Memoirs of Emma Courtney

by Mary Hays

'Your narrative leaves me full of admiration for your qualities, and compassion for your insanity.

'I entreat however your attention to the following passage, extracted from your papers. "After considering all I have urged, you may perhaps reply, that the subject is too nice, and too subtle, for reasoning, and that the heart is not to be compelled. This, I think, is a mistake. There is no topic, in fact, that may not be subjected to the laws of investigation and reasoning. What is it we desire? pleasure, happiness. What! the pleasure of an instant, only; or that which is more solid and permanent? I allow, pleasure is the supreme good! but it may be analysed. To this analysis I now call you."

'Could I, if I had studied for years, invent a comment on your story, more salutary to your sorrows, more immoveable in its foundation, more clearly expressed, or more irresistibly convincing to every rational mind?

'How few real, substantial, misfortunes there are in the world! how few calamities, the sting of which does not depend upon our cherishing the viper in our bosom, and applying the aspic to our veins! The general pursuit of all men, we are frequently told, is happiness. I have often been tempted to think, on the contrary, that the general pursuit is misery. It is true, men do not recognize it by its genuine appellation; they content themselves with the pitiful expedient of assigning it a new denomination. But, if their professed purpose were misery, could they be more skilful and ingenious in the pursuit?

'Look through your whole life. To speak from your own description, was there ever a life, in its present period, less chequered with substantial bona fide misfortune? The whole force of every thing which looks like a misfortune was assiduously, unintermittedly, provided by yourself. You nursed in yourself a passion, which, taken in the degree in which you experienced it, is the unnatural and odious invention of a distempered civilization, and which in almost all instances generates an immense overbalance of excruciating misery. Your conduct will scarcely admit of any other denomination than moon-struck madness, hunting after torture. You addressed a man impenetrable as a rock, and the smallest glimpse of sober reflection, and common sense, would have taught you instantly to have given up the pursuit.

'I know you will tell me, and you will tell yourself, a great deal about constitution, early association, and the indissoluble chain of habits and sentiments. But I answer with small fear of being erroneous, "It is a mistake to suppose, that the heart is not to be compelled. There is no topic, in fact, that may not be subjected to the laws of investigation and reasoning. Pleasure, happiness, is the supreme good; and happiness is susceptible of being analysed." I grant, that the state of a human mind cannot be changed at once; but, had you worshipped at the altar of reason but half as assiduously as you have sacrificed at the shrine of illusion, your present happiness would have been as enviable, as your present distress is worthy of compassion. If men would but take the trouble to ask themselves, once every day, Why should I be miserable? how many, to whom life is a burthen, would become chearful and contented.

'Make a catalogue of all the real evils of human life; bodily pain, compulsory solitude, severe corporal labour, in a word, all those causes which deprive us of health, or the means of spending our time in animated, various, and rational pursuits. Aye, these are real evils! But I should be ashamed of putting disappointed love into my enumeration. Evils of this sort are the brood of folly begotten upon fastidious indolence. They shrink into non-entity, when touched by the wand of truth.

'The first lesson of enlightened reason, the great fountain of heroism and virtue, the principle by which alone man can become what man is capable of being, is independence. May every power that is favourable to integrity, to honour, defend me from leaning upon another for support! I will use the word, I will use my fellow men, but I will not abuse these invaluable benefits of the system of nature. I will not be weak and criminal enough, to make my peace depend upon the precarious thread of another's life or another's pleasure. I will judge for myself; I will draw my support from myself—the support of my existence and the support of my happiness. The system of nature has perhaps made me dependent for the means of existence and happiness upon my fellow men taken collectively; but nothing but my own folly can make me dependent upon individuals. Will these principles prevent me from admiring, esteeming, and loving such as are worthy to excite these emotions? Can I not have a mind to understand, and a heart to feel excellence, without first parting with the fairest attribute of my nature?

'You boast of your sincerity and frankness. You have doubtless some reason for your boast—Yet all your misfortunes seem to have arisen from concealment. You brooded over your emotions, and considered them as a sacred deposit—You have written to me, I have seen you frequently, during the whole of this transaction, without ever having received the slightest hint of it, yet, if I be a fit counsellor now, I was a fit counsellor then; your folly was so gross, that, if it had been exposed to the light of day, it could not have subsisted for a moment. Even now you suppress the name of your hero: yet, unless I know how much of a hero and a model of excellence he would appear in my eyes, I can be but a very imperfect judge of the affair.

