OLIVIA.
LETTER LXX.
MR. L —— TO GENERAL B —— .
My Dear General,
You will rejoice to hear that Olivia and I have been in a state of warfare for some days past, and you will be still more pleased when you learn the cause of our quarrel. On the day that I had been reading Leonora’s letters I was rather later at Richmond than usual. Olivia, offended, insisted upon knowing by what I could possibly have been detained. Her anger knew no bounds when she heard the truth. She made use of some expressions, in speaking of my wife, which I could not, I hope, have borne at any time, but which shocked me beyond measure at that moment. I defended Leonora with warmth. Olivia, in a scornful tone, talked of my wife’s coldness of disposition, and bid me compare Lady Leonora’s love with hers. It was a comparison I had it more in my power to make than Olivia was aware of; it was the most disadvantageous moment for her in which that comparison could be made. She saw or suspected my feelings, and perceived that all she had said of my Leonora’s incapability of loving produced an effect directly contrary to her expectations. Transported by jealousy, she then threw out hints respecting the Prince. I spoke as I felt, indignantly. I know not precisely what I said, but Olivia and I parted in anger. I have since received a passionately fond note from her. But I feel unhappy. Dear general, when will you come to town?
Yours truly,
F. L ——
LETTER LXXI.
MRS. C —— TO THE DUCHESS OF —— .
MY DEAR MADAM,
Your grace’s cautions and entreaties to Lady Leonora not to over-exert and fatigue herself were, alas! as ineffectual as mine. From the time she heard that Mr. L —— had accepted this embassy to Petersburg, she was so eager to set out on her journey to town, and so impatient to see him, that neither her mind nor her body had one moment’s tranquillity. She waited with indescribable anxiety for your grace’s answer to her letter; and the instant she was secure of your approbation, her carriage was ordered to the door. I saw that she was ill; but she would not listen to my fears; she repeated with triumph, that her mother made no objection to her journey, and that she had no apprehensions for herself. However, she was obliged at last to yield. The carriage was actually at the door, when she was forced to submit to be carried to her bed. For several hours she was in such danger, that I never expected she could live till this day. Thank God! she is now safe. Her infant, to her great delight, is a boy: she was extremely anxious to have a son, because Mr. L —— formerly wished for one so much. She forbids me to write to Mr. L —— , lest I should communicate the account of her sudden illness too abruptly.
She particularly requests that your grace will mention to him this accident in the least alarming manner possible. I shall write again next post. Lady Leonora has now fallen asleep, and seems to sleep quietly. Who should sleep in peace if she cannot? I never saw her equal,
My dear madam,
I am,
With respect and attachment,
Your grace’s
Sincerely affectionate,
HELEN C —— .
It is with extreme concern I am forced to add, that since I wrote this letter the child has been so ill that I have fears for his life. — His poor mother!
LETTER LXXII.
MR. L —— TO GENERAL B —— .
MY DEAR GENERAL,
All is upon velvet again. Poor Olivia was excessively hurt by my letter: she was ill for two days — seriously ill. Yesterday I at length obtained admittance. Olivia was all softness, all candour: she acknowledged that she had been wrong, and in so sweet a voice! She blamed herself till I could no longer think her blamable. She seemed so much humbled and depressed, such a tender melancholy appeared in her bewitching eyes, that I could not resist the fascination. I certainly gave her some cause for displeasure that unfortunate evening; for as Olivia has strong passions and exquisite sensibility, I should not have been so abrupt. A fit of jealousy may seize the best and most generous mind, and may prompt to what it would be incapable of saying or thinking in dispassionate moments. I am sure that Olivia has, upon reflection, felt more pain from this affair than I have. My Russian embassy is still in abeyance. Ministers seem to know their own minds as little as I know mine. Ambition has its quarrels and follies as well as love. At all events, I shall not leave England till next month; and I shall not go down to L —— Castle till I have received my last instructions from our court, and till the day for my sailing is fixed. The parting with Leonora will be a dreadful difficulty. I cannot think of it steadily. But as she herself says, “is it not better that she should lose a year of my affections than a life?” The Duchess is mistaken in imagining it possible that any woman, let her influence be ever so great over my heart, could prejudice me against my amiable, my admirable wife. What has just passed between Olivia and me, convinces me that it is impossible. She has too much knowledge of my character to hazard in future a similar attempt. No, my dear friend, be assured I would not suffer it. I have not yet lost all title to your esteem or to my own. This enchantress may intoxicate me with her cup, but shall never degrade me; and I should feel myself less degraded even by losing the human form than by forfeiting that principle of honour and virtue, which more nobly distinguishes man from brute.
Yours most sincerely,
F. L —— .
LETTER LXXIII.
GENERAL B —— TO MR. L —— .
MY DEAR FRIEND,
It is well that I did not answer your letter of Saturday before I received that of Monday. My congratulations upon your quarrel with your fair one might have come just as you were kissing hands upon a reconciliation.
