University of Virginia Library

LETTER XV.

To Jane Talbot.

Insolent creature that thou art, Jane, and cunning as
insolent! To elude my just determination by such an artifice!
To counterfeit a strange hand in the direction of
thy letter, that I might thereby be induced to open it.

Thou wilt not rest, I see, till thou hast torn from my heart
every root; every fibre of my once cherished tenderness;
till thou hast laid my head low in the grave. To number
the tears and the pangs which thy depravity has already
cost me—but thy last act is destined to surpass all former
ones.

Thy perseverance in wickedness, thy inflexible imposture,
amazes me beyond all utterance. Thy effrontery in boasting
of thy innocence; in calling this wretch thy friend, thy
soul's friend, the means of securing the favor of a pure
and all-seeing Judge, exceeds all that I supposed possible
in human nature. And that thou, Jane, the darling of my
heart, and the object of all my care and my pride, should
be this profligate, this obdurate creature!

When very young you were ill of a fever. The physician
gave up, for some hours, all hope of your life. I shall
never forget the grief which his gloomy silence gave me.
All that I held dear in the world, I then thought, I would
cheerfully surrender to save your life.

Poor short-sighted wretch that I was. That event, which,
had it then happened, would, perhaps, have bereaved me of
reason, would have saved me from a portion far more bitter.
I should have never lived to witness the depravity of one,
whom my whole life had been employed in training to
virtue.

Having opened your letter, and somewhat debated with
myself, I consented to read. I will do more than read; I
will answer it minutely. I will unfold that secret, by which,
you truly think, my aversion to your present scheme has
been chiefly caused.

I have hitherto been silent through compassion to you;

through the hope that all might yet be well; that you might
be influenced by my persuasions to forbear an action, that
will insure forever your ruin. I now perceive the folly of
this compassion and these hopes. I need not be assiduces
to spare you the shame and mortification of hearing the
truth. Shame is as much a stranger to your heart as remorse.
Say what I will; disclose what I will, your conduct
will be just the same. A show of much reluctanct
and humility will, no doubt, be made, and the tongue will
be busy in imploring favor which the heart disdains.

In the foresight of this, I was going to forbid your writing,
but you care not for my forbidding. As long as you
think it possible to reconcile me to your views, and make
me a partaker in your infamy, you with harass me will importunity;
with feigned penitence and preposterous arguments—But
one thing at least is in my power. I can shun
you, and I can throw your unopened letters into the fire,
and that, believe me, Jane, I shall do.

But I am wasting time. My indignation carries its
away from my purpose. Let me return to it, and having
told you all my mind, let me dismiss the hateful subject forever.

I knew the motives that induced you to marry Leus
Talbot. They were good ones. Your compliance with
mine and your father's wishes in that respect, shewed the
force of understanding which I always ascribed to you
Your previous reluctance; your scruples, were indeed inworthy
of you, but you conquered them, and that was better;
perhaps, it evinced more magnanimity than never to
have had them.

You were happy, I long thought, in your union with a
man of probity and good sense. You may be sure, I
thought of you often, but only with pleasure. Certain indications,
I early saw in you of a sensibility that required
strict government; an inattention to any thing but feeling
a proneness to romantic friendship and a pining after good
not consistent with our nature. I imagined that I had kept
at a distance all such books and companions as tend to produce
this phantastic character, and whence you imbibed
this perverse spirit, at so early an age, is, to me, inconceivable.
It cost me many a gloomy foreboding.

My disquiets increased as you grew up, and that age arrived
when the heart comes to be entangled with what is
called love. I was anxious to find for you a man of merit,
to whose keeping your happiness might safely be entrusted.
Talbot was such a one, but the wayward heart refused
to love him. He was not all your fancy had conceived of excellent
and lovely. He was a mere man, with the taste and
habits suitable and common to his education and age. He
was addicted to industry, was regular and frugal in his manners
and economy. He had nothing of that specious and
glossy texture which captivates inexperience and youth, and
serves as a substitute for every other virtue. While others
talked about their duty he was contented with performing it,
and he was satisfied with ignorance of theories as long as
his practice was faultless.

