Thomas Beddoes to Maria Thompson, undated, [?1803] (10)
Yes, my dear ____, I think your protégés an interesting pair. The female, handsome, sensible, unaffected! You and some of your friends, I suppose, have entered into a combination, to change a certain leading article in the world’s creed. For heretofore it has been thought that a young woman could almost as soon pass through the eye of a needle, as unite these qualities.
But do you know that these good people afford a subject for much speculation? I do not know if their case is exactly what I conceive: But it was a love-match, I guess, therefore a sacrifice on the Lady’s part; since, on the smallest signal, Cupid would have waited upon her with Plutus in his train. So far they have little missed Plutus, and have been infinitely better off than the couples whom he joins in ‘holy matrimony’. Pity that they may stand some chance of not always so continuing. But already there comes a rub. A long indisposition puts to shame the all-sufficiency of love. They feel, nay they express their sense of the superiority of those, who hold the accommodations of life snug tied up in their purses. But for you, they would probably have felt the difference more in their present distress. But they by no means repine. But will not most people so circumstanced come to repining? What think you, —— of an illness of long continuance, of a rapidly increasing family without increase of means? Only consider what a mother feels at the sight of children she cannot educate to her ideas, or provide for. Her thoughts must sour at her heart, unless she have super-human patience and sweetness of disposition. All the casualties of life will promote the fermentation and set the mind on the fret. It is a sad reflection, but the honey-moon will not shine at all, or only furnish light just to heighten the gloom. A pair of turtle-doves converted into cur and cat! What a shocking metamorphosis! The Wife, if she do not scold downright, shewing an unalterably cheerless countenance! The Husband croaking! The Children running about dirty, if not ragged; in perfect contrast to their mother’s quondam elegance. So there seems no medium between affluence and lucrative industry or labour. In one case you have the means, in the other you are without the desires.
So you may moralize a whole autumn’s day, by the sea-side, on the future fortune of your friends, if the case suits them. I know nothing certain about them, but that they are now not affluent.
Published: Stock, pp. 295–96