You bid me write to you, and so I will; you bid me pray for you, and so,
indeed, I do, for the restoration of your sweet peace of mind. I pray
for your resignation to this hard blow, for the continued union and
exertion of your virtues with your talents, and for the happiest reward
their exertion can meet with, in the gratitude and prosperity of your
children. These are my prayers for my beloved Mrs. Thrale; but these are
not my only ones; no, the unfailing warmth of her kindness for myself I
have rarely, for a long time past, slept without first petitioning.
I ran away without seeing you again when I found you repented that sweet
compliance with my request which I had won from you. For the world would
I not have pursued you, had I first seen your prohibition, nor could
I endure to owe that consent to teasing which I only solicited from
tenderness. Still, however, I think you had better have suffered me to
follow you; I might have been of some use; I hardly could have been in
your way. But I grieve now to have forced you to an interview which I
would have spared myself as well as you, had I foreseen how little it
would have answered my purpose.
Yet though I cannot help feeling disappointed, I am not surprised; for
in any case at all similar, I am sure I should have the same eagerness
for solitude.
I tell you nothing of how sincerely I sympathise in your affliction; yet
I believe that Mr. Crutchley and Dr. Johnson alone do so more earnestly;
and I have some melancholy comfort in flattering myself that, allowing
for the difference of our characters, that true regard which I felt was
as truly returned. Nothing but kindness did I ever meet with; he ever
loved to have me, not merely with his family, but with himself; and
gratefully shall I ever remember a thousand kind expressions of esteem
and good opinion, which are now crowding upon my memory.