He was just such a one as I wished for the darling of
my heart, but you thought not so. You did not object to
his age, though almost double your own; to his person or
aspect, though they were by no means worthy of his mind;
to his profession or condition; but your heart sighed after
one who could divide with you your sympathies. Who saw
every thing just as you saw it. Who could emulate your
enthusiasm, and echo back every exclamation which chance
should dictate to you.

You even pleaded religion as one of your objections.
Talbot, it seems, had nothing that deserved to be called religion.
He had never reasoned on the subject. He had
read no books and had never looked into his bible since he
was fifteen years old. He seldom went to church, but because
it was the fashion, and when there, seldom spared a
thought from his own temporal concerns, to a future state
and a governing deity. All those expansions of soul, produced
by meditation on the power and goodness of our
Maker, and those raptures that flow from accommodating
all our actions to his will, and from consciousness of his approbation
and presence, you discovered to be strangers to
his breast, and, therefore, you scrupled to unite your fate
with his.

It was not enough that this man had never been seduced
into disbelief. That his faith was steadfast and rational,

without producing those fervors, and reveries, and rhapsodies,
which unfit us for the mixed scenes of human life, and
breed in us absurd and phantastic notions of our duty or our
happiness; that his religion had produced all its practical
effects, in honest, regular, sober and consistent conduct.

You wanted a zealot; a sectary; one that should enter
into all the trifling distinctions and minute subtileties that
make one christian the mortal foe of another, while, in their
social conduct, there is no difference to be found between
them.

I do not repeat these things to upbraid you for what you then
were, but merely to remind you of the inconsistency of these
notions with your subsequent conduct. You then, at the
instance of your father and at my instance, gave them up,
and that compliance, supposing your scruples to have been
undissembled, gave you a still greater interest in our affections.

You never gave me reason to suppose that you repented
of this compliance. I never saw you after your engagement,
but you wore a cheerful countenance; at least, it
your unfortunate connexion with Colden. To that connexion
must be traced every misfortune and depravity that
has attended you since.

When I heard from Patty Sinclair, of his frequent visit
to you during your retirement at Burlington, I thought of
it but little. He was, indeed, a new acquaintance. You
were unacquainted with his character and history, except so
far as you could collect them from his conversation, and so
confidence could, of course, be placed in that. It was
therefore, perhaps, somewhat indiscreet, to permit such
very frequent visits; such very long walks. To neglect the
friends whom you lived with, for the sake of exclusive conversations
and lonely rambles, noon and night, with a more
stranger. One, not regularly introduced to you. Whose
name you were obliged to inquire of himself. You too, already
a betrothed woman; your lover absent; yourself from
home, and merely on terms of hospitality! all this did not
look well.

But the mischief, it was evident, was to be known by
the event. Colden might have probity and circumspection.
He might prove an agreeable friend to your future husband

and a useful companion to yourself. Kept within due limits,
your complacency for this stranger; your attachment to his
company, might occasion no inconvenience; how little did
I then suspect to what extremes you were capable of going,
and even then had actually gone!

The subject was of sufficient importance to induce me
to write to you. Your answer was not quite satisfactory;
yet on the whole, laid my apprehensions at rest. I was deceived
by the confidence you expressed in your own caution,
and the seeming readiness there was to be governed
by my advice.

Afterwards, I heard, through various channels, without
any efforts on my part, intelligence of Colden. At first I
was not much alarmed. Colden, it is true, was not a faultless
or steadfast character. No gross or enormous vices
were ascribed to him. His habits, as far as appearances
enabled one to judge, were temperate and chaste. He was
contemplative and bookish, and was vaguely described as
being somewhat visionary and romantic.

