To Miss Fermor, at Silleri.
Quebec, Oct. 7, three o'clock.
My visit to you is prevented by an event beyond my hopes. Sir George
has this moment a letter from his mother, desiring him earnestly to
postpone his marriage till spring, for some reasons of consequence to
his fortune, with the particulars of which she will acquaint him by the
next packet.
He communicated this intelligence to me with a grave air, but with a
tranquillity not to be described, and I received it with a joy I found
it impossible wholly to conceal.
I have now time to consult both my heart and my reason at leisure,
and to break with him, if necessary, by degrees.
What an escape have I had! I was within four and twenty hours of
either determining to marry a man with whom I fear I have little chance
to be happy, or of breaking with him in a manner that would have
subjected one or both of us to the censures of a prying impertinent
world, whose censures the most steady temper cannot always contemn.
I will own to you, my dear, I every hour have more dread of this
marriage: his present situation has brought his faults into full light.
Captain Clayton, with little more than his commission, was modest,
humble, affable to his inferiors, polite to all the world; and I
fancied him possessed of those more active virtues, which I supposed
the smallness of his fortune prevented from appearing. 'Tis with pain I
see that Sir George, with a splendid income, is avaricious, selfish,
proud, vain, and profuse; lavish to every caprice of vanity and
ostentation which regards himself, coldly inattentive to the real
wants of others.
Is this a character to make your Emily happy? We were not formed for
each other: no two minds were ever so different; my happiness is in
friendship, in the tender affections, in the sweets of dear domestic
life; his in the idle parade of affluence, in dress, in equipage, in
all that splendor, which, whilst it excites envy, is too often the mark
of wretchedness.
Shall I say more? Marriage is seldom happy where there is a great
disproportion of fortune. The lover, after he loses that endearing
character in the husband, which in common minds I am afraid is not
long, begins to reflect how many more thousands he might have expected;
and perhaps suspects his mistress of those interested motives in
marrying, of which he now feels his own heart capable. Coldness,
suspicion, and mutual want of esteem and confidence, follow of course.
I will come back with you to Silleri this evening; I have no
happiness but when I am with you. Mrs. Melmoth is so fond of Sir
George, she is eternally persecuting me with his praises; she is
extremely mortified at this delay, and very angry at the manner in
which I behave upon it.