Letter 366 To Miss Berry.
Berkeley Square, Friday, Feb. 4, 1791. (page 470)
Last post I sent you as cheerful a letter, as I could, to convince you that I was recovering. This will be less gay; not because I have had a little return in both arms, but because I have much more pain in my mind than in my limbs. I see and thank you all for the kindness of your intention; but, as it has the contrary effect from what you expect, I am forced, for my own peace, to beseech you not to continue a manoeuvre that only tantalizes and wounds me. In your last you put together many friendly words to give me hopes of your return; but can I be' so blind as not to see that they are vague words? Did you mean to return in autumn, Would you not say so? would the most artful arrangement of words be so kind as those few simple ones? In fact, I have for some time seen how little you mean it; and, for your sakes, I cease to desire it. The pleasure you expressed at seeing Florence again, forgive me for saying, is the joy of sight merely; for can a little Italian town, and wretched Italian company, and travelling English lads and governors, be comparable to the choice of the best company of so vast a capital as London, unless you have taken an aversion to England? And your renewed transports at a less and still more insipid town, Pisa! These plainly told me your thoughts, which vague words cannot efface. You then dropped that you could let your London house till next Christmas, and then talked of a visit to Switzerland, and since all this, Mrs. Damer has warned me not to expect YOU till next Spring. I shall not; nor do I expect that next spring. I have little expected this next! My dearest Madam, I allow all my folly and Unreasonableness, and give them up and abandon them totally. I have most impertinently and absurdly tried, for my own sake merely, to exact from two young ladies, above forty years younger than myself, a promise of sacrificing their rooted inclinations to my whims and satisfaction. But my eyes are opened, my reason is returned, I condemn myself; and I now make you but one request, which is, that, though I am convinced it would be with the most friendly and good-natured meaning possible, I do implore you not to try to help me to delude myself any more. You never know half the shock it gave me when I learned from Mr. Batt, what you had concealed from me, your fixed resolution of going abroad last October; and though I did in vain deprecate it,—your coming to Twickenham in September, which I know, and from my inmost soul believe, was from mere compassion and kindness to me,-yet it did aggravate my parting with you.
I would not repeat all this, but to prevail with you, While I do live, and while you do condescend to have any friendship for me, never to let me deceive myself. I have no right to inquire into your plans, views or designs; and never will question you more about them. I shall deserve to be deluded if I do; but what you do please to say to me, I beg may be frank. I am, in every light, too weak to stand disappointment ow: I cannot be disappointed. You have a firmness that nothing shakes; and, therefore, it would be unjust to betray your good-nature into any degree of insincerity. You do nothing that is not reasonable and right; and I am conscious that you bore a thousand times more from my self-love and vanity, than any other two persons but yourselves would have supported with patience so long. Be assured that what I say I think, feel, and mean; derange none of your plans for me. I now wish you take no one step but What is conformable to your views, interest and satisfaction. It would hurt me to interfere with them -. I reproach myself with having so ungenerously tried to lay you under any difficulties, and I approve your resolution in adhering steadily to your point. Two posts ago I hinted that I was weaning myself from the anxiety of an attachment to two persons that must have been so uneasy to them, and has ended so sorrowfully to myself but that anxiety I restrict solely to the desire of your return: my friendship, had I years to live, could not alter or be shaken; and there is no kind of proof or instance of it that I will not give you both while I have breath.
I have vented what I had at my heart, and feel relieved. Do not take ill a word I have said. Be assured I can love you as much as ever I did, and do; and though I am no longer so Unjust as to prefer my own satisfaction to yours. Here I drop the subject; before Tuesday, perhaps, I shall be able to talk on some other.
Monday, 7th.
Though the Parliament is met, and the town they say, full, I have not heard a tittle of news of any sort; and yet my prison is a coffeehouse in a morning, though I have been far from well this whole week. Yesterday and Saturday the gout was so painful in my right shoulder, that I could not stoop or turn round. To-day it is in my left elbow, and, I doubt, coming into my right foot: in short, it seems to be going its circle over again. I am not very sorry; sufferings reconcile one to parting with one's self.
One of our numerous tempests threw down Mrs. Damer's chimney last week, and it fell through her workshop; but fortunately touched none of her own works, and only broke two or three insignificant casts. I suppose you know she returns through Spain. This minute I have heard that Lord Lothian's daughter, Lady Mary St. John, and daughter-in-law of Lady Di Beauclerc, died yesterday, having been delivered of a fine boy but the day before. As you are curious to know the chief topic of conversation, it is the rival Opera-houses, neither of which are opened yet; both saying the other is fallen down. Taylor has published a pamphlet that does not prove that the Marquis(730) is the most upright Chamberlain that ever dropped from the skies, nor that the skies are quite true blue. Adieu! if no postscript tomorrow. None.
(730) of Salisbury.
Letter 367 To Miss Berry.
Berkeley Square, Feb. 12, 1791. (page 472)
I have received your two letters of January 17th and 24th with an account of your objects and plans; and the latter are very much what I expected, as before you receive this you will have seen by my last, No. 18. Indeed, you most kindly offer to break SO far into your plan, as to return at the beginning of next winter; but as that would, as you say, not only be a sacrifice, but risk your healths, can any thing upon earth be more impossible than for me to accept or consent to such a sacrifice? Were I even in love with one of you, could I agree to it? and, being only a most zealous friend, do you think I will hear of it? Should I be a friend at all, if I wished you, for my sake, to travel in winter over mountains, or risk the storms at sea, that I have not forgotten when you went away? Can I desire you to derange a reasonable plan of economy, that would put you quite at your ease at your return? Have I any pretensions for expecting, still less for asking, such or any sacrifices? Have I interested myself in your affairs only to embarrass them?