'—— Francis.'

---

CHAPTER XII

To the remonstrance of my friend, which roused me from the languor into which I was sinking, I immediately replied—

TO MR FRANCIS.

'You retort upon me my own arguments, and you have cause. I felt a ray of conviction dart upon my mind, even, while I wrote them. But what then?—"I seemed to be in a state, in which reason had no power; I felt as if I could coolly survey the several arguments of the case—perceive, that they had prudence, truth, and common sense on their side—And then answer—I am under the guidance of a director more energetic than you!"[¹⁷] I am affected by your kindness—I am affected by your letter. I could weep over it, bitter tears of conviction and remorse. But argue with the wretch infected with the plague—will it stop the tide of blood, that is rapidly carrying its contagion to the heart? I blush! I shed burning tears! But I am still desolate and wretched! And how am I to stop it? The force which you impute to my reasoning was the powerful frenzy of a high delirium.

'What does it signify whether, abstractedly considered, a misfortune be worthy of the names real and substantial, if the consequences produced are the same? That which embitters all my life, that which stops the genial current of health and peace is, whatever be its nature, a real calamity to me. There is no end to this reasoning—what individual can limit the desires of another? The necessaries of the civilized man are whimsical superfluities in the eye of the savage. Are we, or are we not (as you have taught me) the creatures of sensation and circumstance?

'I agree with you—and the more I look into society, the deeper I feel the soul-sickening conviction—"The general pursuit is misery"—necessarily—excruciating misery, from the source to which you justly ascribe it—"The unnatural and odious inventions of a distempered civilization." I am content, you may perceive, to recognize things by their genuine appellation. I am, at least, a reasoning maniac: perhaps the most dangerous species of insanity. But while the source continues troubled, why expect the streams to run pure?

'You know I will tell you—"about the indissoluble chains of association and habit:" and you attack me again with my own weapons! Alas! while I confess their impotence, with what consistency do I accuse the flinty, impenetrable, heart, I so earnestly sought, in vain, to move? What materials does this stubborn mechanism of the mind offer to the wise and benevolent legislator!

'Had I, you tell me, "worshipped at the altar of reason, but half as assiduously as I have sacrificed at the shrine of illusion, my happiness might have been enviable." But do you not perceive, that my reason was the auxiliary of my passion, or rather my passion the generative principle of my reason? Had not these contradictions, these oppositions, roused the energy of my mind, I might have domesticated, tamely, in the lap of indolence and apathy.

'I do ask myself, every day—"Why should I be miserable?"—and I answer, "Because the strong, predominant, sentiment of my soul, close twisted with all its cherished associations, has been rudely torn away, and the blood flows from the lacerated wound. You would be ashamed of placing disappointed love in your enumeration of evils! Gray was not ashamed of this—

'And pining love shall waste their youth,

And jealousy, with rankling tooth,

That inly gnaws the secret heart!'

——

'These shall the stings of falsehood try,

And hard unkindness' alter'd eye,

That mocks the tear it forc'd to flow.'"

'Is it possible that you can be insensible of all the mighty mischiefs which have been caused by this passion—of the great events and changes of society, to which it has operated as a powerful, though secret, spring? That Jupiter shrouded his glories beneath a mortal form; that he descended yet lower, and crawled as a reptile—that Hercules took the distaff, and Sampson was shorn of his strength, are in their spirit, no fables. Yet, these were the legends of ages less degenerate than this, and states of society less corrupt. Ask your own heart—whether some of its most exquisite sensations have not arisen from sources, which, to nine-tenths of the world, would be equally inconceivable: Mine, I believe, is a solitary madness in the eighteenth century: it is not on the altars of love, but of gold, that men, now, come to pay their offerings.

