Lady Morgan’s Memoirs
Thomas Charles Morgan to Sydney Owen, [December 1811]
Dearest Love,
I do pity while I blame you. But your great instability, whatever be the
cause of it, is equally cruel in you and equally
unbearable to me. It is absolutely necessary for you to
exert some firmness of nerve. Review your own conduct to me and think how very
unnecessarily you have tortured with repeated
promises, all evaded; while each letter has ![]()
| 500 | LADY MORGAN'S MEMOIR. | |
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been a direct
contradiction of the last. It is not the lapse of time I so much regret; and in
whatever way our loves may terminate, I beg you to carry that
in your remembrance. The same effort of self-denial, which gave you
one month, would have given you three, had you asked it
seriously and firmly. It is the eternal fiddling upon
nerves untuned by love (perhaps too romantic) for you, that I cannot bear the
repeated frustration of hope. The evident preference you give to general
society over mine—your very dread of this place,—the instability of
your affections as depicted in your letters, are all
sources of agony greater than I can endure, and it must have
an end. To finish this business, then, at once—of your own mere motion within this last week, you have
fixed with me and with your sister too, to leave Dublin
at Christmas, and that much I give to nature and to amusement. If you can then return
to me freely and voluntarily (for I will be no restraint upon you) say so, and
stick to your promise. If not, we had better (great
Heaven! and is it come to this!) we had better never meet
again. The love I require is no ordinary affection. The woman who
marries me must be identified with me. I must have a
large bank of tenderness to draw upon. I must have frequent profession, and
frequent demonstration of it. Woman’s love is all in all to me; it stands
in place of honours and riches, and, what is yet more, in place of tranquillity
of mind and ease; without it there is a void in existence that deprives me of
all control of myself, and leads me to headlong dissipation, as a refuge from
reflection. If, then, your love ![]()
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for me is not sufficiently
ardent to bring you freely to me at the end of a three months’ absence
for your own happiness’ sake, by Heaven! more dear
to me than my own, do not let us risk a life of endless regret and
disappointment. Deliberate; make up your mind; and, having done so, have the
honesty to abide by your determination, and not
again trifle with feelings so agonized as your unfortunate friend’s.
As to your two chapters on
story-telling, I am indignant enough at them, but my
mind is too much occupied to dwell on that subject—only this; you assume
too high a tone on these occasions. I set up no tyrannical pretensions to man’s
superiority, and have besides a personal respect for your
intellect over other women’s. I know too, that in the present
instance, you are right. But I never will submit to an
assumed control on the woman’s side; we must be equals; and ridicule or command will meet
with but little success and little quarter from me.
Oh, God! oh, God! my poor lacerated mind! but the horrid
task is over, and now, dearest woman (for such you are and ever will be to me),
take me to you, your own ardent lover; let me throw myself on your bosom, and
give vent to my burdened heart; let me feel your gentle pressure, the warmth of
your breath, and your still warmer tear on my cheek. Think, love, of those
delicious moments! when all created things but our two selves were forgotten;
of those instants wherein we lived eternities.
