_To Mrs. Talbot_
Baltimore, November 5.
I highly approve of your letter. It far exceeded the expectations I had
formed of you. You are indeed a surprising creature.
One cannot fail to be astonished at the differences of human
characters; at the opposite principles by which the judgments of men are
influenced.
Experience, however, is the antidote of wonder. There was a time when I
should have reflected on the sentiments of your mother with a firm belief
that no human being could be practically influenced by them.
She offers, and surely with sincerity, to divide her large property
with you; to give away half her estate during her own life, and while,
indeed, she is yet in her prime: and to whom give it? To one who has no
natural relation to her; who is merely an adopted child; who has acted for
several years in direct repugnance to her will, in a manner she regards as
not only indiscreet, but flagrantly criminal. Whom one guilty act has (so
it must appear to your mamma) involved in a continued series of falsehoods
and frauds.
She offers this immense gift to you, on no condition but a mere verbal
promise to break off intercourse with the man you love? and with whom you
have been actually criminal.
She seems not aware how easily promises are made that are not designed
to be performed; how absurd it would be to rely upon your integrity in
this respect, when you have shown yourself (so it must appear to her)
grossly defective in others of infinitely greater moment. How easily might
a heart like yours be persuaded to recall its promises, or violate this
condition, as soon as the performance of her contract has made you
independent of her and of the world!
You promise--it is done in half a dozen syllables--that you will see
the hated Colden no more. All that you promise, you intend. To-morrow she
enriches you with half her fortune. Next day the seducer comes, and may
surely expect to prevail on you to forget this promise, since he has
conquered your firmness in a case of unspeakably greater importance.
This offer of hers surely indicates not only love for you, but
reverence for your good faith inconsistent with the horrid imputation she
has urged against you.
As to me, what a portrait does her letter exhibit! And yet this scoffer
at the obligation of a promise is offered four or five thousand dollars on
condition that he plights his word to embark for England and to give up
all his hopes of you.
Villain as he is; a villain not by habit or by passion, but by
_principle;_ a cool-blooded, systematic villain; yet she will give
him affluence and the means of depraving thousands by his example and his
rhetoric, on condition that he refuses to marry the woman whom he has made
an adulteress; who has imbibed, from the contagion of his discourse, all
the practical and speculative turpitude which he has to impart.
This conduct might be considered only as proving her aversion to me. So
strong is it as to impel her to indiscreet and self-destructive
expedients; and so I should likewise reason if these very expedients did
not argue a confidence in my integrity somewhat inconsistent with the
censure passed on my morals.
After all, is there not reason to question the sincerity of her hatred?
Is not thy mother a dissembler, Jane? Does she really credit the charge
she makes against thee? Does she really suppose me that insane philosopher
which her letter describes?
Yet this is only leaping from a ditch into a quicksand. It is quite as
hard to account for her dissimulation as for her sincerity. Why should she
pretend to suspect _you_ of so black a deed, or me of such abominable
tenets?
And yet, an observer might say, it is one thing to promise and another
to perform, in her case as well as in ours. She tells us what she _will
do_, provided we enter into such engagements; but, if we should embrace
her offers, is it certain that she would not hesitate, repent, and
retract?
Passion may dictate large and vehement offers upon paper, which
deliberating prudence would never allow to be literally adhered to.
Besides, may not these magnificent proposals be dictated by a knowledge
of our characters, which assured her that they would never be accepted?
But, with this belief, why should the offers be made?
The answer is easy. These offers, by the kindness and respect for us
which they manifest, engage our esteem and gratitude, and, by their
magnitude, show how deeply she abhors this connection, and hence dispose
us to do that, for pity's sake, which mere lucre would never
recommend.
And here is a string of guesses to amuse thee, Jane. Their truth or
falsehood is of little moment to us, since these offers ought not to
influence our conduct.
One thing is sure; that is, thy mother's aversion to me. And yet I
ought not to blame her. That I am an atheist in morals, the seducer of her
daughter, she fully believes; and these are surely sufficient objections
to me. Would she be a discerning friend or virtuous mother if she did not,
with this belief, remonstrate against your alliance with one so
wicked?
The fault lies not with her. With whom, then, does it lie? Or, what
only is important, where is the remedy? Expostulation and remonstrance
will avail nothing. I cannot be a hypocrite: I cannot dissemble that I
have _once_ been criminal, and that I am, at present, conscious of a
thousand weaknesses and self-distrusts. There is but one meagre and
equivocal merit that belongs to me. I stick to the truth; yet this is a
virtue of late growth. It has not yet acquired firmness to resist the
undermining waves of habit, or to be motionless amidst the hurricane of
passions.
You offer me yourself. I love you. Shall I not then accept your offer?
