_To Mrs. Fielder_
Philadelphia, October 24.
Impossible! Are you not my mother?--more to me than any mother? Did I
not receive your protection and instruction in my infancy and my
childhood? When left an orphan by my own mother, your bosom was open to
receive me. _There_ was the helpless babe cherished, and there was it
taught all that virtue which it has since endeavoured to preserve
unimpaired in every trial.
You must not cast me off. You must not hate me. You must not call me
ungrateful and a wretch. Not to have merited these names is all that
enables me to endure your displeasure. As long as that belief consoles me,
my heart will not break.
Yet that, even that, will not much avail me. The distress that I now
feel, that I have felt ever since the receipt of your letter, cannot be
increased.
You forbid me to write to you; but I cannot forbear as long as there is
hope of extorting from you the cause of your aversion to my friend. I
solicit not this disclosure with a view or even in the hope of repelling
your objections. I want, I had almost said, I _want_ to share your
antipathies. I want only to be justified in obeying you. When known, they
will, perhaps, be found sufficient. I conjure you once more, tell me your
objections to this marriage.
As well as I can, I have examined myself. Passion may influence me, but
I am unconscious of its influence. I think I act with no exclusive regard
to my own pleasure, but as it flows from and is dependent on the happiness
of others.
If I am mistaken in my notions of duty, God forbid that I should shut
my ears against good counsel. Instead of loathing or shunning it, I am
anxious to hear it. I know my own short-sighted folly, my slight
experience. I know how apt I am to go astray, how often my own heart
deceives me; and hence I always am in search of better knowledge; hence I
listen to admonition, not only with docility, but gratitude. My
inclination ought, perhaps, to be absolutely neuter; but, if I know
myself, it is with reluctance that I withhold my assent from the
expostulator. I am delighted to receive conviction from the arguments of
those that love me.
In this case, I am prepared to hear and weigh, and be convinced by, any
thing you think proper to urge.
I ask not pardon for my faults, nor compassion on my frailty. That I
love Colden I will not deny, but I love his worth; his merits, real or
imaginary, enrapture my soul. Ideal his virtues may be, but to me they are
real, and the moment they cease to be so, that the illusion disappears, I
cease to love him, or, at least, I will do all that is in my power to do.
I will forbear all intercourse or correspondence with him,--for his as
well as my own sake.
Tell me then, my mother, what you know of him. What heinous offence has
he committed, that makes him unworthy of my regard?
You have raised, without knowing it perhaps, or designing to effect it
in this way, a bar to this detested alliance. While you declare that
Colden has been guilty of base actions, it is impossible to grant him my
esteem as fully as a husband should claim. Till I know what the actions
are which you impute to him, I never will bind myself to him by
indissoluble bands.
I have told him this, and he joins with me to entreat you to
communicate your charges to me. He believes that you are misled by some
misapprehension,--some slander. He is conscious that many of his actions
have been, in some respects, ambiguous, capable of being mistaken by
careless, or distant, or prejudiced observers. He believes that you have
been betrayed into some fatal error in relation to _one_ action of
his life.
If this be so, he wishes only to be told his fault, and will spare no
time and no pains to remove your mistake, if you should appear to be
mistaken.
How easily, my good mamma, may the most discerning and impartial be
misled! The ignorant and envious have no choice between truth and error.
Their tale must want something to complete it, or must possess more than
the truth demands. Something you have heard of my friend injurious to his
good name, and you condemn him unheard.
Yet this displeases me not. I am not anxious for his justification, but
only to know so much as will authorize me to conform to your wishes.
You warn me against this marriage for my own sake. You think it will be
disastrous to me.--The reasons of this apprehension would, you think,
appear just in my eyes should they be disclosed, yet you will not disclose
them. Without disclosure I cannot--as a rational creature, I
_cannot_--change my resolution. If then I marry and the evil come
that is threatened, whom have I to blame? at whose door must my
misfortunes be laid if not at hers who had it in her power to prevent the
evil and would not?
Your treatment of me can proceed only from your love; and yet all the
fruits of the direst enmity may grow out of it. By untimely concealments
may my peace be forfeited forever. Judge then between your obligations to
me, and those of secrecy, into which you seem to have entered with
another.
My happiness, my future conduct, are in your hand. Mould them, govern
them, as you think proper. I have pointed out the means, and once more
conjure you, by the love which you once bore, which you still bear, to me,
to use them.