Since I find that you have paid so much regard to my complaints as to
publish them, I am inclined by vanity, or gratitude, to continue our
correspondence; and indeed, without either of these motives, am glad of an
opportunity to write, for I am not accustomed to keep in any thing that
swells my heart, and have here none with whom I can freely converse. While
I am thus employed, some tedious hours will slip away, and when I return
to watch the clock, I shall find that I have disburdened myself of part
of the day.
You perceive that I do not pretend to write with much consideration
of any thing but my own convenience; and, not to conceal from you my
real sentiments, the little time which I have spent, against my will,
in solitary meditation, has not much contributed to my veneration for
authors. I have now sufficient reason to suspect, that, with all your
splendid professions of wisdom, and seeming regard for truth, you have
very little sincerity; that you either write what you do not think, and
willingly impose upon mankind, or that you take no care to think right,
but while you set up yourselves as guides, mislead your followers by
credulity or negligence; that you produce to the publick whatever notions
you can speciously maintain, or elegantly express, without enquiring
whether they are just, and transcribe hereditary falsehoods from old
authors perhaps as ignorant and careless as yourselves.
You may perhaps wonder that I express myself with so much acrimony on a
question in which women are supposed to have very little interest; and
you are likely enough, for I have seen many instances of the sauciness
of scholars, to tell me, that I am more properly employed in playing with
my kittens, than in giving myself airs of criticism, and censuring the
learned. But you are mistaken, if you imagine that I am to be intimidated
by your contempt, or silenced by your reproofs. As I read, I have a
right to judge; as I am injured, I have a right to complain; and these
privileges, which I have purchased at so dear a rate, I shall not easily
be persuaded to resign.
To read has, indeed, never been my business, but as there are hours of
leisure in the most active life, I have passed the superfluities of
time, which the diversions of the town left upon my hands, in turning
over a large collection of tragedies and romances, where, amongst other
sentiments common to all authors of this class, I have found almost every
page filled with the charms and happiness of a country life; that life
to which every statesman in the highest elevation of his prosperity is
contriving to retire; that life to which every tragic heroine in some
scene or other wishes to have been born, and which is represented as a
certain refuge from folly, from anxiety, from passion, and from guilt.
It was impossible to read so many passionate exclamations, and soothing
descriptions, without feeling some desire to enjoy the state in which all
this felicity was to be enjoyed; and therefore I received with raptures
the invitation of my good aunt, and expected that by some unknown
influence I should find all hopes and fears, jealousies and competitions,
vanish from my heart upon my first arrival at the seats of innocence
and tranquillity; that I should sleep in halcyon bowers, and wander in
elysian gardens, where I should meet with nothing but the softness of
benevolence, the candour of simplicity, and the cheerfulness of content;
where I should see reason exerting her sovereignty over life, without any
interruption from envy, avarice, or ambition, and every day passing in
such a manner as the severest wisdom should approve.
This, Mr. Rambler, I tell you I expected, and this I had by an hundred
authors been taught to expect. By this expectation I was led hither, and
here I live in perpetual uneasiness, without any other comfort than that
of hoping to return to London.
Having, since I wrote my former letter, been driven by the mere necessity
of escaping from absolute inactivity, to make myself more acquainted
with the affairs and inhabitants of this place, I am now no longer an
absolute stranger to rural conversation and employments, but am far from
discovering in them more innocence or wisdom, than in the sentiments
or conduct of those with whom I have passed more cheerful and more
fashionable hours.
It is common to reproach the tea-table, and the park, with given
opportunities and encouragement to scandal. I cannot wholly clear them
from the charge; but must, however, observe in favour of the modish
prattlers, that if not by principle, we are at least by accident, less
guilty of defamation than the country ladies. For having greater numbers
to observe and censure, we are commonly content to charge them only with
their own faults or follies, and seldom give way to malevolence, but
such as arises from some injury or affront, real or imaginary, offered
to ourselves. But in these distant provinces, where the same families
inhabit the same houses from age to age, they transmit and recount the
faults of a whole succession. I have been informed how every estate
in the neighbourhood was originally got, and find, if I may credit the
accounts given me, that there is not a single acre in the hands of the
right owner. I have been told of intrigues between beaux and toasts
that have been now three centuries in their quiet graves, and am often
entertained with traditional scandal on persons of whose names there
would have been no remembrance, had they not committed somewhat that
might disgrace their descendants.
In one of my visits I happened to commend the air and dignity of a young
lady, who had just left the company; upon which two grave matrons looked
with great sliness at each other, and the elder asked me whether I had
ever seen the picture of Henry the eighth. You may imagine that I did
not immediately perceive the propriety of the question: but after having
waited awhile for information, I was told that the lady's grandmother
had a great-great-grandmother that was an attendant on Anna Bullen, and
supposed to have been too much a favourite of the king.
If once there happens a quarrel between the principal persons of two
families, the malignity is continued without end, and it is common for
old maids to fall out about some election, in which their grandfathers
were competitors; the heart-burnings of the civil war are not yet
extinguished; there are two families in the neighbourhood who have
destroyed each other's game from the time of Philip and Mary; and when
an account came of an inundation, which had injured the plantations of
a worthy gentleman, one of the hearers remarked, with exultation, that
he might now have some notion of the ravages committed by his ancestors
in their retreat from Bosworth.
Thus malice and hatred descend here with an inheritance, and it is
necessary to be well versed in history, that the various factions of
this county may be understood. You cannot expect to be on good terms with
families who are resolved to love nothing in common; and, in selecting
your intimates, you are perhaps to consider which party you most favour
in the barons' wars. I have often lost the good opinion of my aunt's
visitants by confounding the interests of York and Lancaster, and was
once censured for sitting silent when William Rufus was called a tyrant.
I have, however, now thrown aside all pretences to circumspection, for
I find it impossible in less than seven years to learn all the requisite
cautions. At London, if you know your company, and their parents,
you are safe; but you are here suspected of alluding to the slips of
great-grandmothers, and of reviving contests which were decided in armour
by the redoubted knights of ancient times. I hope, therefore, that you
will not condemn my impatience, if I am weary of attending where nothing
can be learned, and of quarrelling where there is nothing to contest, and
that you will contribute to divert me while I stay here by some facetious
performance.