Shall my high conception of your merits, and my extreme contempt and
distrust of myself, hinder me from receiving so precious a boon? Shall I
not make happy by being happy? Since you value me so much beyond my
merits; since my faults, though fully disclosed to you, do not abate your
esteem, do not change your views in my favour, shall I withhold my
hand?
I am not obdurate. I am not ungrateful. With you I never was a
hypocrite. With the rest of the world I have ceased to be so. If I look
forward without confidence, I look back with humiliation and remorse. I
have always wished to be good, but, till I knew you, I despaired of ever
being so, and even now my hopes are perpetually drooping.
I sometimes question, especially since your actual condition is known,
whether I should accept your offered hand; but mistake me not, my beloved
creature. My distrust does not arise from any doubts of my own constancy.
That I shall grow indifferent or forgetful or ungrateful to you, can never
be.
All my doubts are connected with you. Can I compensate you for those
losses which will follow your marriage?--the loss of your mother's
affection,--the exchange of all that splendour and abundance you have
hitherto enjoyed for obscurity and indigence?
You say I _can_. The image of myself in my own mind is a sorry
compound of hateful or despicable qualities. I am even out of humour with
my person, my face. So absurd am I in my estimates of merit, that my
homely features and my scanty form had their part in restraining me from
aspiring to one supreme in loveliness, and in causing the surprise that
followed the discovery of your passion.
In your eyes, however, this mind and this person are venerable and
attractive. My affection, my company, are chief goods with you. The
possession of all other goods cannot save you from misery, if this be
wanting. The loss of all others will not bereave you of happiness if this
be possessed.
Fain would I believe you. You decide but reasonably. Fortune's goods
ought not to be so highly prized as the reason of many prizes them, and as
my habits, in spite of reason's dissent and remonstrances, compel me to
prize them. They contribute less to your happiness, and that industry and
frugality which supplies their place, you look upon without disgust; with
even some degree of satisfaction.
Not so I: I cannot labour for bread; I cannot work to live. In that
respect I have no parallel. The world does not contain my likeness. My
very nature unfits me for any profitable business. My dependence must ever
be on others or on fortune.
As to the influence of some stronger motive to industry than has yet
occurred, I am without hope. There can be no stronger ones to a generous
mind, than have long been urgent with me: being proof against these, none
will ever conquer my reluctance.
I am not indolent, but my activity is vague, profitless, capricious. No
lucrative or noble purpose impels me. I aim at nothing but selfish
gratification. I have no relish, indeed, for sensual indulgences. It is
the intellectual taste that calls for such banquets as imagination and
science can furnish; but, though less sordid than the epicure, the
voluptuary, or the sportsman, the principle that governs them and me is
the same; equally limited to self; equally void of any basis in morals or
religion.
Should you give yourself to me, and rely upon my _labour_ for
shelter and food, deplorable and complete would be your disappointment. I
know myself too well to trust myself with such an office. My love for you
would not strengthen my heart or my hands. No; it would only sink me with
more speed into despair. Quickly, and by some fatal deed, should I abandon
you, my children and the world.
Possibly I err. Possibly I underrate my strength of mind and the
influence of habit, which makes easy to us every path; but I will not
trust to the _possible_.
Hence it is that, if by marriage you should become wholly dependent on
me, it could never take place. Some freak of fortune may indeed place me
above want, but my own efforts never will. Indeed, in this forbearance, in
this self-denial, there is no merit. While admitted to the privileges of a
betrothed man, your company, your confidence, every warrantable proof of
love mine, I may surely dispense with the privileges of wedlock. Secretly
repine I might; occasionally I might murmur. But my days would glide along
with fewer obstacles, at least, than if I were that infirm and
disconsolate wretch, _your husband_.
But this unhappy alternative is not ours. Thou hast something which thy
mother cannot take away; sufficient for thy maintenance, thy frugal
support. Meaner and more limited indeed than thy present and former
affluence; such as I, of my own motion, would never reduce thee to; such
as I can object to only on thy own account.
How has the night run away! My friend's sister arrived here yesterday.
They joined in beseeching me to go to a separate chamber and strive for
some refreshment. I have slept a couple of hours, and that has sufficed.
My mind, on waking, was thronged with so many images connected with my
Jane, that I started up at last and betook myself to the pen.
Yet how versatile and fleeting is thought! In this long letter I have
not put down one thing that I intended. I meant not to repeat what has
been so often said before, and especially I meant not to revolve, if I
could help it, any gloomy ideas.
Thy letters gave me exquisite pleasure. They displayed all thy charming
self to my view. I pressed every precious line to my lips with nearly as
much rapture as I would have done the prattler herself, had she been
talking to me all this tenderness instead of writing it.
I took up the pen that I might tell thee my thanks, yet rambled almost
instantly into mournful repetitions. I have half a mind to burn the
scribble, but I cannot write more just now, and this will show you, at
least, that I am not unmindful of you. Adieu.