To Miss Rivers, Clarges Street.
Quebec, Oct. 15, evening.
I am returned, my dear, and have had the pleasure of hearing you and
my mother are well, though I have had no letters from either of you.
Mr. Temple, my dearest Lucy, tells me he has visited you. Will you
pardon me a freedom which nothing but the most tender friendship can
warrant, when I tell you that I would wish you to be as little
acquainted with him as politeness allows? He is a most agreable man,
perhaps too agreable, with a thousand amiable qualities; he is the man
I love above all others; and, where women are not concerned, a man of
the most unblemished honor: but his manner of life is extremely
libertine, and his ideas of women unworthy the rest of his character;
he knows not the perfections which adorn the valuable part of your
sex, he is a stranger to your virtues, and incapable, at least I fear
so, of that tender affection which alone can make an amiable woman
happy. With all this, he is polite and attentive, and has a manner,
which, without intending it, is calculated to deceive women into an
opinion of his being attached when he is not: he has all the splendid
virtues which command esteem; is noble, generous, disinterested, open,
brave; and is the most dangerous man on earth to a woman of honor, who
is unacquainted with the arts of man.
Do not however mistake me, my Lucy; I know him to be as incapable
of forming improper designs on you, even were you not the sister of his
friend, as you are of listening to him if he did: 'tis for your heart
alone I am alarmed; he is formed to please; you are young and
inexperienced, and have not yet loved; my anxiety for your peace makes
me dread your loving a man whose views are not turned to marriage, and
who is therefore incapable of returning properly the tenderness of a
woman of honor.
I have seen my divine Emily: her manner of receiving me was very
flattering; I cannot doubt her friendship for me; yet I am not
absolutely content. I am however convinced, by the easy tranquillity of
her air, and her manner of bearing this delay of their marriage, that
she does not love the man for whom she is intended: she has been a
victim to the avarice of her friends. I would fain hope--yet what
have I to hope? If I had even the happiness to be agreable to her, if
she was disengaged from Sir George, my fortune makes it impossible for
me to marry her, without reducing her to indigence at home, or dooming
her to be an exile in Canada for life. I dare not ask myself what I
wish or intend: yet I give way in spite of me to the delight of seeing
and conversing with her.
I must not look forward; I will only enjoy the present pleasure of
believing myself one of the first in her esteem and friendship, and of
shewing her all those little pleasing attentions so dear to a sensible
heart; attentions in which her _lover_ is astonishingly remiss: he
is at Montreal, and I am told was gay and happy on his journey thither,
though he left his mistress behind.
I have spent two very happy days at Silleri, with Emily and your
friend Bell Fermor: to-morrow I meet them at the governor's, where
there is a very agreable assembly on Thursday evenings. Adieu!
Yours,
Ed. Rivers.