More Letters

I dare say you will not think the worse of her for consulting her friends in such an affair . . . besides, a woman could not well answer such a letter herself unless it was with a full refusal, and that would have been wrong to have done until she knew something of the person who wrote it and as wrong to have encouraged him.

'I shall tell you farther that she took notice of you at the play and does not at all seem disinclined to think favourable of you.'

A suitor is even instructed how to take tragedy in his stride. The lady to whom he seeks to pay his addresses asks him whether he has consulted his mother (with whom he lives) in this affair of the heart. He screws up courage to do so, then writes to say that his mother favours the match; but for a bad cold 'she would have waited on you as the bearer of this.' Almost immediately the mother herself writes to the young lady, expressing delight and praising her son for all his virtues. Her letter contains intimations of mortality. 'The only worldly consideration now on my mind is to see him happily married; then my whole care and attention shall be fixed in that place where I hope to enjoy eternal felicity.' It becomes clear that she is suffering from rather more than a bad cold. The young lady can write in pious strain too. Replying to the mother, she says:

I was going to say that you had known but few pleasures in this life, to be deprived of your husband so soon, and the rest of your life spent under so many infirmities, but your letter convinced me that you have felt more real pleasure in the practice of virtue and resignation to the Divine Will than ever can be had in any temporal enjoyment.

And to her suitor this high-minded young lady writes:

I hope that her conduct will be a pattern for you to copy after in the whole of your future life; it is virtue alone, Sir, which can make you happy.

The two are now corresponding with each other direct, since the requisite permissions have been obtained. Then the suitor's mother dies. He writes:
'Will you, my dear charmer, believe that whilst I was reading your letter with the greatest pleasure I was shedding tears for an affectionate parent? . . . My mother is being buried this evening and as soon as I can settle things with the executors I will, as it were, fly to meet you.'
So it goes on: 'From a Rich Lover to a Young Lady Without a Fortune'; 'From a Young Lady to an Aged Suitor' ('dotage must fall to the share of the old, disgust to the share of the young'); 'From a Bashful Lover to His Mistress'; 'From a Lover to his Mistress's Aunt Requesting Her Intercession.' One letter is inspired by the misfortune which overtook Dorothy Osborne. The title is 'From a Young Lady After Having the Small Pox, to Her Lover'.

You was pleased when you first honoured me with your addresses to say the beauties of my person were only exceeded by the perfection of my mind . . . hence the loss of my personal accomplishments which are now totally destroyed by the severity of the small pox is not so much to be regretted. It gives you a happy opportunity to prove yourself to be a man of truth and veracity....

The gentleman writes in reply to say that his feelings are unchanged. After all, he himself may some day find himself writing the 'Letter from a Lover After Receiving Wounds in a Battle, to His Mistress':

You have often declared before battle had called me that not my personal but mental accomplishments had joined your affections; happy for me if thus be true, for I can no longer boast those personal charms with which my looking-glass once nattered me. I have lost one of my eyes and am deprived of a leg; but as they are gone in an honourable cause I hope my dear Maria will give me no reason to regret their loss....

If the lady is still willing to marry him, he says, he will fly home on the wings of a dove. The lady, of course, signifies her willingness to accept him. Was it not a ruling of the Courts of Love that a suitor wounded in the wars must on no account be rejected?