'Why call woman, miserable, oppressed, and impotent, woman—crushed, and then insulted—why call her to independence—which not nature, but the barbarous and accursed laws of society, have denied her? This is mockery! Even you, wise and benevolent as you are, can mock the child of slavery and sorrow! "Excluded, as it were, by the pride, luxury, and caprice, of the world, from expanding my sensations, and wedding my soul to society, I was constrained to bestow the strong affections, that glowed consciously within me, upon a few."[¹⁸] Love, in minds of any elevation, cannot be generated but upon a real, or fancied, foundation of excellence. But what would be a miracle in architecture, is true in morals—the fabric can exist when the foundation has mouldered away. Habit daily produces this wonderful effect upon every feeling, and every principle. Is not this the theory which you have taught me?

'Am I not sufficiently ingenuous?—I will give you a new proof of my frankness (though not the proof you require).—From the miserable consequences of wretched moral distinctions, from chastity having been considered as a sexual virtue, all these calamities have flowed. Men are thus rendered sordid and dissolute in their pleasures; their affections vitiated, and their feelings petrified; the simplicity of modest tenderness loses its charm; they become incapable of satisfying the heart of a woman of sensibility and virtue.—Half the sex, then, are the wretched, degraded, victims of brutal instinct: the remainder, if they sink not into mere frivolity and insipidity, are sublimed into a sort of—[what shall I call them?]—refined, romantic, factitious, unfortunate, beings; who, for the sake of the present moment, dare not expose themselves to complicated, inevitable, evils; evils, that will infallibly overwhelm them with misery and regret! Woe be, more especially, to those who, possessing the dangerous gifts of fancy and feeling, find it as difficult to discover a substitute for the object as for the sentiment! You, who are a philosopher, will you still controvert the principles founded in truth and nature? "Gross as is my folly," (and I do not deny it) "you may perceive I was not wholly wandering in darkness. But while the wintry sun of hope illumined the fairy frost-work with a single, slanting ray—dazzled by the transient brightness, I dreaded the meridian fervors that should dissolve the glittering charm." Yes! it was madness—but it was the pleasurable madness which none but madmen know.

'I cannot answer your question—Pain me not by its repetition; neither seek to ensnare me to the disclosure. Unkindly, severely, as I have been treated, I will not risque, even, the possibility of injuring the man, whom I have so tenderly loved, in the esteem of any one. Were I to name him, you know him not; you could not judge of his qualities. He is not "a model of excellence." I perceive it, with pain—and if obliged to retract my judgment on some parts of his character—I retract it with agonizing reluctance! But I could trace the sources of his errors, and candour and self-abasement imperiously compel me to a mild judgment, to stifle the petulant suggestions of a wounded spirit.

'Ought not our principles, my friend, to soften the asperity of our censures?—Could I have won him to my arms, I thought I could soften, and even elevate, his mind—a mind, in which I still perceive a great proportion of good. I weep for him, as well as for myself. He will, one day, know my value, and feel my loss. Still, I am sensible, that, by my extravagance, I have given a great deal of vexation (possibly some degradation), to a being, whom I had no right to persecute, or to compel to chuse happiness through a medium of my creation. I cannot exactly tell the extent of the injury I may have done him. A long train of consequences succeed, even, our most indifferent actions.—Strong energies, though they answer not the end proposed, must yet produce correspondent effects. Morals and mechanics are here analogous. No longer, then, distress me by the repetition of a question I ought not to answer. I am content to be the victim—Oh! may I be the only victim—of my folly!

'One more observation allow me to make, before I conclude. That we can "admire, esteem, and love," an individual—(for love in the abstract, loving mankind collectively, conveys to me no idea)—which must be, in fact, depending upon that individual for a large share of our felicity, and not lament his loss, in proportion to our apprehension of his worth, appears to me a proposition, involving in itself an absurdity; therefore demonstrably false.

'Let me, my friend, see you ere long—your remonstrance has affected me—save me from myself!'

'And pining love shall waste their youth,

And jealousy, with rankling tooth,

That inly gnaws the secret heart!'

——

'These shall the stings of falsehood try,

And hard unkindness' alter'd eye,

That mocks the tear it forc'd to flow.'"

TO THE SAME.
[In continuation.]