In all this there was nothing formidable. Such a man
might surely be a harmless companion. Those with whom
he was said to associate most intimately were highly estimable.
Their esteem was a test of merit, not to be disposed
or hastily rejected.

Things, however, quickly took a now face. I was informed
that after your return to the city, Colden continued
to be a very constant visitant. Your husband's voyage left
you soon after at liberty, and your intercourse with this
person only became more intimate and confidential.

Reflecting closely on this circumstance, I began to suspect
some danger lurking in your path. I now remembered
that impetuosity of feeling which distinguished your early
age; those notions of kindred among souls; of friendship and
harmony of feelings which, in your juvenile age, you loved
to indulge.

I reflected that the victory over these chimeras, which
you gained by marriage with Talbot, might be merely temporary;
and that, in order to call these dormant feelings into
action, it was only requisite to meet with one, contemplative,
bookish and romantic as yourself.

Such a one, it was greatly to be feared, you had now

found in this young man; just such qualities he was reported
to possess, as would render him dangerous to you and
you dangerous to him. A poet, not in theory only, but it
practice; accustomed to intoxicate the women with melodious
flattery; fond of being intimate; avowedly devoted to
the sex; eloquent in his encomiums upon female charms;
and affecting to select his friends only from that sex.

What effect might such a character have upon your peace,
even without imputing any ill intention to him? both of you
might work your own ruin, while you designed nothing but
good; and even supposing that your intercourse should be
harmless, or even beneficial with respect to yourselves, what
was to be feared for Talbot? An intimacy of this kind
could hardly escape his observation on his return. It would
be criminal, indeed, to conceal it from him.

These apprehensions were raised to the highest pitch by
more accurate information of Colden's character, which I
afterwards received. I found, on inquiring of those who
had the best means of knowing, that Colden had imbibed
that pernicious philosophy, which is now so much in vogue.
One who knew him perfectly; who had long been in habits
of the closest intimacy with him, who was still a familiar correspondent
of his, gave me this account.

I met this friend of Colden's, Thomson his name is, of
whom I suppose you have heard something, in this city.
His being mentioned as the intimate companion of Colden,
made me wish to see him, and fortunately I prevailed upon
him to be very communicative.

Thomson is an excellent young man: he loves Colden
much, and describes the progress of his friend's opinions
with every mark of regret. He even showed me letters
that had passed between them, and in which every horrid
and immoral tenet was defended by one and denied by the
other. These letters showed Colden as the advocate of
suicide; a scoffer at promises; the despiser of revelation,
of providence and a future state; an opponent of marriage,
and as one who denied (shocking!) that any thing but mere
habit and positive law, stood in the way of marriage; nay,
of intercourse without marriage, between brother and sister,
parent and child!

You may readily believe that I did not credit such things

on slight evidence. I did not rely on Thomson's mere words,
solemn and unaffected as these were; nothing but Colden's
hand-writing could in such a case, be credited.

To say truth, I should not be much surprised had I heard
of Colden, as of a youth whose notions, on moral and religious
topics, were, in some degree, unsettled; that in the
fervor and giddiness incident to his age, he had not tamed
his mind to investigation; had not subdued his heart to regular
and devout thoughts; that his passions or his indolence
had made the truths of religion somewhat obscure, and shut
them out, not properly from his conviction, but only from
his attention.

I expected to find, united with this vague and dubious
state of mind, tokens of the influence of a pious education;
a reverence, at least, for those sacred precepts on which the
happiness of men rests, and at least, a practical observance
of that which, if not fully admitted by his understanding,
was yet very far from having been rejected by it.

But widely and deplorably different was Colden's case.
A most fascinating book[1] fell at length into his hands, which
changed, in a moment, the whole course of his ideas. What
he had before regarded with reluctance and terror, this book
taught him to admire and love. The writer has the art of
the grand deceiver; the fatal art of carrying the worst poison
under the name and appearance of wholesome food; of disguising
all that is impious or blasphemous, or licentious,
under the guise and sanctions of virtue.

Colden had lived before this without examination or inquiry.
His heart, his inclination was, perhaps, on the side
of religion and true virtue, but this book carried all his inclination,
his zeal and his enthusiasm, over to the adversary,
and so strangely had he been perverted, that he held himself
bound, he conceived it to be his duty, to vindicate in private
and public, to preach, with vehemence, his new faith. The
rage for making converts seized him, and that Thomson was
not won over to the same cause, proceeded from no want of
industry in Colden.

Such was the man whom you had admitted to your confidence;

whom you had adopted for your bosom friend. I
knew your pretensions to religion, the stress which you laid
upon piety as the basis of morals. I remembered your objections
to Talbot on this score, not only as a husband, but
as a friend. I could, therefore, only suppose that Colden
had joined dissimulation to his other errors, and had gained
and kept your good opinion by avowing sentiments which
his heart secretly abhorred.

I cannot describe to you, Jane, my alarms upon this discovery.
That your cook had intended to poison you, the
next meat which you should eat in your own house, would
have alarmed me I assure you, much less. The preservation
of your virtue was unspeakably of more importance
in my eyes than of your life.

I wrote to you and what was your reply? I could
scarcely believe my senses. Every horrid foreboding realized!
already such an adept in this accursed sophistry!
the very cant of that detestable sect adopted!

I had plumed myself upon your ignorance. He had
taken advantage of that, I supposed, and had won your esteem
by counterfeiting a moral and pious strain. To make you
put him forever at a distance, it was needed only to tear of
his mask. This was done, but, alas, too late for your safety.
The poison was already swallowed.

I had no patience with you, to listen to your trifling and
insidious distinctions; such as, though you could audaciously
urge them to me, possessed no weight; could possess no
weight in your understanding. What was it to me whether
he was ruffian or madman; whether in destroying you, he
meant to destroy or to save? Is it proper to expose your
breast to a sword, because the wretch that wields it, supposes
madly that it is a straw, which he holds in his hand?

But I will not renew the subject. The same motives
that induced me to attempt to reason with you then, no
longer exists. The anguish, the astonishment which your
letters, as they gradually unfolded your character, produced
in me, I endeavored to show you at the time. Now I pass
them over to come to a more important circumstance.

Yet how shall I tell it thee, Jane. I am afraid to entrust
it to paper. Thy fame is still dear to me. I would not be

the means of irretrievably blasting thy fame. Yet what may
come of relating some incidents on paper?

Faint is my hope, but I am not without some hope, that
thou canst yet be saved; be snatched from perdition. Thy
life I value not in comparison with something higher. And
if, through an erring sensibility, the sacrifice of Colden cost
thee thy life, I shall yet rejoice. As the wife of Colden,
thou wilt be worse than dead to me.

What has come to me, I wonder? I began this letter
with a firm, and as I thought inflexible soul. Despair had
made me serene, yet now thy image rises before me, with
all those bewitching graces which adorned thee when thou
wast innocent and a child. All the mother seizes my heart,
and my tears suffocate me.

Shall I shock, shall I wound thee, my child, by lifting the
veil from thy misconduct, behind which thou thinkest thou
art screened from every human eye? How little dost thou
imagine that I know so much!

Now will thy expostulations and reasonings have an end.
Surely they will have an end. Shame at last; shame at last
will overwhelm thee and make thee dumb.

Yet my heart sorely misgives me. I shudder at the extremes
to which thy accursed seducer may have urged
thee. What thou hast failed in concealing thou mayest be
so obdurately wicked as to attempt to justify.

Was it not the unavoidable result of confiding in a man
avowedly irreligious and immoral; of exposing thy understanding
and thy heart to such stratagems as his philosophy
made laudable and necessary? But I know not what I
would say. I must lay down the pen, till I can reason
myself into some composure. I will write again tomorrow.