Letter XLVIII

To Mrs. Fielder

December 8.

Madam:--

This comes from a very unfortunate and culpable hand, --a hand that hardly knows how to sign its own condemnation, and which sickness, no less than irresolution, almost deprives of the power to hold the pen.

Yet I call Heaven to witness that I expected not the evil from my infatuation which, it seems, has followed it. I meant to influence none but Mr. Talbot’s belief. I had the misfortune to see and to love him long before his engagement with your daughter. I overstepped the limits of my sex, and met with no return to my generous offers and my weak entreaties but sternness and contempt.

You, madam, are perhaps raised above the weakness of a heart like mine. You will not comprehend how an unrequited passion can ever give place to rage and revenge and how the merits of the object preferred to me should only embitter that revenge.

Jane Talbot never loved the man whom I would have made happy. Her ingenuous temper easily disclosed her indifference, and she married not to please herself, but to please others. Her husband’s infatuation in marrying on such terms could be exceeded by nothing but his folly in refusing one who would have lived for no other end than to please him.

I observed the progress of the intimacy between Mr. Colden and her, in Talbot’s absence; and can you not conceive, madam, that my heart was disposed to exult in every event that verified my own predictions and would convince Talbot of the folly of his choice? Hence I was a jealous observer. The worst construction was put upon your daughter’s conduct. That open, impetuous temper of hers, confident of innocence, and fearless of ungenerous or malignant constructions, easily put her into my power. Unrequited love made me her enemy as well as that of her husband, and I even saw, in her unguarded deportment, and in the reputed licentiousness of Mr. Colden’s principles, some reason, some probability, in my surmises.

Several anonymous letters were written to you. I thank Heaven that I was seldom guilty of direct falsehoods in these letters. I told you little more than what a jealous eye and a prying disposition easily discovered; and I never saw any thing in their intercourse that argued more than a temper thoughtless and indiscreet. To distinguish minutely between truths and exaggerations, in the letters which I sent you, would be a painful and, I trust, a needless task, since I now solemnly declare that, on an impartial review of all that I ever witnessed in the conduct of your daughter, I remember nothing that can justify the imputation of guilt. I believe her conduct to Colden was not always limited by a due regard to appearances; that she trusted her fame too much to her consciousness of innocence, and set too lightly by the malignity of those who would be glad to find her in fault, and the ignorance of others, who naturally judged of her by themselves. And this, I now solemnly take Heaven to witness, is the only charge that can truly be brought against her.