Anna Beddoes to Davies Giddy, written on or shortly before 29 April 1801 [1]
My dear kind Brother, if your endeavours to quell the disturbances at Redruth were as successful as your eloquent exhortations have been upon me xxxxxx, all there is in peace – I feel very strange it is true, as if some great misfortune had befallen me – I was not happy before – perhaps when I have quite conquered myself I shall be more so – of late I have not been very well – last night I had the most unpleasant waking hours – and still more disturbed dreams, for these I must thank you – which I do with the most perfect sincerity. – Tell me the result of your ride to Redruth, I thought I saw carts, dragged along by wounded horses – and the groans of the dying were mingled with the triumphant shouts of the living — From the very earnest tone of your letter, I see how wrong you think me, though you have forborn every expression of reproach – well, all I can now do, is to stop, which if I can trust my own mind I will do without delay. My heart beat when your letter came, I foresaw what your advice would be though I could not indeed foresee that it would be given in so very kind a manner, this I believe has an instantaneous effect xxxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx, while ungentle expressions would incline a weak mind to pursue its bent, good or bad – mine is a weak mind, for though I think more than some women; yet I have not that steadiness which superior understanding always possesses – It is impossible for me to quit ‘the usually esteemed path of duty’, without suffering an uneasiness, that I can hardly account for, or know how to describe – yet when I reflected that our ideas of duty were long established prejudices, which are only opinions taken upon trust, I saw not why I was implicitly to follow them. – You will think me very bad, when I tell you that my ideas of vice and virtue are very indistinct, whatever < action> is the source of present or future pain to any human being is a vicious action, but then so many of our pains and pleasures are only those of imagination that it is difficult to distinguish real evil from fictitious [2] – but these bad reasonings never made me happy – so in future I must obey my feeling of right; then I am sure never to do any thing wrong. – I have always thought it a melancholy thing to be born in spite of one’s teeth; [3] to be subject to a variety of most excruciating feelings – all for no end but to be again unborn. Oh it is very bitter. — How shall I break off my correspondence with Mr –––––– I cannot tell him that I am convinced it ought to be done, after permitting < it> so long – however I won’t write till I hear from you, provided you will take the trouble to put me in the right way. [4] – He showed so much irresolution and I thought want of manly dignity, & sense, in some of his own concerns which he related in his letters, that I wrote strongly expressing my disgust & disapprobation; to this letter, in which perhaps I did take too great a liberty; I received a stiff formal answer, so perhaps this is a fair opening for my silence – I will not see him again unless it be to tell him so – but perhaps this would be [MS torn] – It is impossible for a husband to be ki[nder] [5] or better or more truly affectionate than [MS torn]. I often feel this very strongly, even when I am sorrowful; xxxxxxxxxx his views are larger his soul nobler than mine, yet there are moments when I am selfish enough to wish, not that I should be equal to him, but that he were humbled to my level. Is not this silly? – yes, it is; yet I should be glad I had no sillier wishes – I must observe that the correspondence now between us contains nothing but what persons totally indifferent to each other might write, still probably you think it best to discontinue it. – You are very kind – indeed you are, to have taken the trouble you have done – all the return I can make is not to let it be lost upon me – these letters must have teazed & and vexed you, but you are every body’s friend farewell!
April the 29th
1801 DG.[6]
Yours most gratefully
A.M.B.
I read the pages you desired in Gibbon, – if it is true as something tells me it is, I cannot help grieving for it. [7] – I will not be so deceitful as to deny the truth in the present instance – my pen is very unwilling to write my thoughts and yet I ought to tell them to you – Do you know Dodsley’s songs called Kisses? [8] Till very lately I did not well understand them – Oh I am very unhappy – it is not however more indelicate to acknowledge this, than to have it concealed. – I did not conceal the fact from another, though I certainly did the agreeable sensations – indeed I am so ashamed I don’t know what to do. Dr – [9] made me promise before he [10] came to stay with us that nothing of this kind should pass – at first I would not agree to this – at length I did, and you may be sure I kept it – indeed I did except at parting when he saluted both Em. [11] and me – and we were both together – pray destroy this vile stuff. Dr laughed at me for liking so well a person more than 20 years older than myself.
I used to be told I was a
very modest woman.
I have forfeited this title entirely
by having revealed these
things & still more by
having done
them —
I have half a
mind not
to send
this. [12]
Address: Davies Giddy Esq / Tredrea / Marazion / Cornwall
Endorsement: 1801 / April the 29th
Notes
[1] The endorsement is 29 April 1801. There is no postmark. If 29 April 1801 is the date on which Giddy received it, then the letter probably dates from c. 26 April: this would mean that Giddy’s previous letter of 23 April reached Anna c. 26th April and that Anna wrote and posted her reply the same day. If 29 April was the date of a now missing Bristol postmark, then Giddy’s letter of 23 April could have arrived in Clifton on 26 or 27 April, and Anna written this letter between 26–29 April.
[2] Here Anna highlights an issue in the post-Lockean ethics that were influential in the eighteenth century: if deciding whether an action is good or bad depends upon imagining whether it will benefit or harm people if carried out, then the onus is placed upon imagination to be able to make correct predictions both in particular cases and in general. It must reliably be able to distinguish which of the outcomes that it conceives are likely to occur in the real world and which are of its own making (fictions, figments, castles in the air, groundless anxieties). And, to avoid chaos, it must be assumed that people imagine in similar ways. The pitfalls of such an assumption, and of individual reliance on imagination, were hilariously fictionalized by Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy (1759).
[3] Meaning, despite oneself – despite one’s self-love.
[4] Giddy had in fact already advised her ‘resolve at once & discontinue all further acquaintance’, in his letter of 23 April.
[5] Conjectural reading, part of page torn away here.
[6] This date appears to have been added by Giddy.
[7] Meaning Gibbon’s point that the only Platonic love that can be indulged without danger between men and women is that between a brother and a sister. See 23 April 1801, note 5.
[8] Robert Dodsley, Colin’s Kisses: Twelve New Songs designed for Music (London, 1742). The first of these, ‘The Tutor’ (pp. 3–4) is written from the point of view of a male suitor tempting a reticent young woman:
Come, my Fairest, learn of me,
Learn to give and take the Bliss
Come, my Love, here’s none but we,
I’ll instruct thee how to Kiss.
Why turn from me that dear Face?
Why that Blush, and down-cast Eye?
Come, come, meet my fond Embrace,
And the mutual Rapture try.
Throw thy lovely twining Arms
Round my Neck, or round my Waist;
And whilst I devour thy Charms,
Let me closely be embrac’d:
Then when foft Ideas rife,
And the gay Desires grow strong;
Let them sparkle in thy Eyes,
Let them murmur from thy Tongue.
To my Breast with Rapture cling,
Look with Transport on my Face,
Kiss me, press me, every Thing
To endear the fond Embrace.
Every tender Name of Love,
In soft Whispers let me hear;
And let speaking Nature prove
Every Extasy sincere.
[9 ] Her husband Thomas Beddoes.
[10] That is, William Wynch.
[11] Emmeline, her sister.
[12] This postscript is written on a separate sheet that has been folded into triangles.