Anna Beddoes and Thomas Beddoes to Davies Giddy, 23 October 1803
Who’s a good boy I think!! Yes you are good for letting me hear from you so soon, and for taking the trouble of culling the grecian leaves for me, they will be ever green for me, and I would rather have them than be crowned with a laurel wreath [1] –
You desire me to tell you how I am, very lazy, that’s all, which disorder I propose curing by sufficient doses of Porney’s Elements of Heraldry. [2] – Having been for a long time not so healthy as I hoped and wished to be, I have lost what little power of attention I formerly could command, and it is extremely difficult for me to fix my mind steadily to any thing, yet I have at present so strong an inclination to extricate myself from this labyrinth of ignorance that I do not despair of success – have you not furnish’d me with the clue! Study one thing at a time you say, and give the whole attention to it till you are master of it – well I will try my best – You have contrived such a pretty way of settling accounts that I do not wonder people are so fond of putting their affairs into your hands – And, so you are at liberty how glad I am! for I could not help feeling as if I should never see you again – Thank you for your journal I should like to have been with you to have seen Captn Bullers large ship [3] – you have certainly interested Miss Thompson very much she tells me in her last letter ‘I said something of myself, and had he staid much longer could have said every thing’ pray Sir how do you contrive to win peoples confidence in this extraordinary and rapid manner – an utter stranger too – by the bye Dr B has told me something of you that has surprised me more even than this, and what I can scarcely believe but as he desires me to ask you when I write whether it is as he says I shall rather make you explain it by word of mouth – so don’t ask me anything about it till I see you – I have looked into Herodotus [4] and I find the style so agreeable that when I am more at leisure I will read him through – What you said to me about those dear little Lambtons often recurs to my mind, and I suppose it is, that I believe you in spite of my senses that makes me grieve so much about it – 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 felt extremely interested in their fate, if they do not shine superior, I shall regret it both on the Drs account and on their own [5] – I shall never forget that ride to Godolphin [6] – Porny is just come, and if you will describe any coat of arms not mentioned in that book I will blazen [7] it, (is not that the right word?) and send it for your correction or inspection, but indeed you will think me too unreasonable; you say there is not time to be thrown away upon trifles such as writing letters, reading novels, &c pray how happens it then, that you have so much poetry at your finger’s ends, this expression originated I suppose from talking on the fingers which requires great readiness to accomplish – I daresay you wish in your heart you had not quite so much suavity of disposition to suffer yourself to be tormented in this manner – Now my delight will be to plague you to such a degree by asking foolish questions, and talking all the nonsense that comes into my head, that you shall be forced to assume some of that sternness of character which you so charitably assigned to little Anna and which is more becoming in a man than in a woman, though perhaps a little sternness is not so very unbecoming in a woman either – So very great is your reluctance to giving pain, that you soften and polish down your expressions of disapprobation too much, so it strikes me at least from having seen your conduct to a variety of persons some of whom I’m sure you could not approve – But I must not forget that you love every body, and everybody loves you – this is doing things on a grand scale – Be so good as to tell me the name of Chattertons Poem, [8] which you repeated in the carriage to me – And so you think sonnets the most beautiful species of minor poetry! I should have had some veneration for your judgment, if you had not selected a very paltry one for your favourite – my favourite sonnet is one of Charlotte Smith’s beginning,
Far on the sands the slow [9] retiring tide
In distant murmurs hardly seems to flow,
And o’er the world of waters blue and wide
The sighing summer wind forgets to blow –[10]
don’t you wish to see the rest? You must take the trouble of looking for it then for I cannot remember it [11] – your sister’s favourite is Queen of the silver bow [12] – And now please to look in your collection of poem[s] [13] that you have Miss Phillips [14] to read, and you will find a prayer to Indifference written by Mrs Greville [15] that you never read, and tell me if you do not think it very pretty – Now I have plagued you enough, no not quite enough yet – One day when we were walking to the smelting house, [16] you were speaking of the utility of certain long establish’d forms and customs, in appearance trifling or absurd, amongst others, you produced as an example the etiquette of leaving cards – but all this I had seen before and perhaps you could not guess where – – Your head is in a clock-case I suppose by this time, which in Ireland signifies your being petrified with stupidity – a situation so new to you that I will leave you to the quiet and peaceable enjoyment of it – When you get out of your clock case give my love to your Father & Mary dear – hear –and the first time you go to hear the what you had for dinner thirty years ago pray remember me to the Patriarches [17] – Give Tom one bit more for me adieu [18] –
If you don’t answer this letter I will write one that shall make your hair stand on end, then what a queer figure you will be!
