William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. XI. 1798
William Godwin to Harriet Lee, [April 1798]
“When I last had the pleasure of seeing you, you said
you supposed you should hear of me. What was your meaning in this, I ![]()
![]()
do not think proper to set myself
to guess, lest I should find that you meant nothing, or what in my estimate
might amount to nothing. In saying, therefore, that you supposed you should
hear of me, I am determined to understand that you expected to hear from me. It
is indeed a very displeasing thought to reflect, when one’s ideas of a
person have just been raised by their writings, and afterwards confirmed by a
direct communication of sentiments and feelings, that possibly years may elapse
before that communication is renewed, and that possibly it may even never be
renewed. There are so few persons in the world that have excited that degree of
interest in my mind which you have excited, that I am loth to have the
catalogue of such persons diminished, and that distance should place a barrier
between them and me, scarcely less complete than that of death. Indulge me with
the knowledge that I have some place in your recollection. Suffer me to
suppose, in any future production that you may give to the world, that while
you are writing it, you will sometimes remember me in the number of your
intended readers. Allow me to believe that I have the probability of seeing you
in no long time here in the metropolis. You said, if I recollect right, that
this was rather the less likely as the friend with whom you used to reside in
London had lately removed to some other place. Why should not I venture to
suggest the practicability of your substituting my house, instead of the
accommodation you have lost? I do not perceive that there could be any
impropriety in it. A sister of the
Miss Joneses, with whom I resided at Bath, lives at my
house upon the footing of an acquaintance, and is so obliging as to superintend
my family, and take care of the children. I am sure she would be happy to do
everything to accommodate you. I should imagine, therefore, that you might
accept the invitation without sinning against the etiquette that you love. It
is true that my establishment is a humble one, but you could not, perhaps, be
under the roof of a person who does more justice to your merits.” [Here
follows some criticism on Miss Lee’s
writings, of no sort of interest now.]
“Be so good as to express to your sister my sense of
the flatter-![]()
![]()
ing politeness and attention she was so
obliging as to bestow upon me. Farewell.—Yours, with much regard and esteem,
Louisa Dibbin [née Jones] (1773-1836 fl.)
A friend of William Godwin’s sister Hannah, for a time she kept house for Godwin before
her marriage to Henry Dibbin in 1801.
Harriet Lee (1758-1851)
English novelist and playwright, younger sister of Sophia Lee; she was best known for the
Gothic novella,
Kruitzner which first appeared in
Canterbury Tales, 5 vols (1797-1805).
