_ Letter XIV - To Mrs. Fielder
To Mrs. Fielder Philadelphia, October 24.
Impossible! Are you not my mother?--more to me than any mother? Did I not receive your protection and instruction in my infancy and my childhood? When left an orphan by my own mother, your bosom was open to receive me. _There_ was the helpless babe cherished, and there was it taught all that virtue which it has since endeavoured to preserve unimpaired in every trial.
You must not cast me off. You must not hate me. You must not call me ungrateful and a wretch. Not to have merited these names is all that enables me to endure your displeasure. As long as that belief consoles me, my heart will not break.
Yet that, even that, will not much avail me. The distress that I now feel, that I have felt ever since the receipt of your letter, cannot be increased.
You forbid me to write to you; but I cannot forbear as long as there is hope of extorting from you the cause of your aversion to my friend. I solicit not this disclosure with a view or even in the hope of repelling your objections. I want, I had almost said, I _want_ to share your antipathies. I want only to be justified in obeying you. When known, they will, perhaps, be found sufficient. I conjure you once more, tell me your objections to this marriage.
As well as I can, I have examined myself. Passion may influence me, but I am unconscious of its influence. I think I act with no exclusive regard to my own pleasure, but as it flows from and is dependent on the happiness of others.
If I am mistaken in my notions of duty, God forbid that I should shut my ears against good counsel. Instead of loathing or shunning it, I am anxious to hear it. I know my own short-sighted folly, my slight experience. I know how apt I am to go astray, how often my own heart deceives me; and hence I always am in search of better knowledge; hence I listen to admonition, not only with docility, but gratitude. My inclination ought, perhaps, to be absolutely neuter; but, if I know myself, it is with reluctance that I withhold my assent from the expostulator. I am delighted to receive conviction from the arguments of those that love me.
In this case, I am prepared to hear and weigh, and be convinced by, any thing you think proper to urge.
I ask not pardon for my faults, nor compassion on my frailty. That I love Colden I will not deny, but I love his worth; his merits, real or imaginary, enrapture my soul. Ideal his virtues may be, but to me they are real, and the moment they cease to be so, that the illusion disappears, I cease to love him, or, at least, I will do all that is in my power to do. I will forbear all intercourse or correspondence with him,--for his as well as my own sake.
Tell me then, my mother, what you know of him. What heinous offence has he committed, that makes him unworthy of my regard?
You have raised, without knowing it perhaps, or designing to effect it in this way, a bar to this detested alliance. While you declare that Colden has been guilty of base actions, it is impossible to grant him my esteem as fully as a husband should claim. Till I know what the actions are which you impute to him, I never will bind myself to him by indissoluble bands.
I have told him this, and he joins with me to entreat you to communicate your charges to me. He believes that you are misled by some misapprehension,--some slander. He is conscious that many of his actions have been, in some respects, ambiguous, capable of being mistaken by careless, or distant, or prejudiced observers. He believes that you have been betrayed into some fatal error in relation to _one_ action of his life.
If this be so, he wishes only to be told his fault, and will spare no time and no pains to remove your mistake, if you should appear to be mistaken.
How easily, my good mamma, may the most discerning and impartial be misled! The ignorant and envious have no choice between truth and error. Their tale must want something to complete it, or must possess more than the truth demands. Something you have heard of my friend injurious to his good name, and you condemn him unheard.
Yet this displeases me not. I am not anxious for his justification, but only to know so much as will authorize me to conform to your wishes.
You warn me against this marriage for my own sake. You think it will be disastrous to me.--The reasons of this apprehension would, you think, appear just in my eyes should they be disclosed, yet you will not disclose them. Without disclosure I cannot--as a rational creature, I _cannot_--change my resolution. If then I marry and the evil come that is threatened, whom have I to blame? at whose door must my misfortunes be laid if not at hers who had it in her power to prevent the evil and would not?
Your treatment of me can proceed only from your love; and yet all the fruits of the direst enmity may grow out of it. By untimely concealments may my peace be forfeited forever. Judge then between your obligations to me, and those of secrecy, into which you seem to have entered with another.
My happiness, my future conduct, are in your hand. Mould them, govern them, as you think proper. I have pointed out the means, and once more conjure you, by the love which you once bore, which you still bear, to me, to use them.
JANE TALBOT. _