I have often found a great convenience in writing a bad hand; my letters are so little like what they are intended for, and have among them such equality of unintelligibility, that each seems either; and with the slightest alteration, each will stand and serve for the other. My m, n, and u, are convertible letters; so are the terms and propositions of your present mode of reasoning, my dear L —— , and I perceive that you find your account in it. Upon this I congratulate you; and I congratulate Lady Leonora upon your being detained some weeks longer in England. Those who have a just cause need never pray for victory; they need only ask the gods for time. Time always brings victory to truth, and shame to falsehood. But you are not worthy of such fine apophthegms. At present “you are not fit to hear yourself convinced.” I will wait for a better opportunity, and have patience with you, if I can.
You seem to plume yourself mightily upon your resolve to do justice to the merits of your wife, and upon the courage you have shown in stuffing cotton into your ears to prevent your listening to the voice of the siren: but pray take the cotton out, and hear all she can say or sing. Lady Leonora cannot be hurt by any thing Olivia can say, but her own malice may destroy herself.
In the mean time, as you tell me that you are upon velvet again, I am to presume that you are perfectly at ease; and I should be obliged to you, if, as often as you can find leisure, you would send me bulletins of your happiness. I have never yet been in love with one of these high-flown heroines, and I am really curious to know what degree of felicity they can bestow upon a man of common sense. I should be glad to benefit by the experience of a friend.
Yours truly,
J.B.
LETTER LXXIV.
OLIVIA TO MADAME DE P —— .
Richmond.
Accept my sincere thanks, inimitable Gabrielle! for having taken off my hands a lover, who really has half-wearied me to death. If you had dealt more frankly with me, I could, however, have saved you much superfluous trouble and artifice. I now perfectly comprehend the cause of poor R — —’s strange silence some months ago; he was then under the influence of your charms, and it was your pleasure to deceive me even when there was no necessity for dissimulation. You knew the secret of my growing attachment to L —— , and must have foreseen that R —— would be burthensome to me. You needed therefore only to have treated me with cando
ur, and you would have gained a lover without losing a friend: but Madame de P —— is too accomplished a politician to go the simple straight road to her object. I now perfectly comprehend why she took such pains to persuade me that an imperial lover was alone worthy of my charms. She was alarmed by an imaginary danger. Believe me, I am incapable of disputing with any one les restes d’un coeur.
Permit me to assure you, madam, that your incomparable talents for explanation will be utterly thrown away on me in future. I am in possession of the whole truth, from a person whose information I cannot doubt: I know the precise date of the commencement of your connexion with R —— , so that you must perceive it will be impracticable to make me believe that you have not betrayed my easy confidence.
I cannot, however, without those pangs of sentiment which your heart will never experience, reflect upon the treachery, the perfidy of one who has been my bosom friend. — Return my letters, Gabrielle. — With this you will receive certain souvenirs, at which I could never henceforward look without sighing. I return you that ring I have so long worn with delight, the picture of that treacherous eye, which you know so well how to use. — Adieu, Gabrielle. — The illusion is over. — How many of the illusions of my fond heart have been dispelled by time and treachery!
OLIVIA.
{Footnote 1: Certain ladies at this time carried pictures of the eyes of their favourites.}
LETTER LXXV.
MADAME DE P —— TO MONSIEUR R —— .
Paris, —— 18, —— .
I have just received the most extravagant letter imaginable from your Olivia. Really you may congratulate yourself, my dear friend, upon having recovered your liberty. ‘Twere better to be a galley slave at once than to be bound to please a woman for life, who knows not what she would have either in love or friendship. Can you conceive anything so absurd as her upbraiding me with treachery, because I know the value of a heart, of which she tells me she was more than half tired? as if I were to blame for her falling in love with Mr. L —— , and as if I did not know the whole progress of her inconstancy. Her letters to me give a new history of the birth and education of Love. Here we see Love born of Envy, nursed by Ennui, and dandled in turn by all the Vices.
And this Lady Olivia fancies that she is a perfect French woman! There is nothing we Parisians abhor and ridicule so much as these foreign, and always awkward, caricatures of our manners. With us there are many who, according to a delicate distinction, lose their virtue without losing their taste for virtue; but I flatter myself there are few who resemble Olivia entirely — who have neither the virtues of a man nor of a woman. One cannot even say that “her head is the dupe of her heart,” since she has no heart. But enough of such a tiresome and incomprehensible subject.
How I overvalued that head, when I thought it could ever be fit for politics! ’Tis well we did not commit ourselves. You see how prudent I am, my dear R —— , and how much those are mistaken who think that we women are not fit to be trusted with secrets of state. Love and politics make the best mixture in the world. Adieu. Victoire summons me to my toilette.
GABRIELLE DE P —— .
LETTER LXXVI.
MADAME DE P —— TO LADY OLIVIA.
Paris, —— 18, —— .
Really, my dear Olivia, this is too childish. What! make a complaint in form against me for taking a lover off your hands when you did not know what to do with him! Do you quarrel in England every time you change partners in a country dance? But I must be serious; for the high-sounding words treachery and perfidy are surely sufficient to make any body grave. Seriously, then, if you are resolved to be tragical, et de me faire une scène, I must submit — console myself, and, above all things, take care not to be ridiculous.
