Letter XXXIX

To Mrs. Talbot

November 28.

IT becomes me to submit without a murmur to a resolution dictated by a disinterested regard to my happiness.

That you may find in that persuasion, in your mother’s tenderness and gratitude, in the affluence and honour which this determination has secured to you, abundant consolation for every evil that may befall yourself or pursue me, are my only wishes.

Far was I from designing to conceal from you entirely my father’s aversion to our views. I frequently apprized you of the inferences to be naturally drawn from his known character; but I trusted to his generosity, to the steadiness of my own deportment, to your own merits, when he should become personally acquainted with you, to his good sense, when reflecting on an evil in his power to lessen though not wholly to remove, for a change in his opinions, or, at least, in his conduct.

There was sufficient resemblance in the characters of both our parents to make me rely on the influence of time and reflection in our favour. Your mother could not cease to love you. I could not by any accident be wholly bereaved of my father’s affection. No conduct of theirs had robbed them of my esteem. Why then did I persist in thwarting their wishes? Why encourage you in your opposition? Because I imagined that, in thwarting their present views, which were founded in error, I consulted their lasting happiness, and made myself a title to their future gratitude by challenging their present rebukes.