Anna Beddoes to Davies Giddy, written on or shortly before 8 November 1800
Though not a learned lady, I dare venture to write to you, and what is more, I have the presumption to feel pretty certain that I shall not meet with the contempt which others might think I deserve – I am determined to intrude into your solitary study to stop for a little moment the intensity of your application – lay down your crabbed book for a few minutes – you can’t help obeying me – you know you can’t – Dr B says you would be well, if you were not shut up like a poor little bird in a cage, – you have been better, you are so, and you shall continue so, the mind must not always be screwed up to its highest pitch or it is impossible for the body not to lose its tone – Mind what I say to you I am not joking, so you need not laugh at me — yes do laugh – this is the very thing you should do – and please to take the trouble of writing me a few legible lines to tell us that you are as well as when Mr Hawkins heard from you last – nasty conceited fellow, if you write to him, I am sure you shall to me, for this excellent reason, I shall value the letter as highly as he does his delicate picked out person and more highly it cannot be valued – I beg pardon – I do not mean to depreciate in any degree the various merits of Mr Hawkins. – Heaven forbid – – no, no, – – but if you can spare time to talk with him so you shall with me, that is all [1] – Do you remember your friend Mrs Wynch? [2] she does you, I can tell you, nay she has actually written a poetical Epistle, in answer to one written to her in your name by Emmeline [3] – if you wish to see what kind of figure you cut, your laudable curiosity shall be gratified, the letters are both masterpieces in their kind – No wonder when Mrs Wynch was inspired by Mr Giddy. Oh! vile, illnatured, unkind man, not one word, either to Emmeline or to me in your letters to Dr B. [4] E [5] feels your cruelty more poignantly than I do, but I have been told that I have no heart, and that ‘accounts for it’– Your old Cornish visitor Gregory Watt[6] has lately been inspecting the Pneumatic Institution, where he has seen wonders [7] – – I wish you were here, that we might torment you, pull you by the coat – drag you where we please tear the red pocket handkerchief from your throat and a thousand nice little jobs of this kind – amongst them we must not omit sitting on the sopha, and reading that dear beautiful elegant little Anacreon. [8]Come again [9] – do come again sometime. we all love you, you know, and you must love us of course – our rivals the Procters are at Bath – could not long remain at Clifton after you – John and Billy [10]would please you now, they are so much improved in their Latin – – I am going to proceed in German – and if I have the happiness to succeed in this, I shall not despair, of sitting (in due time) in the same form with the celebrated Miss Dennis [11]— higher I dare not aspire. Pray does it require more talents to write a Play or a Novel?[12] — Give my best love to your dear good affectionate sister [13] – she is my sister too – ask her, so you are my brother — and so you are, I believe, for I always like to tell you every thing I think just as if you really were one — and so my dear new Brother farewell, only tell me you are pretty well, and that you forgive my impertinence
yours truly
Anna Maria B –
Dr B says, this will amuse you for a moment as you do not pay for it – a letter from you will delight me even though it were a double one [14] – so do write to me – [15]
So I hope Mr Giddy does not forget Emmeline who often thinks of him notwithstanding you sd I wd laugh when you went. I hope you will come here again before I die that is before I go away – I am very glad your mother is so much better [16]– kind love to your sister — adieu your affect Emmeline Edgeworth [17]
Take care of yourself for there are few so bad you understand! [18]
Address: Davies Giddy Esq / Tredrea / Marazion / Cornwall
Postmark: Bristol / Nov 8 800
Endorsement: 1800 / Novr. the 8th —
Notes
[1] Giddy knew both John Hawkins (1761–1841) and his brother Christopher (1758–1829), Cornish neighbours of Giddy’s. He had a closer relationship with John, a country landowner who pursued, as an amateur, his interests in science, literature and art. He had studied mining and mineralogy under Abraham Gottlob Werner Germany and in 1791 accompanied Giddy and Thomas Beddoes on a geological trip in Cornwall. The tone of Anna’s remarks makes it more likely that she meant Christopher: he was known as a political fixer who bought and sold influence – a boroughmonger. He was a wealthy mine owner and a Tory MP with considerable power in the county; Giddy had, since 1792 been serving as High Sheriff and then Deputy Lieutenant of Cornwall.
