. These proceedings, and her intimacy with J. H. Stone, who had been separated from his wife, provoked a good deal of hostile comment, both among her acquaintances, and in the papers like the Anti-Jacobin, of which she was not aware till much later. It was currently reported that she was living under Stone's protection, a view accepted in the Dictionary of National Biography. But it is not quite fair to judge her conduct solely on such ex-parte evidence, though perhaps it was all her biographer had to go upon. Her own letters, written to Mrs. Pennington, put a somewhat different complexion on the case. In the first of these, dated 2nd July 1803, she mentions that she is taking charge of the orphan children of her sister, who had died suddenly. She lives with her mother and another relative, Mrs. Persis Williams, whom she has never quitted for three days together since she left England, except for her journey to Switzerland, which was undertaken to save her neck. Stone procured her passport, but she travelled, not with him alone, as had been represented, but with three other gentlemen, one of whom was an English M.P., and on her arrival was placed under the charge of her brother-in-law's relatives. In 1811 she writes that her mother is dead, but that she is still living with Mrs. Persis Williams and her nephew. In another letter, dated 26th January 1819, after Stone's death, she mentions that his matrimonial troubles had begun before she knew him, and that it was his wife, "an odious woman," who provided herself with gallants in Paris, and then, seizing on the new Law of Divorce, "in spite of all our counsels," separated herself from her husband, who had by this time lost his fortune. After this they took Stone in, and he lived for twenty-five years as a member of the household.
HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS