_Mrs. Johnson to Lady Susan._
Edward Street.
I am gratified by your reference, and this is my advice: that you come
to town yourself, without loss of time, but that you leave Frederica
behind. It would surely be much more to the purpose to get yourself
well established by marrying Mr. De Courcy, than to irritate him and
the rest of his family by making her marry Sir James. You should think
more of yourself and less of your daughter. She is not of a disposition
to do you credit in the world, and seems precisely in her proper place
at Churchhill, with the Vernons. But you are fitted for society, and it
is shameful to have you exiled from it. Leave Frederica, therefore, to
punish herself for the plague she has given you, by indulging that
romantic tender-heartedness which will always ensure her misery enough,
and come to London as soon as you can. I have another reason for urging
this: Mainwaring came to town last week, and has contrived, in spite of
Mr. Johnson, to make opportunities of seeing me. He is absolutely
miserable about you, and jealous to such a degree of De Courcy that it
would be highly unadvisable for them to meet at present. And yet, if
you do not allow him to see you here, I cannot answer for his not
committing some great imprudence—such as going to Churchhill, for
instance, which would be dreadful! Besides, if you take my advice, and
resolve to marry De Courcy, it will be indispensably necessary to you
to get Mainwaring out of the way; and you only can have influence
enough to send him back to his wife. I have still another motive for
your coming: Mr. Johnson leaves London next Tuesday; he is going for
his health to Bath, where, if the waters are favourable to his
constitution and my wishes, he will be laid up with the gout many
weeks. During his absence we shall be able to chuse our own society,
and to have true enjoyment. I would ask you to Edward Street, but that
once he forced from me a kind of promise never to invite you to my
house; nothing but my being in the utmost distress for money should
have extorted it from me. I can get you, however, a nice drawing-room
apartment in Upper Seymour Street, and we may be always together there
or here; for I consider my promise to Mr. Johnson as comprehending only
(at least in his absence) your not sleeping in the house. Poor
Mainwaring gives me such histories of his wife’s jealousy. Silly woman
to expect constancy from so charming a man! but she always was
silly—intolerably so in marrying him at all, she the heiress of a large
fortune and he without a shilling: one title, I know, she might have
had, besides baronets. Her folly in forming the connection was so great
that, though Mr. Johnson was her guardian, and I do not in general
share _his_ feelings, I never can forgive her.
Adieu. Yours ever,
ALICIA.