Love and Friendship, and Other Early Works - Jane Austen (ebook offline reader .TXT) 📗

forget the very witty

answer I made to this speech. “Eloisa (said I) I beg you would

be quite at your Ease with respect to all such fears in future,

for be assured that I shall always keep my admiration to myself

and my own pursuits and never extend it to yours.” This was the

only very severe thing I ever said in my Life; not but that I

have often felt myself extremely satirical but it was the only

time I ever made my feelings public.

 

I suppose there never were two Young people who had a greater

affection for each other than Henry and Eloisa; no, the Love of

your Brother for Miss Burton could not be so strong tho’ it might

be more violent. You may imagine therefore how provoked my

Sister must have been to have him play her such a trick. Poor

girl! she still laments his Death with undiminished constancy,

notwithstanding he has been dead more than six weeks; but some

People mind such things more than others. The ill state of

Health into which his loss has thrown her makes her so weak, and

so unable to support the least exertion, that she has been in

tears all this Morning merely from having taken leave of Mrs.

Marlowe who with her Husband, Brother and Child are to leave

Bristol this morning. I am sorry to have them go because they

are the only family with whom we have here any acquaintance, but

I never thought of crying; to be sure Eloisa and Mrs Marlowe have

always been more together than with me, and have therefore

contracted a kind of affection for each other, which does not

make Tears so inexcusable in them as they would be in me. The

Marlowes are going to Town; Cliveland accompanies them; as

neither Eloisa nor I could catch him I hope you or Matilda may

have better Luck. I know not when we shall leave Bristol,

Eloisa’s spirits are so low that she is very averse to moving,

and yet is certainly by no means mended by her residence here. A

week or two will I hope determine our Measures—in the mean time

believe me and etc—and etc—

Charlotte Lutterell.

 

LETTER the EIGHTH

Miss LUTTERELL to Mrs MARLOWE

Bristol April 4th

 

I feel myself greatly obliged to you my dear Emma for such a mark

of your affection as I flatter myself was conveyed in the

proposal you made me of our Corresponding; I assure you that it

will be a great releif to me to write to you and as long as my

Health and Spirits will allow me, you will find me a very

constant correspondent; I will not say an entertaining one, for

you know my situation suffciently not to be ignorant that in me

Mirth would be improper and I know my own Heart too well not to

be sensible that it would be unnatural. You must not expect news

for we see no one with whom we are in the least acquainted, or in

whose proceedings we have any Interest. You must not expect

scandal for by the same rule we are equally debarred either from

hearing or inventing it.—You must expect from me nothing but

the melancholy effusions of a broken Heart which is ever

reverting to the Happiness it once enjoyed and which ill supports

its present wretchedness. The Possibility of being able to

write, to speak, to you of my lost Henry will be a luxury to me,

and your goodness will not I know refuse to read what it will so

much releive my Heart to write. I once thought that to have what

is in general called a Freind (I mean one of my own sex to whom I

might speak with less reserve than to any other person)

independant of my sister would never be an object of my wishes,

but how much was I mistaken! Charlotte is too much engrossed by

two confidential correspondents of that sort, to supply the place

of one to me, and I hope you will not think me girlishly

romantic, when I say that to have some kind and compassionate

Freind who might listen to my sorrows without endeavouring to

console me was what I had for some time wished for, when our

acquaintance with you, the intimacy which followed it and the

particular affectionate attention you paid me almost from the

first, caused me to entertain the flattering Idea of those

attentions being improved on a closer acquaintance into a

Freindship which, if you were what my wishes formed you would be

the greatest Happiness I could be capable of enjoying. To find

that such Hopes are realised is a satisfaction indeed, a

satisfaction which is now almost the only one I can ever

experience.—I feel myself so languid that I am sure were you

with me you would oblige me to leave off writing, and I cannot

give you a greater proof of my affection for you than by acting,

as I know you would wish me to do, whether Absent or Present. I

am my dear Emmas sincere freind

E. L.

 

LETTER the NINTH

Mrs MARLOWE to Miss LUTTERELL

Grosvenor Street, April 10th

 

Need I say my dear Eloisa how wellcome your letter was to me I

cannot give a greater proof of the pleasure I received from it,

or of the Desire I feel that our Correspondence may be regular

and frequent than by setting you so good an example as I now do

in answering it before the end of the week—. But do not imagine

that I claim any merit in being so punctual; on the contrary I

assure you, that it is a far greater Gratification to me to write

to you, than to spend the Evening either at a Concert or a Ball.

