Davies Giddy to Anna Beddoes, mid-late April 1802 [draft] [1]
I really begin to fear my sister Anna has quite forgotten me or given me up – the assigned cause for so long xxx <an a silence> intermission x xxxxxx never occurred to my mind but in a form little calculated to produce such an effect — It struck as affording ample proof when none was previously wanting & <as> sending assurance double sure — let the very Idea of suspicion then be for ever banished [2] — If it were in my plan to move from home nothing would more induce me to ride four hundred miles than the hope of seeing Little Anna in her Mothers Arms – I regret the picture being incomple [3] but you do so too, and this removes every unpleasing painful feeling [4] — The Existence of this little being has without doubt opened a new prospect to your view <strongly> illuminated strongly
I am ready to confess by the Doctors Essays but rendered at the same time sensible, this however is not his fault, by the distinct exhibition of precipices & torrents thickly scattered & for the most part secreted from < the eyes of> those destined to wander among its mores [5] signals should then be thrown out from the commonly xxxx [6] – but it was replies to Imlac that last fully convinced me it is impossible for any man to become a Poet[7] – I certainly rejoice on reflecting that no duty obliges me to guide in such a journey where one generation must be sacrificed <itself> to an other <& in the case of Lambton> merely for purpose of enabling that to do so for a third [8] —
I approve however of the latter Essays very much & think them likely to produce much good [9]
My sister complains of having long waited for a intelligence from two little Annas & has <is also> anxiety to see the both, – but that is impossible. My mother continues much the same her Health rather on the whole I think improved & my Father very well – for I myself the account <if I give any> must be far otherwise but <this> is little to the purpose, the life of an Individual xxx stands only in the relation of an evanescent quantity to the Universe [10] and if it is the will of Fate so let it be — were I an anthropomorphite xx serious xxx feelings would be excited <call forth> but imputing no human passions to the firmament of the universe I sincerely exclaim with Epictetus – lead me Jupiter wherever I am destined & let me follow willingly for murmurs can only be ineffectual & make me wicked —criminal [11] —
I hope one day or other to see Miss Thompson, yet it would be imprudent to increase an interest for one whom I consider inevitably doomed to misfortune — Happiness has been said not to be made for man: and certainly the situations of Romance are still less so – the whole world both in hxxls [12] & physics must undergo a complete change before the characters held up xxx <to> admiration will become models for imitation in the present state of things disappointment, chagrin and wretchedness must almost uniformly follow an attempt at copying them. Miss Thompson case is undoubtedly a hard one her Parents seem very absurd persons & to have treated her in a manner least suited to her disposition & character. I must sincerely wish her well & expect to be favoured from time to time with a continuation of her history — xxx <common> acqxxxxx xx so very few that xx thxxx hxxx
I do not know whether the Doctor or yourself are continue speculation in politics – for myself I still take some interest in them as curious abstract events unaccompanied by passion — and seeing mankind as I now do after many years of experience & disappointment the Concordat [13] has given me pleasure – Idolatry <in its substantial form> has vanished from the world but mental Idolatry still remains – nor does it seem probably that the habit <will ever cease> of addressing a supposed framer of the universe under a human form & endowed with human passions – superstition must then exist & surely it had better be in character as to add stability to the state than to attempt its overthrow
Perhaps the last act of Bonaparte his openly assuming the consulate for life goes rather beyond my limit. Little Anna for reasons I surely must not name will ever be an object of attention xx & solicitude for my sister and myself — she may at any time furnish sufficient subject for a letter when all other su [draft ends]
Notes
[1] This draft letter was written by Davies Giddy on a sheet which had previously been used. Initially it had been sent to Davies Giddy as a letter; the first page consists of a letter from J Rogers[?] to Giddy, dated 13 April 1802. This page, along with pages two and four, was also used to work out various arithmetical sums. Finally, this sheet of paper was used by Giddy to draft a letter to Anna Beddoes. The letter begins on the third page, continues onto the fourth, and ends in a gap towards the bottom of the second. The letter of which this was a draft was evidently posted to Anna sometime after 13 April – and before 2-6 May, when Anna and Thomas Beddoes composed a reply to it. Anna also replied to it in another letter, of 10 May.
[2] Giddy’s rather indirect – to say the least – formulation means that it hadn’t occurred to him that it was complications in pregnancy, giving birth and lying-in that were the cause of Anna’s not having written, rather than the suspicion that the father of her daughter was not her husband but a lover – William Wynch.
[3] An incomplete rendition of ‘incomplete’.
[4] That is, he regretted not being able to be present to complete the image of mother, child and godfather, but his regret was alleviated by the fact that Anna also regretted his absence.
[5] That is, moors. Another circuitous metaphor, used to say indirectly that Giddy was not quite a believer in the abrupt critique of and reformist arguments about parenting and education made in Beddoes’s new publications – his Essay on Personal Prudence and on Prejudices Respecting Health: to Heads of Families, Inhabitants of the British Isles, published 1 December 1801, and Essay on the Means of Avoiding Habitual Sickliness and Premature Mortality, published in January 1802. They were contributions to A Series of Essays on Health, on a Plan Entirely Popular. The initial plan was to publish on the first of each month, each part to cost between 1 and 2s, and there to be 12-16 essays. Their overall title, when collected, was Hygëia: or Essays Moral and Medical, on the Causes Affecting the Personal State of Our Middling and Affluent Classes, 3 vols (Bristol: printed by J. Mills for R. Phillips, London, 1802–3). Giddy had already suggested to Beddoes that the first two essays’ social and political criticism should be toned down in future editions, as Beddoes’ letter to him of 21 January 1802 makes clear (Cornish Archives, DG 42/8).
[6] Illegible word.
[7] Giddy is referring to Samuel Johnson’s moral tale The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, continuing a conversation begun by Anna’s quotation from it in her letter to him written on or shortly before 1 July 1801 (see 1 July 1801, note 6). Imlac, the poet-friend of the titular hero, helps Rasselas escape from seclusion in the ‘Happy Valley’ and leads him in a journey into different cultures. In a series of encounters, they discover that happiness is not to be found in other walks of life; the journey is futile; they return to the valley to make the best they can of life there.
[8] Thomas and Anna Beddoes were foster-parenting the sons of Beddoes’ deceased patient William Henry Lambton (see 8 Nov. 1800, note 10), a wealthy land- and mine-owner. In 1802, the boys’ guardians were expecting to send them to Eton School, in preparation for life as landed gentlemen; Beddoes was arguing for a delay in this plan that would enable him to continue giving them a more useful education than the predominantly classical one offered there.
[9] By mid-April 1802 the first five of Beddoes’s Essays on Health (Hygëia) had been published. The third and fourth comprised the two parts of Essay on the Individuals Composing our Affluent and Easy Classes. The fifth was Essay on Temperature and Hardiness with Remarks on Diet (see above, note 5 for the first two).
[10] Anna would take issue with this nihilistic and somewhat self-pitying philosophising in her letter of reply, c. 2–6 May.
[11] Epictetus (55–c. 135 AD) was the Stoic philosopher who counselled his pupils how to live so as to bear with dignity and peace of mind life’s inevitable slings and arrows. The reference comes from verse by Cleanthes (c. 330–c. 230 BC) that is quoted in Epictetus’s Enchiridion, chapter 53.
[12] Illegible word.
[13] The Concordat was formally promulgated at Easter 1802. It re-established the Catholic Church in post-revolutionary France, under the control of Napoleon, who gained the right to nominate bishops and to reorganise dioceses and parishes.