[2] Rhoda Wynch, née Crockett (1754–1847), wife of a patient of Beddoes’s who was staying in Clifton. Anna had been conducting a love affair with her husband William Wynch (1750–1819). Giddy would have met her in August or September 1800 in Clifton, when he too was a patient of Beddoes (who was also his former tutor at Pembroke College Oxford and his friend).
[3] Emmeline King, née Edgeworth (1770–1848), Anna’s sister, who in 1802 married Johan Konig/John King (1766–1846), the friend and assistant of Anna’s husband Thomas Beddoes. The Kings lived in an adjacent house in Clifton, Bristol to the Beddoes at 3 Rodney Parade.
[4] Thomas Beddoes, Anna’s husband.
[5] Emmeline King, Anna’s sister.
[6] Gregory Watt (1777–1804) was the son of the engineer and chemist James Watt. Both he and his father were friends of Beddoes, and Beddoes was treating Gregory for consumption. Gregory had stayed in Penzance, near Giddy, in the winter of 1797–98 in an effort to improve his health.
[7] In 1798 Watt had recommended to Beddoes a youth whom he had met while staying in Cornwall – Humphry Davy (1778–1829) – as the chemical experimentalist at the Pneumatic Institution that Beddoes was in the process of establishing at Clifton. Davy was hired, and in 1799 began testing various gases, including nitrous oxide, on volunteers, many of whom reported exhilarating effects. Beddoes hoped that this gas would cure consumption and palsy; Gregory Watt inhaled it during his 1800 visit but, Davy reported, was much less affected than anyone else.
[8] Anacreon (c.575–c.–495 BC), the Greek poet of love lyrics.
[9] Giddy had been in Clifton, ill, for treatment by Beddoes, in August and September. During that time, he had dined and socialised with Anna and met Emmeline for the first time.
[10] John George Lambton, later 1st Earl of Durham (1792–1840). The eldest son of Beddoes’s deceased patient William Henry Lambton (1764–97) and the inheritor of vast wealth from coalmining, Lambton lived from 1798 to 1803 with Beddoes, undergoing an unconventional education for a boy of his class that left him radical views as a man, expressed in his parliamentary career and as Governor General of Canada. Anna later wrote of him and his younger brother William Henry Lambton (Billy) (1793–1866). ‘Dr B took more pains with those children, shewed them more kindness, and exerted himself in every respect more for them than I could have supposed it possible for him to have done for any two individuals – for my own part I loved them almost as much as I do little Anna, John Lambton the eldest I have often, & often wished had been my son, so that <you> see I feel extremely interested in their fate, if they do not shine superior, I shall regret it’ (letter to Davies Giddy of 23 October 1803).
[11] Evidently Giddy, recognising that Anna was highly intelligent but poorly educated, had encouraged her to learn languages. He was the mentor and tutor of the Cornishwoman Thomasina Dennis (1771–1809), having taught her Latin and Greek and encouraged her ambitions to be a writer. His recommendation secured for her a post as governess of the children of Josiah Wedgwood Jr (1769–1843) and his wife Elizabeth, née Allen (1764-1846) in 1798. She came to live with the Wedgwoods in Clifton in November 1799, where she met Davy and inhaled nitrous oxide at the Pneumatic Institution. Lonely and depressed, she became ill, and returned to Cornwall in 1800.
[12] Among Anna’s acquaintances was S. T. Coleridge, who had written the play Osorio in 1797 and whose translation of Friedrich Schiller’s drama Wallenstein was published in 1800. Thomasina Dennis published a novel, Sophia St. Clare, in 1806.
[13] Mary Philippa Davies Giddy (1769–1850), the sister of Davies Giddy. She married Thomas Beddoes’ acquaintance John Lewis Guillemard in December 1804.
[14] In 1800 the recipient of a letter paid the postage, but Giddy’s official position exempted him. A ‘double’ letter – that is, one of two sheets folded together – cost more than a standard one.
[15] This postscript has been written at 90 degrees to the main text in the blank space at the head of the letter’s first page.
[16] Catherine Giddy, née Davies (1728-1803).
[17] Anna’s sister Emmeline has added this note under Anna’s postscript.
[18] This final note has been added in the space between the postscript and the main text, at 180 degrees to the main text.