To John Temple, Esq; Pall Mall.
Quebec, Oct. 14.
I am this moment arrived from a ramble down the river; but, a ship
being just going, must acknowledge your last.
You make me happy in telling me my dear Lady H---- has given my place
in her heart to so honest a fellow as Jack Willmott; and I sincerely
wish the ladies always chose their favorites as well.
I should be very unreasonable indeed to expect constancy at almost
four thousand miles distance, especially when the prospect of my return
is so very uncertain.
My voyage ought undoubtedly to be considered as an abdication: I am
to all intents and purposes dead in law as a lover; and the lady has
a right to consider her heart as vacant, and to proceed to a new
election.
I claim no more than a share in her esteem and remembrance, which I
dare say I shall never want.
That I have amused myself a little in the dowager way, I am very far
from denying; but you will observe, it was less from taste than the
principle of doing as little mischief as possible in my few excursions
to the world of gallantry. A little deviation from the exact rule of
right we men all allow ourselves in love affairs; but I was willing to
keep as near it as I could. Married women are, on my principles,
forbidden fruit; I abhor the seduction of innocence; I am too
delicate, and (with all my modesty) too vain, to be pleased with venal
beauty: what was I then to do, with a heart too active to be absolutely
at rest, and which had not met with its counterpart? Widows were, I
thought, fair prey, as being sufficiently experienced to take care of
themselves.
I have said married women are, on my principles, forbidden fruit: I
should have explained myself; I mean in England, for my ideas on this
head change as soon as I land at Calais.
Such is the amazing force of local prejudice, that I do not
recollect having ever made love to an English married woman, or a
French unmarried one. Marriages in France being made by the parents,
and therefore generally without inclination on either side, gallantry
seems to be a tacit condition, though not absolutely expressed in the
contract.
But to return to my plan: I think it an excellent one; and would
recommend it to all those young men about town, who, like me, find in
their hearts the necessity of loving, before they meet with an object
capable of fixing them for life.
By the way, I think the widows ought to raise a statue to my honor,
for having done my _possible_ to prove that, for the sake of
decorum, morals, and order, they ought to have all the men to
themselves.
I have this moment your letter from Rutland. Do you know I am almost
angry? Your ideas of love are narrow and pedantic; custom has done
enough to make the life of one half of our species tasteless; but you
would reduce them to a state of still greater insipidity than even that
to which our tyranny has doomed them.
You would limit the pleasure of loving and being beloved, and the
charming power of pleasing, to three or four years only in the life of
that sex which is peculiarly formed to feel tenderness; women are born
with more lively affections than men, which are still more softened by
education; to deny them the privilege of being amiable, the only
privilege we allow them, as long as nature continues them so, is such a
mixture of cruelty and false taste as I should never have suspected you
of, notwithstanding your partiality for unripened beauty.
As to myself, I persist in my opinion, that women are most charming
when they join the attractions of the mind to those of the person, when
they feel the passion they inspire; or rather, that they are never
charming till then.
A woman in the first bloom of youth resembles a tree in blossom;
when mature, in fruit: but a woman who retains the charms of her person
till her understanding is in its full perfection, is like those trees
in happier climes, which produce blossoms and fruit together.
You will scarce believe, Jack, that I have lived a week _tête à
tête_, in the midst of a wood, with just the woman I have been
describing; a widow extremely my taste, _mature_, five or six
years more so than you say I require, lively, sensible, handsome,
without saying one civil thing to her; yet nothing can be more certain.
I could give you powerful reasons for my insensibility; but you are
a traitor to love, and therefore have no right to be in any of his
secrets.
I will excuse your visits to my sister; as well as I love you
myself, I have a thousand reasons for chusing she should not be
acquainted with you.
What you say in regard to my mother, gives me pain; I will never
take back my little gift to her; and I cannot live in England on my
present income, though it enables me to live _en prince_ in
Canada.
Adieu! I have not time to say more. I have stole this half hour from
the loveliest woman breathing, whom I am going to visit: surely you are
infinitely obliged to me. To lessen the obligation, however, my calash
is not yet come to the door.
Adieu! once more.
Yours,
Ed. Rivers.