LETTER XXXIX.
To Mrs. Talbot.
November 28.
It becomes me to submit without a murmur
to a resolution dictated by a disinterested regard
to my happiness.
That you may find in that persuasion; in your
mother's tenderness and gratitude; in the affluence
and honor, which this determination
has secured to you; abundant consolation for
every evil that may befall yourself or pursue
me, are my only wishes.
Far was I from designing to conceal from
you entirely my father's aversion to our views.
I frequently apprised you of the inferences to be
naturally drawn from his known character, but
I trusted to his generosity, to the steadiness of
my own deportment—to your own merits, when
he should become personally acquainted with
you: to his good sense, when reflecting on an
evil in his power to lessen, though not wholly
to remove—for a change in his opinions; or, at
least, in his conduct.
There was sufficient resemblance in the
characters of both our parents to make me rely
on the influence of time and reflection in our
favour. Your mother could not cease to love
you. I could not by any accident be wholly bereaved
of my father's affection. No conduct of
theirs had robbed them of my esteem. Why
then did I persist in thwarting their wishes? why
encourage you in your opposition? because I
imagined that, in thwarting their present views,
which were founded in error, I consulted their
lasting happiness, and made myself a title to
their future gratitude, by challenging their
present rebukes.
I told you not of my father's passionate violences,
disgraceful to himself and productive of
unspeakable anguish to me. Why should I revive
the scene? why be the historian of my
father's dishonor? why needlessly add to my
own and to your affliction?
My concealments arose not from the fear
that the disclosure would estrange you from
me. I supposed you willing to grant me the
same independence of a parents controul which
you claimed for yourself. I saw no difference
between forbearing to consult a parent in a
case where we know that his answer will condemn
us, and slighting his express forbidding.
I say thus much to account for, and, if possible,
excuse that concealment with which you
reproach me. Tender and reluctant, indeed,
are these reproaches, but as I deem it a sacred
duty to reveal to you the utmost of my follies,
what but injustice to you would be the tacit admission
of injurious but groundless charges.
My actual faults are of too deep a dye to allow
me to sport with your good opinion, or permit
me to be worse thought of by you than I deserve.
You exhort me to seek reconcilement, with
my father. What mean you? I have not been
the injurer. Not an angry word, accusing look
or vengeful thought has come from me. I have
exercised the privilege of a rational and moral being.
I have loved, not according to another's estimate
of merit, but my own. Of what then am I
to repent? where lies my transgression? if his
treatment of me be occasioned by antipathy for
you, must I adopt his antipathy, and thus creep
again into favour? Impossible! if it arise
from my refusing to give up an alliance which
his heart abhors, your letter to him, which you tell
me you mean to write, and which will inform
him that every view of that kind is at an end,
will remove the evil.
Fear not for me, my friend. Whatever be
my lot, be assured that I never can taste pure
misery while the thought abides with me that
you are not unhappy.
And what now remains but to leave with you the
blessing of a grateful and devoted heart, and to
submit, with what humility I can, to the destiny
which you have prescribed.
I should not deserve your love, if I did not now
relinquish it with an anguish next to despair:
neither should I have merit in my own eyes, if I
did not end this letter with acquitting you, the
author of my loss, of all shadow of blame.
Farewell—forever.
