Feb. 10.
You talk of “permanent views and future comfort”—not for me, for I am
dead to hope. The inquietudes of the last winter have finished the
business, and my heart is not only broken, but my constitution
destroyed. I conceive myself in a galloping consumption, and the
continual anxiety I feel at the thought of leaving my child, feeds the
fever that nightly devours me. It is on her account that I again write
to you, to conjure you, by all that you hold sacred, to leave her here
with the German lady you may have heard me mention! She has a child of
the same age, and they may be brought up together, as I wish her to be
brought up. I shall write more fully on the subject. To facilitate this,
I shall give up my present lodgings, and go into the same house. I can
live much cheaper there, which is now become an object. I have had 3000
livres from ——, and I shall take one more to pay my servant’s wages, &c.
and then I shall endeavour to procure what I want by my own exertions. I
shall entirely give up the acquaintance of the Americans.
—— and I have not been on good terms a long time. Yesterday he very
unmanlily exulted over me, on account of your determination to stay. I
had provoked it is true, by some asperities against commerce, which have
dropped from me, when we have argued about the propriety of your
remaining where you are; and it is no matter, I have drunk too deep of
the bitter cup to care about trifles.
When you first entered into these plans, you bounded your views to the
gaining of a thousand pounds. It was sufficient to have procured a farm
in America, which would have been an independence. You find now that you
did not know yourself, and that a certain situation in life is more
necessary to you than you imagined—more necessary than an uncorrupted
heart—For a year or two you may procure yourself what you call pleasure;
eating, drinking, and women; but in the solitude of declining life, I
shall be remembered with regret—I was going to say with remorse, but
checked my pen.
As I have never concealed the nature of my connection with you,
reputation will not suffer. I shall never have a confident: I am content
with the approbation of my own mind; and, if there be a searcher of
hearts, mine will not be despised. Reading what you have written
relative to the desertion of women, I have often wondered how theory and
practice could be so different, till I recollected, that the sentiments
of passion, and the resolves of reason, are very distinct. As to my
sisters, as you are so continually hurried with business, you need not
write to them—I shall, when my mind is calmer. God bless you! Adieu!
* * * *
This has been such a period of barbarity and misery, I ought not to
complain of having my share. I wish one moment that I had never heard of
the cruelties that have been practised here, and the next envy the
mothers who have been killed with their children. Surely I had suffered
enough in life, not to be cursed with a fondness, that burns up the
vital stream I am imparting. You will think me mad: I would I were so,
that I could forget my misery—so that my head or heart would be still.——