"This morning I returned to town. It has been the finest day imaginable; a solemn mildness was diffused throughout the blue horizon; its light was clear and distinct rather than dazzling; the serene beams of an autumnal sun! Gilded hills, variegated woods, glittering spires, ruminating herds, bounding flocks, all combined to enchant the eyes, expand the heart, and 'chase all sorrows but despair.' In the midst of such a scene, no lesser sorrow can prevent our sympathy with Nature. A calmness, a benevolent disposition seizes us with sweet, insinuating power. The very brute creation seem sensible of these beauties. There is a species of mild chearfulness in the face of a lamb, which I have but indifferently expressed in a corner of my paper, and a demure, contented look in an ox, which, in the fear of expressing still worse, I leave unattempted.
"Business calls me away--I must dispatch my letter. Yet what does it contain? No matter--You like anything better than news. Indeed, you have never told me so; but I have an intuitive knowledge upon the subject, from the sympathy which I have constantly perceived in the tastes of Julia and Cher Jean. What is it to you or me,
"If here in the city we have nothing but riot;
If the Spitalfield weavers can't be kept quiet;
If the weather is fine, or the streets should be dirty;
Or if Mr. Dick Wilson died aged of thirty?
"But if I was to hearken to the versifying grumbling I feel within me, I should fill my paper, and not have room left to intreat that you would plead my cause with Honora more eloquently than the enclosed letter has the power of doing. Apropos of verses, you desire me to recollect my random description of the engaging appearance of the charming Mrs.----. Here it is at your service.
"Then rustling and bustling the lady comes down,
With a flaming red face and a broad yellow gown,
And a hobbling out-of-breath gait, and a frown.
"This little French cousin of our's, Delarise, was my sister Mary's playfellow at Paris. His sprightliness engages my sisters extremely. Doubtless they tell much of him to you in their letters.
"How sorry I am to bid you adieu! Oh, let me not be forgot by the friends most dear to you at Lichfield. Lichfield! Ah, of what magic letters is that little word composed! How graceful it looks, when it is written! Let nobody talk to me of its original meaning, 'The Field of Blood'! Oh, no such thing! It is the field of joy! 'The beautiful city, that lifts her fair head in the valley, and says, I am, and there is none beside me.' Who says she is vain? Julia will not say so,--nor yet Honora,--and least of all, their devoted
"John André."
It is not difficult to perceive in the tone of this letter that its writer was not an accepted lover. His interests with the lady, despite Miss Seward's watchful care, were already declining; and the lapse of a few months more reduced him to the level of a valued and entertaining friend, whose civilities were not to pass the conventional limits of polite intercourse. To André this fate was very hard. He was hopelessly enamored; and so long as fortune offered him the least hope of eventual success, he persevered in the faith that Honora might yet be his own. But every returning day must have shaken this faith. His visits were discontinued and his correspondence dropped. Other suitors pressed their claims, and often urged an argument which it was beyond his means to supply. They came provided with what Parson Hugh calls good gifts: "Seven hundred pounds and possibilities is good gifts." Foremost among these dangerous rivals were two men of note in their way: Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and the eccentric, but amiable Thomas Day.
Mr. Day was a man whose personal charms were not great. Overgrown, awkward, pitted with the small-pox, he offered no pleasing contrast to the discarded André: but he had twelve hundred pounds a year. His notions in regard to women were as peculiar as his estimate of his own merit. He seems to have really believed that it would be impossible for any beautiful girl to refuse her assent to the terms of the contract by which she might acquire his hand. These were absurd to a degree; and it is not cause for surprise that Miss Sneyd should have unhesitatingly refused them. Poor Mr. Day was not prepared for such continued ill-luck in his matrimonial projects. He had already been very unfortunate in his plans for obtaining a perfect wife,--having vainly provided for the education of two foundlings between whom he promised himself to select a paragon of a helpmate. To drop burning sealing-wax upon their necks, and to discharge a pistol close to their ears, were among his philosophical rules for training them to habits of submission and self-control; and the upshot was, that they were fain to attach themselves to men of less wisdom, but better taste. Miss Sneyd's conduct was more than he could well endure, after all his previous disappointments; and he went to bed with a fever that did not leave him till his passion was cured. He could not at this time have anticipated, however, that the friendly hand which had aided the prosecution of his addresses was eventually destined to receive and hold the fair prize which so many were contending for.
Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the ambassador and counsellor of Mr. Day in this affair, was at the very moment of the rejection himself enamored of Miss Sneyd. But Edgeworth had a wife already,--a pining, complaining woman, he tells us, who did not make his home cheerful,--and honor and decency forbade him to open his mouth on the subject that occupied his heart. He wisely sought refuge in flight, and in other scenes the natural exuberance of his disposition afforded a relief from the pangs of an unlawful and secret passion. Lord Byron, who met him forty years afterwards, in five lines shows us the man: if he was thus seen in the dry wood, we can imagine what he was in the green:--"I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety, elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk, and endless. He was seventy, but did not look fifty,--no, nor forty-eight even." He was in France when the death of his father left him to the possession of a good estate,--and that of his wife occurring in happy concurrence, he lost little time in opening in his own behalf the communications that had failed when he spoke for Mr. Day. His wooing was prosperous; in July, 1773, he married Miss Sneyd.
It is a mistake, sanctioned by the constant acceptance of historians, to suppose that it was this occasion that prompted André to abandon a commercial life. The improbability of winning Honora's hand, and the freedom with which she received the addresses of other men, undoubtedly went far to convince him of the folly of sticking to trade with but one motive; and so soon as he attained his majority, he left the desk and stool forever, and entered the army. This was a long time before the Edgeworth marriage was undertaken, or even contemplated.