[Postscript by Thomas Beddoes:]
Chalk & diluted muriatic acid makes muriate of Lime. [19] This observation is connected with nothing, but Edward Giddy [20] will understand it.
Address: Davies Giddy Esq / Tredrea / Marazion / Cornwall
Postmark: OL
Endorsement: 1803 / Octr the 23rd // Sunday / Octr the 23 / 1803 DG // single
Notes
[1] Presumably Giddy had sent some translations of Greek poetry.
[2] Mark Anthony Porny, Elements of Heraldry (1765).
[3] Anna is probably referring to Captain Edward Buller (1764–1824) of the Royal Navy. During the Peace of Amiens he was elected as MP for East Looe. In March 1803, with war looming again, Buller was appointed to the ship Malta, and joined first the Channel fleet, and then by late summer the Ferrol blockade, off the north coast of Spain.
[4] Evidently Giddy had recommended that Anna should read the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–c. 425 BC).
[5] In 1798 Thomas and Anna Beddoes had taken in and educated the Lambton boys, John George and William Henry, after their father, Beddoes’s friend and patient, died (see 8 Nov. 1800, note 10). They had now left the Beddoes’ care to go to Eton school. John George, the elder, became the 1st Earl of Durham. He was a reforming politician who became Lord Privy Seal, Ambassador to Russia, and Governor General of Canada.
[6] Godolphin is a small Cornish village six miles from Giddy’s home at Marazion.
[7] That is, make a blazon – an heraldic depiction of a family in the form of a coat of arms. After 1816, when Giddy adopted the surname of his wife’s family – Gilbert – so as to be able to inherit her uncle’s estates in Sussex, he had a coat of arms made, which he used on his bookplates:
The Latin motto means ‘I prefer death to change’; the Cornish motto means ‘Peace is pleasing’.
[8] Thomas Chatterton (1752–70), the Bristol boy-poet. The poem was probably ‘The Mynstrelle’s Songe’; Anna later transcribed some of its verses.
[9] Anna makes an improving error here; the original reads ‘low’.
[10] The lines quoted here are from the fortieth sonnet in the fifth edition of Elegiac Sonnets (1789), by Charlotte Smith (1749–1806). This sonnet also appeared in Smith’s novel Emmeline, The Orphan of the Castle (1788).
[11] The ‘rest’ reads thus:
As sinks the daystar in the rosy West,
The silent wave, with rich reflection glows;
Alas! Can tranquil Nature give me rest,
Or scenes of beauty, soothe me to repose?
Can the soft lustre of the sleeping main,
Yon radiant Heaven, or all Creation’s charms,
`Erase the written troubles of the brain,’
Which Memory tortures, and which Guilt alarms?
Or bid a bosom transient quiet prove,
That bleeds with vain remorse, and unextinguish’d love!
[12] ‘Sonnet IV: To the Moon’, Elegiac Sonnets:
Queen of the silver bow!—by thy pale beam,
Alone and pensive, I delight to stray,
And watch thy shadow trembling in the stream,
Or mark the floating clouds that cross thy way.
And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light
Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast;
And oft I think—fair planet of the night—
That in thy orb, the wretched may have rest:
The suff’rers of the earth perhaps may go,
Releas’d by Death—to thy benignant sphere,
And the sad children of Despair and Woe
Forget, in thee, their cup of sorrow here.
Oh! that I soon may reach thy world serene,
Poor wearied pilgrim—in this toiling scene!
[13] Editorial insertion. Page torn away at this point.
[14] Katherine Philips, known as ‘The Matchless Orinda’ (1632–64). Many of Philips’s poems concerned intense (bordering on erotic) friendships.
[15] ‘Ode to Indifference’ by Frances Greville (1724–89) was first published in the Edinburgh Chronicle in 1759 but was frequently printed thereafter, not least because it argued against the contemporary cult of sensibility, and was thus a convenient starting point for those wishing to defend sensibility. Greville was born in Longford, not far from Edgeworthstown.
[16] Giddy’s home was near several tin and copper mines.
[17] An in-joke apparently about old folks remembering minutiae from Giddy’s childhood.
[18] A pet – presumably a dog.
[19] Now known as calcium chloride. Used as a medicine in small and repeated doses it produces increased secretion of mucus, urine, and perspiration; in large doses it is an irritant.
[20] Giddy’s father.