Thomas Beddoes to Thomas Wilkinson, 11 May [1799]

My dear Sir

I guessed that you had at last made your escape from the miseries of the solitary state and were become a happy man. No official intelligence of this event however reached; & if there had, for want of your address, I must have failed in the essential article of matrimonial congratulations.

With Dr. Fenwick’s arbitration I am most perfectly satisfied. I hope you were no less so with Dr. Darwin’s letter (which I transmitted to you) on a similar subject.

But there is an item in the general acc^t which Lady A. will shew you that puzzles us. I am sure I know not whether it ought to appear against you. Its amount is large for its object. But this arose from L^y A’s well judged scrupulosity with regard to the personal state of the boys. Nothing that passed between you & me & Mr Ralph can help us here. We must recur to the innate reasonableness of the thing. Probably you understood this to be included – probably it ought to be. I hope you will decide. Believe me, I care not how you do decide, except that I like to have it in my power to have it in my power to do as much as I can for the little fellows. I c^d easily lay out twenty guineas a year in ways advantageous to them, but in articles notwithstanding which I c^d not bring myself to charge – On this account therefore I desire to charge you as much as with perfect propriety I can – The more the better for J & W. I will not be a gainer by them.

If you take a critical retrospect of our agreem^t. it must strike you that if they had had a manservant, his keep w^d have amounted to more than the item in question. I have not been unmindful of this, but in various ways have silently much more than made up for it – I will not tell you how — You will easily enter into my views – However come & see & we will talk confidentially.

Now begging your pardon for drawing so much of your attention to an affair of suds and foul linen

I remain yours very sincerely

Thomas Beddoes

Mrs. Beddoes begs her comp^ts

11 May

Address: Tho^s Wilkinson Esq / Bedford Row
Endorsement: Dr Beddoes
Postmark: 9 o’Clock / 18 MY / 99
MS: Wellcome Institute

The full versions of these letters with textual apparatus will be published by Cambridge University Press.