You show so plain you strive to kill.'"
"3rd June, 1781.—Well! here have I, with the grace of God and the assistance of good friends, completed—I really think very happily—the greatest event of my life. I have sold my brewhouse to Barclay, the rich Quaker, for 135,000l., to be in four years' time paid. I have by this bargain purchased peace and a stable fortune, restoration to my original rank in life, and a situation undisturbed by commercial jargon, unpolluted by commercial frauds, undisgraced by commercial connections. They who succeed me in the house have purchased the power of being rich beyond the wish of rapacity[1], and I have procured the improbability of being made poor by flights of the fairy, speculation. 'Tis thus that a woman and men of feminine minds always—I speak popularly—decide upon life, and chuse certain mediocrity before probable superiority; while, as Eton Graham says sublimely,—
"'Nobler souls,
Fir'd with the tedious and disrelish'd good,
Seek their employment in acknowledg'd ill,
Danger, and toil, and pain.'
"On this principle partly, and partly on worse, was dear Mr. Johnson something unwilling—but not much at last—to give up a trade by which in some years 15,000l. or 16,000l. had undoubtedly been got, but by which, in some years, its possessor had suffered agonies of terror and tottered twice upon the verge of bankruptcy. Well! if thy own conscience acquit, who shall condemn thee? Not, I hope, the future husbands of our daughters, though I should think it likely enough; however, as Johnson says very judiciously, they must either think right or wrong: if they think right, let us now think with them; if wrong, let us never care what they think. So adieu to brewhouse, and borough wintering; adieu to trade, and tradesmen's frigid approbation; may virtue and wisdom sanctify our contract, and make buyer and seller happy in the bargain!"
[1] There is a curious similarity here to Johnson's phrase, "the potentiality of becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice."
After mentioning some friends who disapproved of the sale, she adds: "Mrs. Montagu has sent me her approbation in a letter exceedingly affectionate and polite. 'Tis over now, tho', and I'll clear my head of it and all that belongs to it; I will go to church, give God thanks, receive the sacrament and forget the frauds, follies, and inconveniences of a commercial life this day."
Madame D'Arblay was at Streatham on the day of the sale, and gives a dramatic colour to the ensuing scene: