Anna Beddoes to Davis Giddy, on or shortly before 1 July 1801 [1]
July (1st perhaps) 1801 D.G. [2]
My poor little good Dr has been extremely ill, but to day he is so much better that I thought I would write to tell you the good news – I have not been well for some time but Doctor’s illness has frightened mine quite away, so that I am in such spirits I can do any thing – even write to you which you know I find the most difficult thing in the world. – When your last nice long letter came we were sitting round the tea table with Miss Este a pretty young patient of the Drs – she said she did not think she had a letter in the world, for she made it a rule to destroy them the moment she had answered them for she had known instances of much mischief being done by the misinterpretation of some very innocent letters; while she was speaking, the Dr took up your letter, and looking at the direction, desired me never to destroy Mr Giddy’s letters, for they were too good to be burned – No I won’t indeed, but I hope, and believe I never shall deserve to receive such letters again – I’ll tell you one thing, which you know at least as well as I do, that with the delicate art of paying the most elegant compliments possible – you possess the talent of saying xxx more illnatured, sarcastic things than ever fell from the pen of Juvenal, [3] you made me blush very heartily by quoting a very improper passage from my last letter – how I could think of writing in such a manner, I don’t know, yet I have no reason to wonder when I have acted as I have done. I will not give up to you in every thing neither – you say ‘would this language, or any in the least degree like it be ever addressed to you by a woman’, I say yes for I have some in my possession, written by a female friend very much in that style, I must acknowledge however, that she was under peculiar circumstances – but I can assure you that I have myself written in the same strain to this beloved fair – when I tell you this I am sensible that I expose both my friend & myself, but this, or any thing I will do to support my own opinion – and as I assure you, upon my honour, that we are neither of us x knights in disguise, you must allow that we were not influenced by sex – but I will not even in jest defend what I feel to be as you say – and now before I go any further, I have one request that I don’t think you will find very difficult to grant me I beg then when you sit down to write to me that you will ‘begin a large sheet of paper (this I leave to your honours generosity,) uncertain what to say, or how to proceed a single line’ for your uncertainties turn out so charmingly that they are far preferable to other peoples certainties, one is like ‘the wildly devious morning walk’ – the xother the sprucely laid out garden where half the platform just reflects the other – you have thoroughly convinced me of all you wish to prove; the truth of xxxx xxx I felt before, but I was willing to extinguish the feeling if I could but find tolerable reasons to support me – one thing I have always thought, and believe always shall think, that I would infinitely rather be mistress to the man I love than wife, but since this is contrary to all custom, and cannot be, I must be contented with being wife in the usual way – and if I were not contented, I should not deserve to be happy, for I know that it is impossible for a husband to be kinder in every respect than mine is – and I am very angry with myself for something I said about him in the first letter I wrote you – it was no excuse for me – and perhaps I am mistaken – however whether I am, or am not, he is the best husband, and the best man in the world, and I think so now, more than ever I did – I believe I love him better, for I was so unhappy, and anxious when he was ill I did not know what to do – thank you for this, dear good man, xxxx I don’t thank you neither for I should not have been so uneasy, if you had not made me love him so well –
The lines which you quote from Tasso [4] are beautiful – particularly Behold how lovely bloom the vernal Rose, etc. [5] — if you will tell me whose translation it is I will get it, for I cannot read the original – I am very ignorant or very stupid, for I know not the favourite author – by the specimen, yet I’m sure I have met with it somewhere — ‘Reflect that Nature sets her gifts in the right hand and in the left’ Johnsons Rambler perhaps! [6] – –
The engagement between the engag[ed] [7] youth & the betrothed damsel, is broken off and it is not impossible or improbable that Miss T [8] – may be something more than a mere friend to him — this she will not allow herself – but nevertheless, as he is her bosom friend, it would be very cruel if she would not let him share her most tender thoughts. –
We have just been reading Belinda by Maria Edgeworth, [9] three vols. small octavo, there is wit, and conversation enough, if the story does not please which is not the best contrived in the world – If you ever happened to see a novel of Kotzebue’s called the Constant Lovers [10] I wish you would look at it, some passages are so pretty, and the whole story of the man in grey is excellent — the conclusion is very bad. – These books I recommend in return for the fine brown study [11] you give me & with the expectation no doubt of my compleat obedience – I always (when I don’t forget it) take physic for my good – so here is my best curtesy for you –
One thing more I so wish to tell you, yet a doubt, a cruel doubt which I know will involuntarily come across your mind prevents me – you must know it in time, and then though your thoughts might be the same you would never tell me – perhaps you guess! then do me the justice to believe I have no reason to be ashamed – and now farewell – I thought you would be provoked at receiving so many letters in such a thick cluster – so you have been indulged with a little respite –
Poor Mr Clayfield, [12] will always remain in his present deplorable state I fear – much better not to be, than undergo such an existence. – Dr frightened me very much when he was ill by begging me in the most serious manner to let him put himself out of pain – he repeated this two or three times, saying he could bear it no longer – &c – pray burn this – I have often thought I should like to die when he did, for one very superstitious reason – that going with him, I should be safe whatever the event might be – he being so perfectly good, would plead for me and we should not be parted . . . how foolish! Since I have always thought that with existence ends every thing.
Address: Davies Giddy Esq / Tredrea / Marazion / Cornwall
Postmark: L/ JUL1 / 01
Endorsement: Single // 1801/ July the 1st. // July [1st perhaps] 1801 DG
Notes
[1] The postmark is probably 1 July, so written on or shortly before 1 July.
[2] This dating note at the head of the first page has been added by Giddy.
[3] Decimus Junius Juvenalis, the Roman poet active in the late first and early second century, renowned for his biting satires.
[4] Torquato Tasso (1544–95), the Italian poet whose best-known work is La Gerusalemme liberate (1591).
[5] ‘Behold how lovely blooms the vernal rose / When scarce the leaves her early bud disclose’, lines 99-100 of Book 16 of the translation, by John Hoole, of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (London 1792).
[6] The Rambler was a periodical written by Samuel Johnson (1709–84). The line Anna quotes comes from Johnson’s History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, 2 vols (London, 1759), I, 152.
[7] Conjectural reading, part of the page being missing here.
[8] Maria Thompson.
[9] Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) was Anna’s sister. Her first novel Belinda had just been published.
[10] The Constant Lovers, or, William and Jeanette: a tale. From the German of August von Kotzebue (London, 1799).
[11] A mood of gloomy self-absorption.
[12] From the phrasing, probably the father of Thomas Beddoes’s assistant William Clayfield (1772–1837). Clayfield, a Bristolian from a family of wine and sugar merchants, was a chemist and botanist. Beddoes met him in 1793; in 1796 he was living in Castle St, Bristol. He made pneumatic experiments with Beddoes in 1795 and 1796 and from 1798 to 1801 he assisted in the laboratory at the Pneumatic Institution, working alongside Humphry Davy.