Your letters, as you desire it so earnestly, and with so much reason, shall be returned by the first safe conveyance; but excuse me if I forbear to restore your souvenirs. With us Parisians, this returning of keepsakes has been out of fashion, since the days of Molière and Le dépit amoureux.
Adieu, my charming Olivia! I embrace you tenderly, I was going to say; but I believe, according to your English etiquette, I must now conclude with
I have the honour to be,
Madam,
Your most obedient,
Humble servant,
GABRIELLE DE P —— .
LETTER LXXVII.
FROM OLIVIA TO MR. L —— .
Tuesday morning.
Come not to Richmond to-day; I am not in spirits to see you, my dearest L —— . Allow me to indulge my melancholy retired from every human eye.
OLIVIA.
LETTER LXXVIII.
FROM LADY OLIVIA TO MR. L —— .
Tuesday evening.
“Explain to you the cause of my melancholy “ — Vain request! — cruel as vain! Your ignorance of the cause too well justifies my sad presentiments. Were our feelings in unison, as once they were, would not every chord of your heart vibrate responsively to mine?
With me, love is an absorbing vortex of the soul, into which all other thoughts, feelings, and ideas are irresistibly impelled; with you, it is but as the stranger stream that crosses the peaceful lake, and, as it flows, wakens only the surface of the slumbering waters, communicating to them but a temporary agitation. With you, my dear, but too tranquil-minded friend, love is but one amid the vulgar crowd of pleasures; it concentrates not your ideas, it entrances not your faculties; it is not, as in my heart, the supreme delight, which renders all others tasteless, the only blessing which can make life supportable; the sole, sufficient object of existence. Alas! how cruelly different is the feeble attachment that I have inspired from that all-powerful sentiment to which I live a victim! Countless symptoms, by you unheeded, mark to my love-watchful eye the decline of passion. How often am I secretly shocked by the cold carelessness of your words and manner! How often does the sigh burst from my bosom, the tear fall from my eye, when you have left me at leisure to recall, by memory’s torturing power, instances of your increasing indifference! Seek not to calm my too well-founded fears. Professions, with all their unmeaning, inanimate formality, but irritate my anguish. Permit me to indulge, to feed upon my grief in silence. Ask me no more to explain to you the cause of my melancholy. Too plainly, alas! I feel it is beyond my utmost power to endure it. Amiable Werter — divine St. Preux — you would sympathize in my feelings! Sublime Goethe — all-eloquent Rousseau — you alone could feel as I do, and you alone could paint my anguish.
The miserable
OLIVIA.
LETTER LXXIX.
MR. L —— TO GENERAL B —— .
Expect no bulletin of happiness from me, my friend. I find it impossible to make Olivia happy. She has superior talents, accomplishments, beauty, grace, all that can attract and fascinate the human heart — that could triumph over every feeling, every principle that opposed her power: she lives with the man she loves, and yet she is miserable.
Rousseau, it has been said, never really loved any woman but his own Julie; I have lately been tempted to think that Olivia never really loved any man but St. Preux. Werter, perhaps, and some other German heroes, might dispute her heart even with St. Preux; but as for me, I begin to be aware that I am loved only as a feeble resemblance of those divine originals (to whom, however, my character bears not the slightest similarity), and I am often indirectly, and sometimes directly, reproached with my inferiority to imaginary models. But how can a plain Englishman hope to reach
“The high sublime of deep absurd?”
I am continually reviled for not using a romantic language, which I have never learned; and which, as far as I can judge, is foreign to all natural feeling. I wish to make Olivia happy. There is nothing I would not do to satisfy her of my sincerity; but nothing I can do will suffice. She has a sort of morbid sensibility, which is more alive to pain than pleasure, more susceptible of jealousy than of love. No terms are sufficiently strong to convince her of my affection, but an unguarded word makes her miserable for hours.
She requires to be agitated by violent emotions, though they exhaust her mind, and leave her spiritless and discontented. In this alternation of rapture and despair all her time passes. As she says of herself, she has no soul but for love: she seems to think it a crime against sentiment, to admit of relief from common occupations or indifferent subjects; with a sort of superstitious zeal, she excludes all thoughts but those which relate to one object, and in this spirit of amorous mysticism she actually makes a penance even of love. I am astonished that her heart can endure this variety of self-inflicted torments. What will become of Olivia when she ceases to love and be loved? And what passion can be durable which is so violent as hers, and to which no respite is allowed? No affection can sustain these hourly trials of suspicion and reproach.
Jealousy of Leonora has taken such possession of Olivia’s imagination, that she misinterprets all my words and actions. By restraining my thoughts, by throwing obstacles in the way of my affection for my wife, she stimulates and increases it: she forces upon me continually those comparisons which she dreads. Till I knew Olivia more intimately than the common forms of a first acquaintance, or the illusions of a treacherous passion permitted, her defects did not appear; but now that I suffer, and that I see her suffer daily, I deplore them bitterly. Her happiness rests and weighs heavily on my honour. I feel myself bound to consider and to provide for the happiness of the woman who has sacrificed to me all independent means of felicity. A man without honour or humanity may perhaps finish an intrigue as easily as he can begin it, but this is not exactly the case of your imprudent friend,
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 90