Home > Authors Index > Charles Brockden Brown > Jane Talbot > This page
Jane Talbot, a novel by Charles Brockden Brown |
||
Letter 15 - To Jane Talbot |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ Letter XV - To Jane Talbot To Jane Talbot New York, October 27. Insolent creature that thou art, Jane, and cunning as insolent! To elude my just determination by such an artifice! To counterfeit a strange hand in the direction of thy letter, that I might thereby be induced to open it! Thou wilt not rest, I see, till thou hast torn from my heart every root, every fibre of my once-cherished tenderness; till thou hast laid my head low in the grave. To number the tears and the pangs which thy depravity has already cost me----but thy last act is destined to surpass all former ones. Thy perseverance in wickedness, thy inflexible imposture, amazes me beyond all utterance. Thy effrontery in boasting of thy innocence, in calling this wretch thy _friend_, thy _soul's_ friend, the means of securing the favour of a pure and all-seeing Judge, exceeds all that I supposed possible in human nature. And that thou, Jane, the darling of my heart, and the object of all my care and my pride, should be this profligate, this obdurate creature! When very young, you were ill of a fever. The physician gave up, for some hours, all hope of your life. I shall never forget the grief which his gloomy silence gave me. All that I held dear in the world, I then thought, I would cheerfully surrender to save your life. Poor, short-sighted wretch that I was! That event which, had it then happened, would perhaps have bereaved me of reason, would have saved me from a portion far more bitter. I should have never lived to witness the depravity of one whom my whole life had been employed in training to virtue. Having opened your letter, and somewhat debated with myself, I consented to read. I will do more than read; I will answer it minutely. I will unfold that secret by which, you truly think, my aversion to your present scheme has been chiefly caused. I have hitherto been silent through compassion to you; through the hope that all might yet be well; that you might be influenced by my persuasions to forbear an action that will insure forever your ruin. I now perceive the folly of this compassion and these hopes. I need not be assiduous to spare you the shame and mortification of hearing the truth. Shame is as much a stranger to your heart as remorse. Say what I will, disclose what I will, your conduct will be just the same. A show of much reluctance and humility will, no doubt, be made, and the tongue will be busy in imploring favour which the heart disdains. In the foresight of this, I was going to forbid your writing; but you care not for my forbidding. As long as you think it possible to reconcile me to your views and make me a partaker in your infamy, you will harass me with importunity, with feigned penitence and preposterous arguments. But one thing at least is in my power. I can shun you, and I can throw your unopened letters into the fire; and that, believe me, Jane, I shall do. But I am wasting time. My indignation carries me away from my purpose. Let me return to it, and, having told you all my mind, let me dismiss the hateful subject forever. I knew the motives that induced you to marry Lewis Talbot. They were good ones. Your compliance with mine and your father's wishes in that respect showed that force of understanding which I always ascribed to you. Your previous reluctance, your scruples, were indeed unworthy of you, but you conquered them, and that was better; perhaps it evinced more magnanimity than never to have had them. You were happy, I long thought, in your union with a man of probity and good sense. You may be sure I thought of you often, but only with pleasure. Certain indications I early saw in you of a sensibility that required strict government; an inattention to any thing but feeling; a proneness to romantic friendship, and a pining after good not consistent with our nature. I imagined that I had kept at a distance all such books and companions as tend to produce this fantastic character; and whence you imbibed this perverse spirit, at so early an age, is, to me, inconceivable. It cost me many a gloomy foreboding. My disquiets increased as you grew up, and that age arrived when the heart comes to be entangled with what is called love. I was anxious to find for you a man of merit, to whose keeping your happiness might safely be intrusted. Talbot was such a one, but the wayward heart refused to love him. He was not all your fancy had conceived of excellent and lovely. He was a mere man, with the tastes and habits suitable and common to his education and age. He was addicted to industry, was regular and frugal in his manner and economy. He had nothing of that specious and glossy texture which captivates inexperience and youth, and serves as a substitute for every other virtue. While others talked about their duty, he was contented with performing it; and he was satisfied with ignorance of theories as long as his practice was faultless. He was just such a one as I wished for the darling of my heart; but you thought not so. You did not object to his age, though almost double your own; to his person or aspect, though they were by no means worthy of his mind; to his profession or condition; but your heart sighed after one who could divide with you your sympathies; who saw every thing just as you saw it; who could emulate your enthusiasm, and echo back every exclamation which chance should dictate to you. You even pleaded religion as one of your objections. Talbot, it seems, had nothing that deserved to be called religion. He had never reasoned on the subject. He had read no books and had never looked into his Bible since he was fifteen years old. He seldom went to church but because it was the fashion, and, when there, seldom spared a thought from his own temporal concerns, to a future state and a governing Deity. All those expansions of soul produced by meditation on the power and goodness of our Maker, and those raptures that flow from accommodating all our actions to his will, and from consciousness of his approbation and presence, you discovered to be strangers to his breast, and therefore you scrupled to unite your fate with his. It was