You will pity rather than blame me when I tell you that all last week
I have been a good deal indisposed. The changes of weather brought a
severe cold, accompanied with some degree of fever. I was confined
to my room several days, and the state of my spirits as well as that
of my health would have rendered the effort of writing very painful
to me. The effort would have been still more painful with regard
to the subject of your two last letters. I feel your happiness so
much connected with mine, that the account of your sentiments and
situation must disturb the enjoyments and encrease the anxiety of my
own life. I feel it the more deeply as I am sensible that it is not
in my power to remove the two causes of your present uneasiness.
I know not how to offer advice, and I am incapable of giving any
efficacious help. I have easily perceived in my successive visits
to Bath that a dislike of the place, of public life, and of mixed
Society was insensibly gaining ground in your mind: and as I know
that our happiness must always depend on our opinions and habits,
I never presumed to prescribe for the constitution of another.
Business and pleasure, Society or no Society, town or country, have
undoubtedly their respective merits, and every one must on those
subjects think and judge and act for themselves. The gay hurry of
Bath or the silent retirement of Mrs. Massey's in Essex may alike be
enjoyed by the mind to which they are adapted, and the only advice
which I could think of offering, would be, not to engage yourself
rashly in a connection of which you might afterwards repent. I have
always considered marriage as a very serious undertaking, and the
agreement of any friends to live together in the same house is a sort
of marriage. If they have passed several years in different modes of
life, their manners, their opinions, their sentiments on almost every
subject must have contracted a different colour, and every little
circumstance of hours, &c., will prove the cause of mutual restraint
or mutual dissatisfaction.
But I now find, what indeed I have sometimes feared, that your
design of retiring from Bath is not entirely the effect of choice
and inclination; that a stronger power, the power of necessity or at
least of prudence, urges you to take that resolution, and that in
a word you find the place too expensive. You do not explicitly say
what income would support your present establishment, and I am not so
stupid or so ungrateful as not to feel the generous delicacy of your
behaviour. If my own circumstances were affluent, the obligations
and friendship of twenty years would instantly prompt me to gratify
my own inclinations in the performance of sacred duty. I am not
insensible that in my present situation, you have a substantial
and even legal claim upon me to a very considerable amount, and
while I feel the value of your tenderness on this occasion, I must
lament that it is not in my power to attain even the humble though
indispensable virtue of Justice.
[Sidenote: LESS INCOME THAN EXPENSES.]
Without recurring to any recollections which would be painful
to us both, I may appeal to the anxious regard which you have
always felt and expressed for my interest. You know the distressed
embarrassed situation in which my affairs were left, and though I
have always been directed by the advice of Mr. H., I have hitherto
been disappointed in every attempt to extricate myself by the
sale of Lenborough Estate. The prospect of public affairs and the
universal want of money forces me at present to suspend every idea
of a sale, and all credit is so compleatly dead, that in the most
pressing exigency I should be at a loss how to borrow a thousand
pounds. In the mean time I have been paying five per Cent. interest
on a Estate which hardly produced three per Cent.; and in the very
moment when I could the least afford it, the madness of my Buriton
tenant has involved me in new scenes of vexation and expence. My
desires have always been moderate and my domestic economy has been
conducted with tolerable prudence. Yet my income has never been quite
adequate to my expences, and those expences, unless I retired from
Parliament--from London and from England--it would be impossible for
me to retrench. When I look back I cannot find much to censure or
regret in my own conduct, but when I look forwards, I am sometimes
alarmed and perplexed. I should indeed find room to despond, if my
spirits were not supported by the resources which I derive from my
litterary character, and by the well grounded hopes which I build on
the assistance of a tried and powerful friend.
I cannot on _this_ head explain myself more particularly by letter,
but I have the strongest reasons to believe that the year which we
have just begun will not end without producing a material improvement
in my situation. If you have not already taken any decisive steps
about leaving Bath, I could wish that you would suspend them till I
can have the pleasure of conversing with you in the Easter holidays.
If you still persist in your design, why should you bury yourself
at Mrs. Massey's? Some pleasant village retirement at a moderate
distance from London, where I could frequently visit you, might
be consistent with your plan of expence, and you might there find
yourself at once delivered from the costly and tasteless vanities of
a fashionable life. Whatever resolution you adopt, let me hear from
you soon, and always believe me with the most unalterable affection,
Ever yours,
E. G.
I can say nothing of public affairs. Men of all parties--Ministers
themselves--think them bad enough; but I do assure you that I
have not any claims to the injurious epithet of 'a Patriot.' The
apprehension of a Dutch War, though it is now blown over, was real
and serious.
[Sidenote: PROSPECT OF A PLACE.]
366.
_To his Stepmother._
London, January the 26th, 1779.