'My letter having been delayed a few days, through a mistake—I resume my pen; for, running my eye over what I had written, I perceive (confounded by the force of your expressions) I have granted you too much. My conduct was not, altogether, so insane as I have been willing to allow. It is certain, that could I have attained the end proposed, my happiness had been encreased. "It is necessary for me to love and admire, or I sink into sadness." The behaviour of the man, whom I sought to move, appeared to me too inconsistent to be the result of indifference. To be roused and stimulated by obstacles—obstacles admitting hope, because obscurely seen—is no mark of weakness. Could I have subdued, what I, then, conceived to be the prejudices of a worthy man, I could have increased both his happiness and my own. I deeply reasoned, and philosophized, upon the subject. Perseverance, with little ability, has effected wonders;—with perseverance, I felt, that, I had the power of uniting ability—confiding in that power, I was the dupe of my own reason. No other man, perhaps, could have acted the part which this man has acted:—how, then, was I to take such a part into my calculations?

'Do not misconceive me—it is no miracle that I did not inspire affection. On this subject, the mortification I have suffered has humbled me, it may be, even, unduly in my own eyes—but to the emotions of my pride, I would disdain to give words. Whatever may have been my feelings, I am too proud to express the rage of slighted love!—Yet, I am sensible to all the powers of those charming lines of Pope—

"Unequal talk, a passion to resign,

For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost, as mine!

Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,

How often must it love, how often hate;

How often hope, despair, resent, regret,

Conceal, disdain, do all things but forget!"

'But to return. I pursued, comparatively, (as I thought) a certain good; and when, at times, discouraged, I have repeated to myself—What! after all these pains, shall I relinquish my efforts, when, perhaps, on the very verge of success?—To say nothing of the difficulty of forcing an active mind out of its trains—if I desisted, what was to be the result? The sensations I now feel—apathy, stagnation, abhorred vacuity!

'You cannot resist the force of my reasoning—you, who are acquainted with, who know how to paint, in colours true to nature, the human heart—you, who admire, as a proof of power, the destructive courage of an Alexander, even the fanatic fury of a Ravaillac—you, who honour the pernicious ambition of an Augustus Cæsar, as bespeaking the potent, energetic, mind!—why should you affect to be intolerant to a passion, though differing in nature, generated on the same principles, and by a parallel process. The capacity of perception, or of receiving sensation, is (or generates) the power; into what channel that power shall be directed, depends not on ourselves. Are we not the creatures of outward impressions? Without such impressions, should we be any thing? Are not passions and powers synonimous—or can the latter be produced without the lively interest that constitutes the former? Do you dream of annihilating the one—and will not the other be extinguished? With the apostle, Paul, permit me to say—"I am not mad, but speak the words of truth and soberness."

'To what purpose did you read my confessions, but to trace in them a character formed, like every other human character, by the result of unavoidable impressions, and the chain of necessary events. I feel, that my arguments are incontrovertible:—I suspect that, by affecting to deny their force, you will endeavour to deceive either me or yourself.—I have acquired the power of reasoning on this subject at a dear rate—at the expence of inconceivable suffering. Attempt not to deny me the miserable, expensive, victory. I am ready to say—(ungrateful that I am)—Why did you put me upon calling forth my strong reason?

'I perceive there is no cure for me—(apathy is, not the restoration to health, but, the morbid lethargy of the soul) but by a new train of impressions, of whatever nature, equally forcible with the past.—You will tell me, It remains with myself whether I will predetermine to resist such impressions. Is this true? Is it philosophical? Ask yourself. What!—can even you shrink from the consequences of your own principles?

'One word more—You accuse me of brooding in silence over my sensations—of considering them as a "sacred deposit." Concealment is particularly repugnant to my disposition—yet a thousand delicacies—a thousand nameless solicitudes, and apprehensions, sealed my lips!—He who inspired them was, alone, the depositary of my most secret thoughts!—my heart was unreservedly open before him—I covered my paper with its emotions, and transmitted it to him—like him who whispered his secret into the earth, to relieve the burden of uncommunicated thought. My secret was equally safe, and received in equal silence! Alas! he was not then ignorant of the effects it was likely to produce!

'Emma.'

"Unequal talk, a passion to resign,

For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost, as mine!

Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,

How often must it love, how often hate;

How often hope, despair, resent, regret,

Conceal, disdain, do all things but forget!"