Thomas Beddoes to Davies Giddy, 3 March 1803
3 March 1803
Dear Giddy
I am just returned from the funeral of my father. It made me think of your last letter about your mother but look back to the event with very different feelings from yours on the occasion of your mother’s long complaint – My father’s age & total helplessness for some time past make me consider his death as a release, which I should desire for myself. He began to be paralytic a year ago & died suddenly by an extension of the complaint. His whole illness & his death were without pain. Nay, he enjoyed food to the hour of his death. He was far from endeavouring to render his house comfortable to the other inhabitants; & perhaps I owe much to this circumstance. The dislike I early imbibed for dissensions within doors may have essentially contributed to the constant serenity I have enjoyed at home & which is little likely to be disturbed by any internal cause. I cd wish my mother, on whose side there was always a great superiority, to find the close of her life comfortable. She will have enough to make her so. But the impotence of wealth is perpetually experienced even by those who have the heart to sacrifice it to health & ease – which great numbers, I see, have not: And then is there not a habit of depression produced by the experience of much disagreeable sensation from surrounding objects, which much younger people carry with them into totally new situations?
During my absence I saw a number of people aged or infirm, whom I years ago I remember young or robust – This was much the most melancholy part of the whole. It is the thing I have always found most spirit-sinking in life. There is in some story-book a fiction of turnips enchanted into damsels to attend a beautiful girl, secluded by an enamoured gnome. They decay as rapidy as the roots out of which they spring. I thought the sorrow of the heroine at the rapid changes of her companions very affecting. Now to see people, with whom you were once familiar, [several words deleted] after a long absence, nearly realises the fiction.
Did you ever consider how to prevent the Hamlet tone of mind? It is the greatest point in education. That what Solomon calls the ‘vanity’ & Darwin the ‘nihility’ of all things shd never occur is what you wd not desire. But it should not be habitual – I wd have it occur but seldom. – If you knew any secret for this purpose, pray let me have it in a legible hand – I do not want it for myself But I wd have it ready, lest little Anna or her future brother or sister should – I see that you contemplative people, whatever other delights you may enjoy, are in general worse off than the active in this respect. Your mind perpetually changes into a huge vault in which the world & every thing it contains, lies entombed – I would not have a child be a living sepulchre of nature – I therefore again beg you to tell me how it may be avoided if you know. – If you know too how the odious selfishness may be prevented, for which the self-humilitation of the melancholy is a preventive.
I know not if my wife has lately shewn a better sense of her duty to your sister – She is weak & far from cheerful – Many women believe childbirth will be fatal to them. She often thinks so. She has no particular reason for thinking so. But there is too much for fearing she may afterwards sink into decay – What different beings will her children be, if this calamity happens.
Remember me to all your family
Yrs truly
Thomas Beddoes
Address: Davies Giddy Esq / Tredrea / Marazion / Cornwall / single
Endorsement: Dr Beddoes / 1803 / March the 3d
MS: Cornish Archives DG 42/24