Thomas Beddoes to Davies Giddy, May 1807
Dear Giddy
You know by this time that my wife & children have eloped for a short time – the children uncommonly flourishing, save & except some suffering on the part of the youngest from the teeth – the wife so strikingly altered for the worse, that as the landlady at Uphill said nobody wd take her for the same woman though God knows she was thin enough when at Uphill before. But now, as the frame never decays uniformly, there seems too strong signs of that sort of disease of the stomach, under which Mrs Clarkson laboured & which indeed she derived from a similar course – Great occasions have unexpectedly concurred to cut my wife down, as the death of Charlotte & Lovell’s distress But trifles now are sufficient – Indeed anything that has interested her much for a long time has done her harm – & very often she has been injured by taking an interest in those affairs of others, which very little concerned the principals as Miss Savery’s affair with Tobin – much better had it been for her had her feeling been dissipated among a number of acquaintances –
The most vexatious circumstance is that before her brothers (Sneyd) visit she looked & felt getting steadily better – Then upon his appearance all her habits were suddenly changed – & she has gradually declined so that you may almost calculate beyond what time she cannot last – If I were likely to go on long without a fatal return of my complaint, it wd be better for the children, at least, for Anna, not to outlive their mother – I do not think of these things at all hypochondriacally – that is low spirits are not previous to their occurrence –
I have no doubt, but the fortunate interposition of some moral cause might save Mrs B – But one cannot prescribe that – Going to London & first keeping the mind fixed on it & beginning preparations is more likely than any <other> upon which one can reckon – I am Dear Giddy
yrs truly
Thomas Beddoes
Endorsement: May 1807
MS: Cornish Archives DG 43/43