not enough that this man had never been seduced into disbelief; that his faith was steadfast and rational without producing those fervours, and reveries, and rhapsodies, which unfit us for the mixed scenes of human life, and breed in us absurd and fantastic notions of our duty or our happiness; that his religion had produced all its practical effects, in honest, regular, sober, and consistent conduct. You wanted a zealot; a sectary; one that should enter into all the trifling distinctions and minute subtleties that make one Christian the mortal foe of another, while, in their social conduct, there is no difference to be found between them. I do not repeat these things to upbraid you for what you then were, but merely to remind you of the inconsistency of these notions with your subsequent conduct. You then, at the instance of your father and at my instance, gave them up; and that compliance, supposing your scruples to have been undissembled, gave you a still greater interest in our affections. You never gave me reason to suppose that you repented of this compliance. I never saw you after your engagement, but you wore a cheerful countenance; at least till your unfortunate connection with Colden. To that connection must be traced every misfortune and depravity that has attended you since. When I heard, from Patty Sinclair, of his frequent visits to you during your retirement at Burlington, I thought of it but little. He was, indeed, a new acquaintance. You were unacquainted with his character and history, except so far as you could collect them from his conversation; and no confidence could, of course, be placed in that. It was therefore, perhaps, somewhat indiscreet to permit such _very_ frequent visits, such _very_ long walks. To neglect the friends whom you lived with, for the sake of exclusive conversations and lonely rambles, noon and night, with a mere stranger,--one not regularly introduced to you,--whose name you were obliged to inquire of himself,--you, too, already a betrothed woman; your lover absent; yourself from home, and merely on terms of hospitality! all this did not look well. But the mischief, it was evident, was to be known by the event. Colden might have probity and circumspection. He might prove an agreeable friend to your future husband and a useful companion to yourself. Kept within due limits, your complacency for this stranger, your attachment to his company, might occasion no inconvenience. How little did I then suspect to what extremes you were capable of going, and even then had actually gone! The subject was of sufficient importance to induce me to write to you. Your answer was not quite satisfactory, yet, on the whole, laid my apprehensions at rest. I was deceived by the confidence you expressed in your own caution, and the seeming readiness there was to be governed by my advice. Afterwards, I heard, through various channels, without any efforts on my part, intelligence of Colden. At first I was not much alarmed. Colden, it is true, was not a faultless or steadfast character. No gross or enormous vices were ascribed to him. His habits, as far as appearances enabled one to judge, were temperate and chaste. He was contemplative and bookish, and was vaguely described as being somewhat visionary and romantic. In all this there was nothing formidable. Such a man might surely be a harmless companion. Those with whom he was said to associate most intimately were highly estimable. Their esteem was a test of merit not to be disposed or hastily rejected. Things, however, quickly took a new face. I was informed that, after your return to the city, Colden continued to be a very constant visitant. Your husband's voyage left you soon after at liberty, and your intercourse with this person only became more intimate and confidential. Reflecting closely on this circumstance, I began to suspect some danger lurking in your path. I now remembered that impetuosity of feeling which distinguished your early age; those notions of kindred among souls, of friendship and harmony of feelings which, in your juvenile age, you loved to indulge. I reflected that the victory over these chimeras, which you gained by marriage with Talbot, might be merely temporary; and that, in order to call these dormant feelings into action, it was only requisite to meet with one contemplative, bookish, and romantic as yourself. Such a one, it was greatly to be feared, you had now found in this young man; just such qualities he was reported to possess, as would render him dangerous to you and you dangerous to him. A poet, not in theory only, but in practice; accustomed to intoxicate the women with melodious flattery; fond of being _intimate_; avowedly devoted to the sex; eloquent in his encomiums upon female charms; and affecting to select his _friends_ only from that sex. What effect might such a character have upon your peace, even without imputing any ill intention to him? Both of you might work your own ruin, while you designed nothing but good; and even supposing that your intercourse should be harmless, or even beneficial with respect to yourselves, what was to be feared for Talbot? An intimacy of this kind could hardly escape his observation on his return. It would be criminal, indeed, to conceal it from him. These apprehensions were raised to the highest pitch by more accurate information of Colden's character, which I afterwards received. I found, on inquiring of those who had the best means of knowing, that Colden had imbibed that pernicious philosophy which is now so much in vogue. One who knew him perfectly, who had long been in habits of the closest intimacy with him, who was still a familiar correspondent of his, gave me this account. I met this friend of Colden's (Thomson his name is, of whom I suppose you have heard something) in this city. His being mentioned as the intimate companion of Colden made me wish to see him, and fortunately, I prevailed upon him to be very communicative. Thomson is an excellent young man: he loves Colden much, and describes the progress of his friend's opinions with every mark of regret. He even showed me letters that had passed between them, and in which every horrid and immoral tenet was defended by one and denied by the other. These letters showed Colden as the advocate of suicide; a scoffer at