Thomas Beddoes to Maria Thompson, [?1803] (8)
I have this day seen your friend, whose first appearance answers perfectly to your commendations. I also agree with you in thinking her dangerously ill, and can by no means promise myself that I can do what you wish for her. I shall do all I can, as you may well suppose. From an expression in one of Mr.——’s letters I imagine they are in narrow circumstances. Do you know? I ask you, because in the plan upon which I should put them, I should study oeconomy as much as possible; and attend to points, of which I should be careless in the case of the affluent.
You do not enter into so many particulars about yourself, as I should wish to be acquainted with. Have you made a nice collection of plants? Did you bathe? you seemed to ‘have a great hankering’ after the cold water. I wish you could have seen that essay of mine. I presume there is enough said to deter any person with a tender chest from cold bathing, who has not a mind to get rid of the miseries of life. And this is a very clumsy way of going to work: the pistol, laurel water, or a cord is a thousand times preferable. I do not say that no such person can bathe once or twice without detriment. But from every immersion there is danger, and then what have we to set on the other side of the account? It is just neck against nothing.
Published: Stock, p. 293