To Henry Mandeville, Esq;
OH! do you know I have a little request
to make you? But first, by
way of preface, I must inform you, Lady
Belmont has been reading me a serious
lecture about the Caro Bellville, who has
wrote to her to beg her intercession in his
favor.
I find fools have been impertinent in regard
to our friendship: there are so few
pleasures in this world, I think it extremely
hard to give up one so lively, yet innocent,
as that of indulging a tender esteem
for an amiable man. But to our conversation:
"My dear Lady Anne, I am convinced
you love Colonel Bellville.
Love him, Madam? no, I rather think
not; I am not sure: The man is not shocking,
and dies for m: I pity him, poor creature;
and pity, your Ladyship knows, is a-kin to
love.
Will you be grave one moment?
A thousand, if your Ladyship desires it:
nothing so easy to me; the gravest creature
in the world naturally.
You allow Colonel Bellville merit?
Certainement.
That he loves you?
To distraction.
And you return it?
Why as to that–he flatters agreeably,
and I am fond of his conversation on that
account: and let me tell you, my dear Lady
Belmont, it is not every man that can flatter;
it requires more genius than one would
suppose.
You intend some time or other to marry
him?
Marry? Oh, Heavens! How did such a
thought enter your Ladyship's imagination?
Have not I been married already? And is
not once enough in conscience, for any
reasonable woman?
Will you pardon me if I then ask, with
what view you allow his address?
I allow? Heavens, Lady Belmont! I
allow the addresses of an odious male animal?
If fellows will follow one, how is
it to be avoided? it is one's misfortune to
be handsome, and one must bear the consequences.
But, my dear Lady Anne, an unconnected
life–Is the pleasantest life in the world.
Have not I 3000£. a year? am not I a widow?
mistress of my own actions? with
youth, health, a tolerable understanding,
an air of the world, and a person not very
disagreeable?
All this I own.
All this? yes, and twenty times more,
or you do nothing. Have not these unhappy
eyes carryed destruction from one
climate to another? Have not the sprightly
French, the haughty Romans, confest
themselves my slaves? Have not–But it
would take up a life to tell you all my
conquests.
But what is all this to the purpose, y
dear?
Now I protest I think it is vastly to the
purpose. And all this you advise me to
give up, to become a tame, domestic, inanimate
–Really, my dear Madam, I did
not think it was in your nature to be so unreasonable.
It is with infinite pain, my dearest Lady
Anne, I bring myself to say any thing
which can give you a moment's uneasiness.
But it is the task of true friendship–
To tell disagreeable truths: I know that
is what your Ladyship would say: and, to
spare you what your delicacy starts at mentioning,
you have heard aspersions on my
character, which are the consequences of
my friendship for Colonel Bellville.
I know and admire the innocent chearfulness
of your heart; but I grieve to say,
the opinion of the world––
As to the opinion of the world, by
which is meant the malice of few spiteful
old cats, I am perfectly unconcerned
about it; but your Ladyship's esteem is necessary
to my happiness: I will therefore
to you vindicate my conduct: which, tho'
indiscreet, has been really irreproachable.
Though a widow, and accountable to nobody,
I have ever lived with Colonel
Bellville, with the reserve of blushing apprehensive
fifteen; whilst the warmth of
my friendship for him, and the pleasure I
found in his conversation, have let loose the
baleful tongue of envy, and subjected me
resolution to the malice of an ill-judging
world; a world I despise for his sake; a
world, whose applause is too often bestowed
on the cold, the selfish, and the artful, and
denied to that generous unsuspected openness
and warmth of heart, which are the
strongest characteristicks of true virtue. My
friendship, or, if you please, my love, for
Colonel Bellville, is the first pleasure of
my life; the happiest hours of which have
been past in his conversation; nor is there
any thing I would not sacrifise to my passion
for him, but his happiness; which, for
reasons unknown to your Ladyship, is incompatible
with his marrying me.
But is it not possible to remove those
reasons?
I am afraid not.
Would it not then, my dear Madam, be
most prudent to break off a connexion,
which can answer no purpose but making
both unhappy?
I own it would; but prudence was never
a part of my character. Will you forgive
and pity me, Lady Belmont, when I say,
that, though I see in the strongest light my
own indiscretion, I am not enough mistress
of my heart to break with the man to
whom I have only a very precarious and
distant hope of being united? There is
an enchantment in his friendship, which I
have not force of mind to break through;
he is my guide, my guardian, protector,
friend; the only man I ever loved, the
man to whom the last recesses of my heart
are open: must I give up the tender, exquisite,
refined delight of his conversation,
to the false opinion of a world, governed by
prejudice, judging by the exterior, which is
generally fallacious, and condemning, without
distinction, those soft affections without
which life is scarcely above vegetation?
Do not imagine, my dear Lady Belmont,
I have really the levity I affect: or, had
my prejudices against marriage been ever
so strong, the time I have passed here would
have removed them: I see my Lord and
you, after an union of thirty years, with as
keen a relish for each other's conversation
as you could have felt at the moment which
first joined you: I see in you all the attention,
the tender solicitude of beginning love,
with the calm delight and perfect confidence
of habitual friendship. I am, therefore,
convinced marriage is capable of happiness,
to which an unconnected state is lifeless
and insipid; and, from observing the
lovely delicacy of your Ladyship's conduct
I am instructed how that happiness is to be
secured; I am instructed how to avoid that
tasteless, languid, unimpassioned hour, so
fatal to love and friendship.
With the man to whom I was a victim,
my life was one continued scene of misery;
to a sensible mind, there is no cold medium
in marriage: its sorrows, like its pleasures,
are exquisite. Relieved from those galling
chains, I have met with a heart suitable to
my own; born with the same sensibility,
the same peculiar turn of thinking: pleased
with the same pleasures, and exactly formed
to make me happy: I will believe this similarity
was not given to condemn us both to
wretchedness: as it is impossible either of us
can be happy but with the other, I will hope
the bar, which at present seems invincible,
may be removed; till then indulge me, my
dear Lady Belmont, in the innocent pleasure
of loving him, and trust to his honor
for the safety of mine."
The most candid and amiable of women,
after a gentle remonstrance on the importance
of reputation to happiness, left me,
so perfectly satisfied, that she intends to invite
Bellville down. I send you this conversation
as an introduction to a request I have
to make you, which I must postpone to my
next. Heavens! how perverse! interrupted
by one of the veriest cats in nature, who
will not leave us till ages after the post is
gone. Adieu! for the present! it is prettily
enough contrived, and one of the great advantages
of society, that one's time, the most
precious of all possessions, is to be sacrifised,
from a false politeness, to every idle creature
who knows not what else to do. Every body
complains of this, but nobody attempts
to remedy it.
Am not I the most inhuman of women,
to write two sheets without naming Lady
Julia? She is well, and beautiful as an angel:
we have a ball to-night on Lord Melvin's
return, against which she is putting on all
her charms. We shall be at Belmont tomorrow,
which is two or three days sooner
than my Lord intended.
Lady Julia dances with Lord Melvin,
who is, except two, the most amiable man
I know: she came up just as I sat down
to write, and looked as if she had something
to say: she is gone, however, without
a word; her childish bashfulness about
you is intolerable.
The ball waits for us. I am interrupted
by an extreme pretty fellow, Sir Charles
Mellifont, who has to-night the honor of
my hand.
A. Wilmot.
