“We remained at Bath no longer than a fortnight after our wedding;
for as to any reconciliation with my aunt, there were no hopes; and of my
fortune not one farthing could be touched till I was of age, of which I
now wanted more than two years. My husband therefore was resolved to set
out for Ireland; against which I remonstrated very earnestly, and insisted
on a promise which he had made me before our marriage that I should never
take this journey against my consent; and indeed I never intended to
consent to it; nor will anybody, I believe, blame me for that resolution;
but this, however, I never mentioned to my husband, and petitioned only
for the reprieve of a month; but he had fixed the day, and to that day he
obstinately adhered.
“The evening before our departure, as we were disputing this point
with great eagerness on both sides, he started suddenly from his chair,
and left me abruptly, saying he was going to the rooms. He was hardly out
of the house when I saw a paper lying on the floor, which, I suppose, he
had carelessly pulled from his pocket, together with his handkerchief.
This paper I took up, and, finding it to be a letter, I made no scruple to
open and read it; and indeed I read it so often that I can repeat it to
you almost word for word. This then was the letter:
“This was the letter, word for word. Guess, my dear girl—guess
how this letter affected me. You prefer the niece on account of her ready
money! If every one of these words had been a dagger, I could with
pleasure have stabbed them into his heart; but I will not recount my
frantic behaviour on the occasion. I had pretty well spent my tears before
his return home; but sufficient remains of them appeared in my swollen
eyes. He threw himself sullenly into his chair, and for a long time we
were both silent. At length, in a haughty tone, he said, `I hope, madam,
your servants have packed up all your things; for the coach will be ready
by six in the morning.' My patience was totally subdued by this
provocation, and I answered, `No, sir, there is a letter still remains
unpacked;' and then throwing it on the table I fell to upbraiding him with
the most bitter language I could invent.
“Whether guilt, or shame, or prudence, restrained him I cannot say;
but, though he is the most passionate of men, he exerted no rage on this
occasion. He endeavoured, on the contrary, to pacify me by the most gentle
means. He swore the phrase in the letter to which I principally objected
was not his, nor had he ever written any such. He owned, indeed, the
having mentioned his marriage, and that preference which he had given to
myself, but denied with many oaths the having mentioned any such matter at
all on account of the straits he was in for money, arising, he said, from
his having too long neglected his estate in Ireland. And this, he said,
which he could not bear to discover to me, was the only reason of his
having so strenuously insisted on our journey. He then used several very
endearing expressions, and concluded by a very fond caress, and many
violent protestations of love.
“There was one circumstance which, though he did not appeal to it,
had much weight with me in his favour, and that was the word jointure in
the taylor's letter, whereas my aunt never had been married, and this Mr
Fitzpatrick well knew.——As I imagined, therefore, that the
fellow must have inserted this of his own head, or from hearsay, I
persuaded myself he might have ventured likewise on that odious line on no
better authority. What reasoning was this, my dear? was I not an advocate
rather than a judge?—But why do I mention such a circumstance as
this, or appeal to it for the justification of my forgiveness?—In
short, had he been guilty of twenty times as much, half the tenderness and
fondness which he used would have prevailed on me to have forgiven him. I
now made no farther objections to our setting out, which we did the next
morning, and in a little more than a week arrived at the seat of Mr
Fitzpatrick.
“Your curiosity will excuse me from relating any occurrences which
past during our journey; for it would indeed be highly disagreeable to
travel it over again, and no less so to you to travel it over with me.
“This seat, then, is an ancient mansion-house: if I was in one of
those merry humours in which you have so often seen me, I could describe
it to you ridiculously enough. It looked as if it had been formerly
inhabited by a gentleman. Here was room enough, and not the less room on
account of the furniture; for indeed there was very little in it. An old
woman, who seemed coeval with the building, and greatly resembled her whom
Chamont mentions in the Orphan, received us at the gate, and in a howl
scarce human, and to me unintelligible, welcomed her master home. In
short, the whole scene was so gloomy and melancholy, that it threw my
spirits into the lowest dejection; which my husband discerning, instead of
relieving, encreased by two or three malicious observations. `There are
good houses, madam,' says he, `as you find, in other places besides
England; but perhaps you had rather be in a dirty lodgings at Bath.'
“Happy, my dear, is the woman who, in any state of life, hath a
cheerful good-natured companion to support and comfort her! But why do I
reflect on happy situations only to aggravate my own misery? my companion,
far from clearing up the gloom of solitude, soon convinced me that I must
have been wretched with him in any place, and in any condition. In a word,
he was a surly fellow, a character perhaps you have never seen; for,
indeed, no woman ever sees it exemplified but in a father, a brother, or a
husband; and, though you have a father, he is not of that character. This
surly fellow had formerly appeared to me the very reverse, and so he did
still to every other person. Good heaven! how is it possible for a man to
maintain a constant lie in his appearance abroad and in company, and to
content himself with shewing disagreeable truth only at home? Here, my
dear, they make themselves amends for the uneasy restraint which they put
on their tempers in the world; for I have observed, the more merry and gay
and good-humoured my husband hath at any time been in company, the more
sullen and morose he was sure to become at our next private meeting. How
shall I describe his barbarity? To my fondness he was cold and insensible.
My little comical ways, which you, my Sophy, and which others, have called
so agreeable, he treated with contempt. In my most serious moments he sung
and whistled; and whenever I was thoroughly dejected and miserable he was
angry, and abused me: for, though he was never pleased with my
good-humour, nor ascribed it to my satisfaction in him, yet my low spirits
always offended him, and those he imputed to my repentance of having (as
he said) married an Irishman.
“You will easily conceive, my dear Graveairs (I ask your pardon, I
really forgot myself), that, when a woman makes an imprudent match in the
sense of the world, that is, when she is not an arrant prostitute to
pecuniary interest, she must necessarily have some inclination and
affection for her man. You will as easily believe that this affection may
possibly be lessened; nay, I do assure you, contempt will wholly eradicate
it. This contempt I now began to entertain for my husband, whom I now
discovered to be—I must use the expression—an arrant
blockhead. Perhaps you will wonder I did not make this discovery long
before; but women will suggest a thousand excuses to themselves for the
folly of those they like: besides, give me leave to tell you, it requires
a most penetrating eye to discern a fool through the disguises of gaiety
and good breeding.
“It will be easily imagined that, when I once despised my husband,
as I confess to you I soon did, I must consequently dislike his company;
and indeed I had the happiness of being very little troubled with it; for
our house was now most elegantly furnished, our cellars well stocked, and
dogs and horses provided in great abundance. As my gentleman therefore
entertained his neighbours with great hospitality, so his neighbours
resorted to him with great alacrity; and sports and drinking consumed so
much of his time, that a small part of his conversation, that is to say,
of his ill-humours, fell to my share.
“Happy would it have been for me if I could as easily have avoided
all other disagreeable company; but, alas! I was confined to some which
constantly tormented me; and the more, as I saw no prospect of being
relieved from them. These companions were my own racking thoughts, which
plagued and in a manner haunted me night and day. In this situation I past
through a scene, the horrors of which can neither be painted nor imagined.
Think, my dear, figure, if you can, to yourself, what I must have
undergone. I became a mother by the man I scorned, hated, and detested. I
went through all the agonies and miseries of a lying-in (ten times more
painful in such a circumstance than the worst labour can be when one
endures it for a man one loves) in a desert, or rather, indeed, a scene of
riot and revel, without a friend, without a companion, or without any of
those agreeable circumstances which often alleviate, and perhaps sometimes
more than compensate, the sufferings of our sex at that season.”