To Miss Fermor, at Silleri.
Pall Mall, July 29.
I am the happiest of human beings: my Rivers is arrived, he is well,
he loves me; I am dear to his family; I see him without restraint; I
am every hour more convinced of the excess of his affection; his
attention to me is inconceivable; his eyes every moment tell me, I am
dearer to him than life.
I am to be for some time on a visit to his sister; he is at Mrs.
Rivers's, but we are always together: we go down next week to Mr.
Temple's, in Rutland; they only stayed in town, expecting Rivers's
arrival. His seat is within six miles of Rivers's little paternal
estate, which he settled on his mother when he left England; she
presses him to resume it, but he peremptorily refuses: he insists on
her continuing her house in town, and being perfectly independent, and
mistress of herself.
I love him a thousand times more for this tenderness to her; though
it disappoints my dear hope of being his. Did I think it possible, my
dear Bell, he could have risen higher in my esteem?
If we are never united, if we always live as at present, his
tenderness will still make the delight of my life; to see him, to hear
that voice, to be his friend, the confidante of all his purposes, of
all his designs, to hear the sentiments of that generous, that exalted
soul--I would not give up this delight, to be empress of the world.
My ideas of affection are perhaps uncommon; but they are not the less
just, nor the less in nature.
A blind man may as well judge of colors as the mass of mankind of
the sentiments of a truly enamored heart.
The sensual and the cold will equally condemn my affection as
romantic: few minds, my dear Bell, are capable of love; they feel
passion, they feel esteem; they even feel that mixture of both which is
the best counterfeit of love; but of that vivifying fire, that lively
tenderness which hurries us out of ourselves, they know nothing; that
tenderness which makes us forget ourselves, when the interest, the
happiness, the honor, of him we love is concerned; that tenderness
which renders the beloved object all that we see in the creation.
Yes, my Rivers, I live, I breathe, I exist, for you alone: be happy,
and your Emily is so.
My dear friend, you know love, and will therefore bear with all the
impertinence of a tender heart.
I hope you have by this time made Fitzgerald happy; he deserves you,
amiable as you are, and you cannot too soon convince him of your
affection: you sometimes play cruelly with his tenderness: I have been
astonished to see you torment a heart which adores you.