Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-011#028

Boston Dec 21st 1841.
There was so much ‘petitionary vehemence’ in your last appeal to me, my dearest friend, that, in spite of my conscience, which is still the counsel of your poor eyes, I yield again to it. I wish I had some more comfortable feelings about you, could enjoy all the faith in your cure I would fain possess – but that will not come (tho I am wrong to tell you so) in sufficient quantity to balance all I know you are suffering & all I am suffering in being deprived of my better half so long. I virtuously endeavor to believe you are gaining permanent good & to bear without repining this prolonged separation (which would be easy with this full faith) but distrust will creep in & patience keep aloof. Well, so it must be till Dr Eliott has exhausted his skill on you & we are permitted to have you again for I do not ask, or expect, another line to satisfy my doubts – You have been too self-forgetful already & it gives me no pleasure to see words which I know wrung pain from your eyes. I shall try to content myself with Sam’s reports& try to hope that every day is exorcising a pang. It is very nice that you have Frank to chat with you & amuse you by recounting his adventures in the woods – you do not mention his Mother but of course you have seen her & have enjoyed her gentle kindness. I should like to have seen le jeune Stenio in that picturesque costume, I confess, for even Miss Wormeley, who is not very amiably disposed toward him for some reason or toher (don’t tell him this, I hate to sow ill feeling) acknowledges it was vastly becoming. Mr Wm Otis once was highly amused because I said I liked to see a handsome man as a work of [p. 2] art – but in this case, it gives me pleasure for less general reasons. I take a sort of pride in his grace & good looks as I did in those of my poor Charles.. & desire to do so in whatever more important graces he may develop, but, hopeful as I am apt to be about human nature, I fear they will not keep pace with the others in time to save him from much stumbling. I do not mean serious down-falls but from trembling of knees at Life’s obstacles. This is all in your ear remember. There is some news for you in the way of engagements. It is reported & I believe with truth that Anna Cabot is fiancée to your brother’s friend Lodge, which I suppose may be considered very good luck for his – as he is a nice youth, they say, & she is neither pretty nor too gracieuse, & I fear if left a spinster might acidulate into a Mrs Kirkland. Then Anna Laurence is said to have entrapped a young Shaw – but I doubt that, tho’ I am so ignorant of the elective affinities of the dancing generation that I knew not her brother was engaged to little Margaret Chadwick which is not very recently settled I believe. Then some of the kind people who retain their desire to send me out of the country declare that the noble Viscount has not taken his last voyage in my company – which I must admit is excessively flattering but rather too good to be true! He is a much-enduring man; after bearing with admirable bonhomie the inflictions of a dinner-party every day, beside the weight of public schools, prisons, hospitals & such cheering branches of sight-seeing, they are merciless eno’ to wish to burthen him with a wife. He must wish to take up his lanthorn, Diogenes like, & set forth again to seek, not an honest man, but an equal rarity a free country. Mrs Paige’s banquet, as he happily styled it, I survived much better than I expected. I was the only lady beside Mrs Sidney Brooks & sat between Mr Gray & Sumner, which latter, to mend his position, had Mr Sears for a vis à vis! The dishes were got up with her usual taste & finish & oppressive profusion, & we adjourned very refreshingly from the dining-room [p. 3] to the drawing-room for the desert, where a coronet of sugar ranges loomed high above a ‘wilderness of sweets’ as Bennett wd say – I went immediately after coffee to Sally Oakey’s whither Lord M. & Sumner followed me. It was a stiff gathering of the family but Sally subdued it all by the magic influence of her presence & looked her prettiest in white muslin & sang her best to his Lordship’s most attentive ears. Most women would have been discountenanced by such devoted attention, for he sat staring her full in the face all the time she sang, with only the piano forte to break the look but her winy voice only gurgled forth with more expression & undiminished ease in consequence. She is sadly vexed that she will miss you probably both here & in N. York, expecting to return in a fortnight. Sumner of course is brimming over with my lord’s doings, describes his interview with Allston of whom he ordered the exquisite sketch of Titania to be painted for the Duchess of Southerland, tries to quote the verses he wrote on Niagara & his Mother, & retai[ns] thus happily ever recurring subjects of interest. Mr Prescott has completely fascinated him Lord M & he pronounces him to be without reservation the most agreeable man he ever met. Think of Aunt Jonathan’s trying to lure his Lordship to her after-Christmas solemnities! Can you resist returning for them ache your eyes never so cruelly? Old age has come upon me in the shape of rheumatism which was the penalty for walking by an icy moonlight on Sunday night to hear Braham thunder forth the Messiah. He is certainly the English Lablache & the strength & breadth of his tones have been gathering might instead of losing since I last heard him. If you desire something like them ask your brother to read you Macaulay’s review of Warren Hastings in the last Quarterly. It is most rich & noble & makes me crave him for the world’s historian. By way of aggravation of my desolation we have been dining lately at half past two & thus I gain two solitary walks a day, pacing with a very savage stride round the Common as if somewhere I must find that which I have lost. Mary is looking much better which is some comfort to me, but her weakness seems almost to have [p. 4 bottom] become a lasting portion – she is often depressed at the prospect of what she calls the slough of invalidism for life but takes courage again at any natural feeling of former days. I hope on about her as a duty & because I need something to hope about. I am childish eno’ to look forward to the new year as a patient does to a new medicine. The last part of this has dragged so heavily, not from outer circumstances which have been better than I deserved, but from soul-sickness that I rejoice to cast it behind me, feverishly deluding myself that I shall put on the next as a new garment. Heigho! We had a very beautiful sermon from Mr Frothing [p. 4 top] ham last Sunday which would have become the mouth of Bishop Taylor – On a subject which always agitates & impresses me – the power & responsibleness of our thoughts. Mine trouble me enough but if we could act as well as we think there would be little need of another life. I believe some people do better but there is nothing more humiliates me than these paralyzing short-comings in action. There is no more contemptible creature than the bully & how often do we make vain boastings in secret which bear no daylights. How unconsciously we talk stereotyped facts when we talk from the heart & not from the head – its own history seems so inevitably an individual & not a general one. I feel so deliciously at my ease when with you in any way [p. 4 cross] that I think aloud as a matter of course & very tediously at this time. Tom consoles himself during yr absence by conjuring up another sweet face that cannot go whither it listeth. Mr Gray has graciously permitted him to copy [p. 1 cross] Newton’s Dutch girl. I am rejoiced to see him interested in any thing & forgetting to grumble at the climate &c American failings –
But enough stupid cruelty to yr eyes. I forbear God grant them a speedy & lasting healing & every other blessing in fullest measure to the rest of you –
ever & ever yr
True Fan.
All send love – Our home atmosphere trembles with the perpetual wail of parvoli innocent as the Infernal one does with the plaints of lost souls. Tom says he might as well be a Mother himself!
Capt Judkins has just arrived!
ADDRESSED: MISS AUSTIN. / ASTOR HOUSE. / N. YORK
POSTMARK: BOSTON / DEC 2[?] / MASS

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