TO RICHARD TRENCH, ESQ.
London, March 15, 1808.
I am just returned from performing the most solemn act of our religion, which, as you know, I had much too long deferred. As I feared, those thoughts I wished to silence would arise, and those tears which ought to have proceeded from devotion, sprung, in fact, from recollections of my lost darling. I never saw a stronger proof that London is a religious town, than in the numbers and the respectful awe of those who remained to-day to receive. This, you know, was a common Sunday, no festival, no charity sermon, no good singing, no popular preacher, and the weather was intolerably cold; yet I dare say more than a hundred stayed in this private chapel; and these persons, of whom a great part were young men and women, and whose dress announced at the least opulence. More solemnity and attention, both in administering and receiving, I have never seen. What a contrast to the manners we have left, where no one ever thought of giving more to Heaven than les restes du diable.
I was so low last night, yet so unwilling and unfit for company, that I persuaded Mrs. Arabin to go to Walker’s Orrery and lecture. It is very interesting, but I must go again before I find it very improving. However, something remains; and at all events, it is equal (from the feelings it inspires) to the finest sermon of Blair or Porteus. I was much better all night from having given my mind this magnificent subject for awe, wonder, and self-abasement. The fulness of the pit and gallery gave a strong proof of the knowledge disseminated in the middle classes. Women who, from their appearance, you would think never turned their thoughts beyond their kitchen or laundry, were there, numerous and attentive listeners. I think if I had a female to educate of a scientific turn, I should lead her to astronomy in preference to the more fashionable studies of botany, chemistry, &c. It elevates the mind much more, and it is less easy, I should imagine, in that science to dazzle the multitude with a little knowledge than in most others; and it seems more like a commencement of those floods of knowledge we shall gain in another existence, than anything relating to the material world, which can be learned here.
TO THE SAME.
London, March 17, 1808.
I have just seen Lady ——, who is, as usual, entertaining. She exercised some of her powers on me. First, ‘London is too dear for anybody to live in,’ leaving me to draw my own conclusions how I could exist, if she found it so. Next, a little quizzing of the old-womanish style of my dress, through Mrs. ——’s, which she described as exactly what I wore, and then said she was always dressed like a person of a hundred. Next, a discovery that —— (though en gros, she says they are both beautiful) is very like the print of my grandfather in Lord Chesterfield’s Letters. This, to be sure, I should be glad of. She pressed me much to go there continually to dinner, while you were away; and said, with tears in her eyes, that ‘her heart was once all my own.’ But the knowledge of what she has said of me appeared too plainly, I fear, in the total insensibility with which I received this declaration; I promised, however, to go sometimes in the evening. People think I have lost my memory, because I do not appear to remember what I do not think they desire I should. You must not allow me, even if hereafter I am so inclined, to renew my intimacy with Lady ——, for her conversation is of the kind which always leaves little stings; and she chooses, I know not why, always to try and lower all those I esteem and love, or whom she thinks I esteem and love; while my happiness depends almost entirely on raising them. Those constant complaints of her poverty, intended to prove to others by the Rule of Three that they are paupers, may perhaps help to keep one at a distance. I do not allow that this flows from any false shame one would have of being poor, if it was really the case. But it is a rule in polished society not to remind one of being ugly, or old, or poor, or low born; and though one would not blush at any of these circumstances, one thinks oneself not treated with sufficient respect, when they are constantly hinted at as having fallen to one’s lot.
Mrs. —— dined with me on Wednesday. She likes me for being attentive to her; but she respects Lady —— for being what she calls ‘too much engrossed with the great world to take any notice of such an old woman, &c. &c.’ If one had no higher motive than standing well in the opinion of the old and retired, one would treat them with hauteur and neglect; for except a Lady Hutchinson and one or two more, they all respect you for it.