Thomas Beddoes to Davies Giddy, [late November/early December 1791]
My dear Friend
Jaded as I am by the performance of the insipid duties of life, I wish I had sate down to write to you at a moment when I was animated with a more agreeable sense of my existence. I have abundance of trifles to tell you – such trifles that if you did not know several of those persons whom they have so much amused as well as the parties whom they concern & if you had not yourself borne a share in their origin, I shd be without the shadow of an excuse for taking up your time with a relation of them. Soon after the receipt of your last letter I was at the Bank. Reynolds was hardly satisfied with your delay in writing to him & he expressed a good deal of impatience on acct of a parcel which he said he expected from you. On the 2nd of the two nights that I remained with him, a parcel was ushered in with the names of all the present towns [xxxx] Shropshire & Cornwall in printed characters upon it as if it had been <regularly> forwarded from one to another. He took out a letter & a book; & when he had read a few sentences of the letter, he asked me to decypher a word & I recognized your hand. I said I supposed it wd be no crime to look into a book which had travelled so far & had cost above its own value in the carriage. ‘You must not touch the book; though if you have any presentiment of its contents, I cd forgive a little impatience; however you must wait this time: I wish to teach you a little patience’. ‘I am much obliged to you for your kind intentions; & as an encouragement to you to proceed in your lessons, you shall find that I have docility at least’. So I sate down. After bestowing a great deal of apparent attention upon the letter, he opened the book & took out of it – the portrait of a lady in which was exhibited the happiest assemblage of sense, animation & beauty that was ever, I think, designed by the pencil. A bandeau passed obliquely round the hair & on the bandeau was fastened the signal of patriotism. Below was written ‘Thou Rosalind of Cornwall’s bowers’. Confounded as I was by so unexpected an exhibition, I replied with some hesitation in the affirmative when he asked me if the drawing bore any resemblance, at the same time reading out of your letter an apology for the unskilfulness of the artist I suppose I was induced to return this answer by a resolution of which I was hardly conscious at the instant – not to spoil amusement which had been promised at so much pain & expence. After my gentleman had sufficiently enjoyed the success of his stratagem, he condescended to explain it. His imagination had been wonderfully smitten with the account I was able to give of the elegant accomplishments of the lady: her proposal for the ordination of unmarried damsels had also very much pleased him & he paid one or two of my lines the compliment of carrying them constantly in his mouth for 3 or 4 days. Mrs Reynolds told me that his sleep was disturbed by the thoughts of the unknown beauty to whom they related & she added ‘Do whatever thou shalt please with thy Rosalind, only never bring her hither. I am sure my husband will despise me if ever he shd see her’. During the fervor of his fancy he questioned me very particularly in the subject of her person & features. He then closeted himself a whole day with a person of Birmingham whose genius for design is hardly equaled by artists of much higher repute. The result of their deliberations was the portrait I have mentioned. The letter you wrote while I was at Tredrea favoured the scheme by giving it the sanction of what I cd not doubt to be your handwriting. And I [xxxx] imagine the contriver of it, in the fullness of his self-inspiration, has entertained you (in the French sense of that term at least) with a variety of speculations concerning me – A lady, who had begged a copy of the lines, has just informed me that she has sent them to a celebrated composer at Liverpool & that she expects the tune in 3 or 4 days. You see how the idle Divinity of rhime has set her idle sister Powers to work. It might amuse you & your friends to compare the portrait with what can hardly be called the original; & I wd send it if I were not afraid of spoiling a drawing so exquisitely beautiful – The music when it comes I will send: & your sister may chaunt the praises of her cousin or, for I dare say you will humour me so far as to have a copy taken, the cousin may chaunt her own praises. In the mean time her reputation, I have every reason to believe, is spreading from tea table to tea table & the ladies regard her as the miraculous production of a distant country, beautiful & accomplished beyond the ordinary measure of mortals & so perfectly angelic that they cannot find in their hearts even to envy her. The gentlemen, if I had not returned with some remains of life, wd have supposed it impossible to look & live; but the comparative delicacy of my shape they will perforce impute to the sunshine of her eyes. Such power of fascination do certain trains of ideas possess! I shd not think it impossible for another Petrarch even in this philosophic age to immortalize another Laura. Do not however suppose that my verses have thus powerfully excited the imagination of my neighbours. I have often exhibited the portrait without giving any account of the manner in which it was fabricated.
I have <lately> held two or three communications with Darwin at second hand. The 1st Vol. of the Bot. Garden is finished. The bookseller only waits for the meeting of Parliament in order to publish it. There will be a vast deal of curious & original matter in the notes on the subject of vegetation. As to the poetry, that cannot but be excellent. I doubt whether I ought to send you the specimen I talked of in a former letter. I have ceased to believe however that it will not appear as a digression: it is too long: and I believe the author will work it up into a whole or print it separately. I have a few of the lines copied & enclose them. You shall have the remainder if you choose. The other verses are by Mrs Barbauld, in my opinion the most respectable of our female consumers of printer’s ink.
The proposals for a history of our Borough you will be glad to see & may perhaps be disposed to encourage the work. The design as far as it concerns this one object is good & useful. But to talk of restoring our constitution to its antient state is to me very offensive nonsense. And I am grieved to hear so many people found our rights to reformation on what they suppose our fore fathers to have possessed. Where it is practicable, it is always desireable to have a concise & clear argument on a subject in which the ideas of common talkers are so vague. Is the following reductio ad absurdum conclusive? Suppose two contiguous countries like England & Scotland governed each by an absolute monarch; suppose also that one country had <at one period> a legislature elected by the whole people: suppose the other had never enjoyed this nor any other institution belonging to a free government; then according to this doctrine the former wd have a perfect right to threw off the shackles & the despot wd have a perfect right to keep the other enslaved: which is absurd: q. e. d.
I am not extremely elated at your success in the R. S. I fully expected it. But I am most sincerely grieved at the other appointment. Though you had before abundantly incurred the displeasure of the P. of W’s party & this blunderbuss was full charged with ill will against you, yet have I not reason to fear lest a certain paper dated ‘Tredrea’ gave the spark that produced the explosion? If this suspicion have any foundation, I shall be severely punished for an unintentional offence. There is nothing, I am afraid, in the discharge of the office which can in any degree compensate for the trouble & expence attending it.
I do not believe you had seen any Chinese sugar when I left Tredrea. I enclose a sample. Numberless families, even among the rich, are leaving off sugar. I did not believe that so much self-denial, whether from virtue or caprice or parsimony, had existed among Men & Women –
Tell your father that the Reynoldses can give no acct of the man he enquires after. Of the Pil. Lunares I am perfectly ignorant. I suppose from the name they contain nitrated silver – I am truly ashamed to look back on what I have written. If I have here & there omitted a word necessary to the sense, you can be at no loss to supply it. I made two or three corrections in going on. I can only promise that as soon as the sunrise arrives I will seize the opportunity of attempting a letter more worthy of my correspondent.
T Beddoes
MS: Cornish Archives MS DG 41/51 and 41/58