LETTER XXXIX MISS BYRON, TO LADY G---- TUESDAY, MAY 2.
I have no patience with you, Lady G----. You are ungenerously playful! Thank Heaven, if this be wit, that I have none of it. But what signifies expostulating with one who knows herself to be faulty, and will not amend? How many stripes, Charlotte, do you deserve?--But you never spared any body, not even your brother, when the humour was upon you. So make haste; and since you will lay in stores for repentance, fill up your measure as fast as you can.
'Reveal to you the state of my heart!'--Ah, my dear! it is an unmanageable one. 'Greatness of mind!'--I don't know what it is!--All his excellencies, his greatness, his goodness, his modesty, his cheerfulness under such afflictions as would weigh down every other heart that had but half the compassion in it with which his overflows--Must not all other men appear little, and, less than little, nothing, in my eyes? --It is an instance of patience in me, that I can endure any of them who pretend to regard me out of my own family.
I thought, that when I got down to my dear friends here, I should be better enabled, by their prudent counsels, to attain the desirable frame of mind which I had promised myself: but I find myself mistaken. My grandmamma and aunt are such admirers of him, take such a share in the disappointment, that their advice has not the effect I had hoped it would have. Lucy, Nancy, are perpetually calling upon me to tell them something of Sir Charles Grandison; and when I begin, I know not how to leave off. My uncle rallies me, laughs at me, sometimes reminds me of what he calls my former brags. I did not brag, my dear: I only hoped, that respecting as I did every man according to his merit, I should never be greatly taken with any one, before duty added force to the inclination. Methinks the company of the friends I am with, does not satisfy me; yet they never were dearer to me than they now are. I want to have Lord and Lady L----, Lord and Lady G----, Dr. Bartlett, my Emily, with me. To lose you all at once!--is hard!--There seems to be a strange void in my heart--And so much, at present, for the state of that heart.
I always had reason to think myself greatly obliged to my friends and neighbours all around us; but never, till my return, after these few months absence, knew how much. So many kind visitors; such unaffected expressions of joy on my return; that had I not a very great counterbalance on my heart, would be enough to make me proud.
My grandmamma went to Shirley-manor on Saturday; on Monday I was with her all day: but she would have it that I should be melancholy if I staid with her. And she is so self-denyingly careful of her Harriet! There never was a more noble heart in woman. But her solitary moments, as my uncle calls them, are her moments of joy. And why? Because she then divests herself of all that is either painful or pleasurable to her in this life: for she says, that her cares for her Harriet, and especially now, are at least a balance for the delight she takes in her.
You command me to acquaint you with what passes between me and the gentlemen in my neighbourhood; in your style, my fellows.
Mr. Fenwick invited himself to breakfast with my aunt Selby yesterday morning. I would not avoid him.
I will not trouble you with the particulars: you know well enough what men will say on the subject upon which you will suppose he wanted to talk to me. He was extremely earnest. I besought him to accept my thanks for his good opinion of me, as all the return I could make him for it; and this in so very serious a manner, that my heart was fretted, when he declared, with warmth, his determined perseverance.