I have been (what I never was till now) in debt to you for a letter
some weeks. I was informed you were at sea, and that 'twas to no
purpose to write till some news had been heard of you somewhere or
other. Besides, I have had a second dangerous illness, from which I
was more diligent to be recovered than from the first, having now some
hopes of seeing you again. If you make any tour in Italy, I shall not
easily forgive you for not acquainting me soon enough to have met you
there. I am very certain I shall never be polite unless I travel with
you, and it is never to be repaired, the loss that Homer has sustained
for want of my translating him in Asia.
You will come here full of criticisms against a man who wanted nothing
to be in the right, but to have kept you company; you have no way of
making me amends but by continuing an Asiatic when you return to me,
whatever English airs you may put on to other people. I prodigiously
long for your sounds, your remarks, your Oriental learning; but I long
for nothing so much as your Oriental self. You must of necessity be
advanced so far back in true nature and simplicity of manners, by
these three years' residence in the East, that I shall look upon you
as so many years younger than you was, so much nearer innocence (that
is truth) and infancy (that is openness). I expect to see your soul as
much thinner drest than your body, and that you have left off as weary
and cumbersome a great many damned European habits. Without offense to
your modesty be it spoken, I have a burning desire to see your soul
stark naked, for I am confident it is the prettiest kind of white soul
in the universe. But I forget whom I am talking to; you may possibly
by this time believe according to the Prophet, that you have none; if
so, show me that which comes next to a soul, you may easily put it
upon a poor ignorant Christian for a soul and please him as well with
it--I mean your heart--Mohammed I think allows you hearts; which
(together with fine eyes and other agreeable equivalents) are with all
the souls on the other side of the world.
But if I must be content with seeing your body only, God send it come
quickly. I honor it more than the diamond casket that held Homer's
Iliads; for in the very twinkle of one eye of it there is more wit,
and in the very dimple of one cheek of it there is more meaning, than
all the souls that were carefully put into woman since God had the
making of them.
I have a mind to fill the rest of this paper with an accident that has
happened just under my eyes, and has made a great impression on me. I
have just passed part of the summer at an old romantic seat of my Lord
Harcourt's which he lent me. It overlooks a commonfield, where, under
the shade of the haycock, sat two lovers as constant as ever were
found in romance, beneath a spreading beech. The name of the one (let
it sound as it will) was John Hewet; of the other, Sarah Drew. John
was a well-set man of about five and twenty, Sarah a brown woman of
eighteen. John had for several months borne the labor of the day in
the same field with Sarah; when she milked it was his morning and
evening charge to bring the cows to her pail.
Their love was the talk, but not the scandal, of the whole
neighborhood; for all they aimed at was the blameless possession of
each other in marriage. It was but this very morning that he had
obtained her parent's consent, and it was but till the next week that
they were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the interval
of their work, they were talking about their wedding clothes, and
John was now matching several kinds of poppies and field flowers to
her complexion to make her a present of knots for the day.
While they are thus employed (it was in the last of July) a terrible
storm of thunder and lightning arose, that drove the laborers to what
shelter the trees or hedge afforded. Sarah, frightened and out of
breath, sunk on a haycock, and John (who was never separated from her)
sate by her side, having raked two or three heaps together to secure
her. Immediately there was heard so loud a crash as if heaven were
burst asunder. The laborers, all solicitous for each other's safety,
called to one another. Those that were nearest our lovers, hearing no
answer, stept to the place where they lay; they first saw a little
smoke and after this the faithful pair--John with one arm about his
Sarah's neck, and the other held over her face as if to screen her
from the lightning. They were struck dead and already grown stiff and
cold in this tender posture. There was no mark or discoloring on their
bodies, only that Sarah's eyebrow was a little singed and a small spot
between her breasts. They were buried the next day in one grave, in
the parish of Stanton Harcourt, in Oxfordshire; where my lord
Harcourt, at my request, has erected a monument over them....
Upon the whole, I can't think these people unhappy. The greatest
happiness, next to living as they would have done, was to die as they
did. The greatest honor people of their low degree could have was to
be remembered on a little monument; unless you will give them
another--that of being honored with a tear from the finest eyes in
the world. I know you have tenderness; you must have it; it is the
very emanation of good sense and virtue; the finest minds like the
finest metals dissolve the easiest.
But when you are reflecting upon objects of pity, pray do not forget
one, who had no sooner found out an object of the highest esteem than
he was separated from it; and who is so very unhappy as not to be
susceptible of consolation from others, by being so miserable in the
right as to think other women what they really are. Such a one can't
but be desperately fond of any creature that is quite different from
these. If the Circassian be utterly void of such honor as these have,
and such virtue as these boast of, I am content. I have detested the
sound of honest woman, and loving spouse, ever since I heard the
pretty name of Odaliche.
Dear Madam, I am forever yours,
My most humble services to Mr. Wortley.[10] Pray let me hear from you
soon, tho I shall very soon write again. I am confident half our
letters are lost.