Davies Giddy to Anna Beddoes, 23 April 1801 [1]
Anna I call you as now emphatically under my protection. I have this moment my dear sister received your letter [2] and must in a few minutes xxxxxxx take my Horse & meet a company of Foot & a Troop of Dragoons with whom I am to attempt preserving the peace at Redruth market tomorrow morning [3] – yet I cannot omit writing now. I will write again in a few days. Only do not in this <the present> instance consider me merely as your Brother merely as one on whose [4] judgement you may depend – look on me for once as your Father Brother Husband Friend – and instantly without further reflection follow my advice my recommendations, my entreaty never to see Mr – again. I have long thought the Doctor & yourself not perfectly suited in disposition or character & have even suspected there might be some Physical impediment to that complete happiness which young women rather fancy she can attain, but by remaining in the usually esteemed path of duty though some short lived < [xxx xxx scenes] > of pleasure may be lost xxxxxxx depend on it you will avoid tenfold pain – I have not time to say much more let me beg of you to read & apply most of what I wrote respecting Miss Thomson – you probably deceive yourself by lines of the most pleasing & enchanting import – let me refer you to the first pages of Gibbons miscellaneous works where he mentions his Brother & Sister. [5] You may rely on my assistance that so is our Nature constituted that almost without exception – circumstances like this uniformly end in what is usually asham’d Guilt – therefore resolve at once & discontinue all further acquaintance: but what ever may be your determination I shall at all times be proud of proving myself your sincere Friend & especially when my opinion may be most <of> the most esential service
I rarely tremble but on this occasion I may not have said enough. ‘Oh for that warning voice’ [6]
Endorsement: Mrs Beddoes / April the 23rd 1801 –
Notes
[1] This is a draft letter sent in reply to Anna’s letter of 19 April 1801. Assuming Anna posted her letter on 19 April, it was probably not delivered to Tredrea until 23 April. This suggests that Giddy drafted this reply almost immediately, and may well have sent his copy to Anna on the same day.
[2] Of 19 April.
[3] Giddy, as Deputy-Lieutenant of Cornwall, was responsible for keeping public order – and a poor harvest in 1799 meant that grain stocks were low while its price shot up. Bands of starving tin miners raided grain stores – including Giddy’s own at Nancledra – and intimidated farmers. By March and April 1801 Giddy was both issuing proclamations calling on farmers to bring their corn to market at affordable prices and calling out the dragoons to suppress food protests – in Penzance as well as Redruth.
[4] This word has been altered.
[5] Edward Gibbon‘s Memoirs Of My Life and Writing appeared posthumously as part of the first volume of Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, 2 vols (London, 1796). It contained, on p. 17, a tribute to the love of brother and sister for each other: ‘from my childhood to the present hour I have deeply and sincerely regretted my sister, whose life was somewhat prolonged, and whom I remember to have seen an amiable infant. The relation of a brother and a sister, especially if they do not marry, appears to me of a very singular nature. It is a familiar and tender friendship with a female, much about our own age; an affection perhaps softened by the secret influence of sex, but pure from any mixture of sensual desire, the sole species of Platonic love that can be indulged with truth, and without danger’.
[6] Giddy is quoting Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 1, wishing, when already too late, for a warning voice alerting ‘our first Parents’ (6) to the arrival in Eden of Satan.