promises; the despiser of revelation, of Providence and a future state; an opponent of marriage, and as one who denied (shocking!) that any thing but mere habit and positive law stood in the way of marriage, nay, of intercourse without marriage, between brother and sister, parent and child! You may readily believe that I did not credit such things on slight evidence. I did not rely on Thomson's mere words, solemn and unaffected as these were; nothing but Colden's handwriting could in such a case, be credited. To say truth, I should not be much surprised had I heard of Colden, as of a youth whose notions on moral and religious topics were, in some degree, unsettled; that, in the fervour and giddiness incident to his age, he had not tamed his mind to investigation; had not subdued his heart to regular and devout thoughts; that his passions or his indolence had made the truths of religion somewhat obscure, and shut them out, not properly from his conviction, but only from his attention. I expected to find, united with this vague and dubious state of mind, tokens of the influence of a pious education; a reverence,--at least, for those sacred precepts on which the happiness of men rests, and at least a practical observance of that which, if not fully admitted by his understanding, was yet very far from having been rejected by it. But widely and deplorably different was Colden's case. A most fascinating book [Footnote: Godwin's Political Justice.] fell at length into his hands, which changed, in a moment, the whole course of his ideas. What he had before regarded with reluctance and terror, this book taught him to admire and love. The writer has the art of the grand deceiver; the fatal art of carrying the worst poison under the name and appearance of wholesome food; of disguising all that is impious, or blasphemous, or licentious, under the guise and sanctions of virtue. Colden had lived before this without examination or inquiry. His heart, his inclination, was perhaps on the side of religion and true virtue; but this book carried all his inclination, his zeal, and his enthusiasm, over to the adversary; and so strangely had he been perverted, that he held himself bound, he conceived it to be his duty, to vindicate in private and public, to preach with vehemence, his new faith. The rage for making converts seized him; and that Thomson was not won over to the same cause proceeded from no want of industry in Colden. Such was the man whom you had admitted to your confidence; whom you had adopted for your bosom friend. I knew your pretensions to religion, the stress which you laid upon piety as the basis of morals. I remembered your objections to Talbot on this score, not only as a husband, but as a friend. I could, therefore, only suppose that Colden had joined dissimulation to his other errors, and had gained and kept your good opinion by avowing sentiments which his heart secretly abhorred. I cannot describe to you, Jane, my alarms upon this discovery. That your cook had intended to poison you, the next meat which you should eat in your own house, would have alarmed me, I assure you, much less. The preservation of your virtue was unspeakably of more importance in my eyes than of your life. I wrote to you: and what was your reply? I could scarcely believe my senses. Every horrid foreboding realized! already such an adept in this accursed sophistry! the very cant of that detestable sect adopted! I had plumed myself upon your ignorance. He had taken advantage of that, I supposed, and had won your esteem by counterfeiting a moral and pious strain. To make you put him forever at a distance, it was needed only to tear off his mask. This was done, but, alas, too late for your safety. The poison was already swallowed. I had no patience with you, to listen to your trifling and insidious distinctions,--such as, though you could audaciously urge them to me, possessed no weight, _could_ possess no weight, in your understanding. What was it to me whether he was ruffian or madman? whether, in destroying you, he meant to destroy or to save? Is it proper to expose your breast to a sword, because the wretch that wields it supposes madly that it is a straw which he holds in his hand? But I will not renew the subject. The same motives that induced me to attempt to reason with you then no longer exist. The anguish, the astonishment, which your letters, as they gradually unfolded your character, produced in me, I endeavoured to show you at the time. Now I pass them over to come to a more important circumstance. Yet how shall I tell it thee, Jane? I am afraid to intrust it to paper. Thy fame is still dear to me. I would not be the means of irretrievably blasting thy fame. Yet what may come of relating some incidents on paper? Faint is my hope, but I am not without some hope, that thou canst yet be saved, be snatched from perdition. Thy life I value not, in comparison with something higher. And if, through an erring sensibility, the sacrifice of Colden cost thee thy life, I shall yet rejoice. As the wife of Colden thou wilt be worse than dead to me. What has come to me, I wonder? I began this letter with a firm, and, as I thought, inflexible, soul. Despair had made me serene; yet now thy image rises before me with all those bewitching graces which adorned thee when thou wast innocent and a child. All the mother seizes my heart, and my tears suffocate me. Shall I shock, shall I wound thee, my child, by lifting the veil from thy misconduct, behind which thou thinkest thou art screened from every human eye? How little dost thou imagine that I know _so much_! Now will thy expostulations and reasonings have an end. Surely they _will_ have an end. Shame at last, shame at last, will overwhelm thee and make thee dumb. Yet my heart sorely misgives me. I shudder at the extremes to which thy accursed seducer may have urged thee. What thou hast failed in concealing thou mayest be so obdurately wicked as to attempt to justify. Was it not the unavoidable result of confiding in a man avowedly irreligious and immoral; of exposing thy understanding and thy heart to such stratagems as his philosophy made laudable and necessary? But I know not what I would say. I must lay down the pen till I can reason myself into some composure. I will write again to-morrow. H. FIELDER. _ |
||