December 30.
Should you receive three or four of the letters at once which I have
written lately, do not think of Sir John Brute, for I do not mean to
wife you. I only take advantage of every occasion, that one out of three
of my epistles may reach your hands, and inform you that I am not
of ——’s opinion, who talks till he makes me angry, of the necessity of
your staying two or three months longer. I do not like this life of
continual inquietude—and, _entre nous_, I am determined to try to earn
some money here myself, in order to convince you that, if you chuse to
run about the world to get a fortune, it is for yourself—for the little
girl and I will live without your assistance, unless you are with us. I
may be termed proud—Be it so—but I will never abandon certain principles
of action.
The common run of men have such an ignoble way of thinking, that if they
debauch their hearts, and prostitute their persons, following perhaps a
gust of inebriation, they suppose the wife, slave rather, whom they
maintain, has no right to complain, and ought to receive the sultan
whenever he deigns to return, with open arms, though his have been
polluted by half an hundred promiscuous amours during his absence.
I consider fidelity and constancy as two distinct things; yet the former
is necessary, to give life to the other—and such a degree of respect do
I think due to myself, that, if only probity, which is a good thing in
its place, brings you back, never return!—for, if a wandering of the
heart, or even a caprice of the imagination detains you—there is an end
of all my hopes of happiness—I could not forgive it, if I would.
I have gotten into a melancholy mood, you perceive. You know my opinion
of men in general; you know that I think them systematic tyrants, and
that it is the rarest thing in the world, to meet with a man with
sufficient delicacy of feeling to govern desire. When I am thus sad, I
lament that my little darling, fondly as I doat on her, is a girl.—I am
sorry to have a tie to a world that for me is ever sown with thorns.
You will call this an ill-humoured letter, when, in fact, it is the
strongest proof of affection I can give, to dread to lose you. —— has
taken such pains to convince me that you must and ought to stay, that it
has inconceivably depressed my spirits.—You have always known my
opinion—I have ever declared, that two people, who mean to live
together, ought not to be long separated. If certain things are more
necessary to you than me—search for them—Say but one word, and you shall
never hear of me more.—If not—for God’s sake, let us struggle with
poverty—with any evil, but these continual inquietudes of business,
which I have been told were to last but a few months, though every day
the end appears more distant! This is the first letter in this strain
that I have determined to forward to you; the rest lie by, because I was
unwilling to give you pain, and I should not now write, if I did not
think that there would be no conclusion to the schemes, which demand, as
I am told, your presence.
* * * *[9]
Footnote 9:
The person to whom the letters are addressed, was about this time at
Ramsgate, on his return, as he professed, to Paris, when he was
recalled, as it should seem, to London, by the further pressure of
business now accumulated upon him.