Mr Marlowe is so desirous of my appearing at some of the Public

places every evening that I do not like to refuse him, but at the

same time so much wish to remain at Home, that independant of the

Pleasure I experience in devoting any portion of my Time to my

Dear Eloisa, yet the Liberty I claim from having a letter to

write of spending an Evening at home with my little Boy, you know

me well enough to be sensible, will of itself be a sufficient

Inducement (if one is necessary) to my maintaining with Pleasure

a Correspondence with you. As to the subject of your letters to

me, whether grave or merry, if they concern you they must be

equally interesting to me; not but that I think the melancholy

Indulgence of your own sorrows by repeating them and dwelling on

them to me, will only encourage and increase them, and that it

will be more prudent in you to avoid so sad a subject; but yet

knowing as I do what a soothing and melancholy Pleasure it must

afford you, I cannot prevail on myself to deny you so great an

Indulgence, and will only insist on your not expecting me to

encourage you in it, by my own letters; on the contrary I intend

to fill them with such lively Wit and enlivening Humour as shall

even provoke a smile in the sweet but sorrowfull countenance of

my Eloisa.

 

In the first place you are to learn that I have met your sisters

three freinds Lady Lesley and her Daughters, twice in Public

since I have been here. I know you will be impatient to hear my

opinion of the Beauty of three Ladies of whom you have heard so

much. Now, as you are too ill and too unhappy to be vain, I

think I may venture to inform you that I like none of their faces

so well as I do your own. Yet they are all handsome—Lady Lesley

indeed I have seen before; her Daughters I beleive would in

general be said to have a finer face than her Ladyship, and yet

what with the charms of a Blooming complexion, a little

Affectation and a great deal of small-talk, (in each of which she

is superior to the young Ladies) she will I dare say gain herself

as many admirers as the more regular features of Matilda, and

Margaret. I am sure you will agree with me in saying that they

can none of them be of a proper size for real Beauty, when you

know that two of them are taller and the other shorter than

ourselves. In spite of this Defect (or rather by reason of it)

there is something very noble and majestic in the figures of the

Miss Lesleys, and something agreably lively in the appearance of

their pretty little Mother-in-law. But tho’ one may be majestic

and the other lively, yet the faces of neither possess that

Bewitching sweetness of my Eloisas, which her present languor is

so far from diminushing. What would my Husband and Brother say

of us, if they knew all the fine things I have been saying to you

in this letter. It is very hard that a pretty woman is never to

be told she is so by any one of her own sex without that person’s

being suspected to be either her determined Enemy, or her

professed Toad-eater. How much more amiable are women in that

particular! One man may say forty civil things to another

without our supposing that he is ever paid for it, and provided

he does his Duty by our sex, we care not how Polite he is to his

own.

 

Mrs Lutterell will be so good as to accept my compliments,

Charlotte, my Love, and Eloisa the best wishes for the recovery

of her Health and Spirits that can be offered by her affectionate

Freind

E. Marlowe.

 

I am afraid this letter will be but a poor specimen of my Powers

in the witty way; and your opinion of them will not be greatly

increased when I assure you that I have been as entertaining as I

possibly could.

 

LETTER the TENTH

From Miss MARGARET LESLEY to Miss CHARLOTTE LUTTERELL

Portman Square April 13th

MY DEAR CHARLOTTE

We left Lesley-Castle on the 28th of last Month, and arrived

safely in London after a Journey of seven Days; I had the

pleasure of finding your Letter here waiting my Arrival, for

which you have my grateful Thanks. Ah! my dear Freind I every

day more regret the serene and tranquil Pleasures of the Castle

we have left, in exchange for the uncertain and unequal

Amusements of this vaunted City. Not that I will pretend to

assert that these uncertain and unequal Amusements are in the

least Degree unpleasing to me; on the contrary I enjoy them

extremely and should enjoy them even more, were I not certain

that every appearance I make in Public but rivetts the Chains of

those unhappy Beings whose Passion it is impossible not to pity,

tho’ it is out of my power to return. In short my Dear Charlotte

it is my sensibility for the sufferings of so many amiable young

Men, my Dislike of the extreme admiration I meet with, and my

aversion to being so celebrated both in Public, in Private, in

Papers, and in Printshops, that are the reasons why I cannot more

fully enjoy, the Amusements so various and pleasing of London.

How often have I wished that I possessed as little Personal

Beauty as you do; that my figure were as inelegant; my face as

unlovely; and my appearance as unpleasing as yours! But ah! what

little chance is there of so desirable an Event; I have had the

small-pox, and must therefore submit to my unhappy fate.

 

I am now going to intrust you my dear Charlotte with a secret

which has long disturbed the tranquility of my days, and which is

of