Anna St. Ives | Page 4

to respect them is to entail upon
ourselves I know not what load of acrimony, contempt, and misery! I
must speak--I never yet met a youth whom I thought so deserving of
Anna St. Ives as Frank Henley! The obstacles you will say are
insurmountable. Alas! I fear they are. And therefore 'tis fortunate that
the same thought has not more strongly occurred to you. Perhaps my
caution would have been greater, but that I know your affections are
free; and yet I confess I wonder that they are so. If it be the effect of
your reason, the praise you merit is infinite: and I hope and believe it is;
for, notwithstanding all the tales I have heard and read, my mind is
convinced of nothing more firmly than that the passion of love is as
capable of being repressed, and conquered, as any other passion
whatever: and you know we have both agreed that the passions are all
of them subject to reason, when reason is sufficiently determined to
exert its power.
I have written a long letter; but, writing to you, I never know when to
end.
Heaven bless my Anna St. Ives!
LOUISA CLIFTON

LETTER III
Frank Henley to Oliver Trenchard _Wenbourne-Hill_
Oliver, I am wretched! The feeble Frank Henley is a poor miserable
being! The sun shines, the birds warble, the flowers spring, the buds are
bursting into bloom, all nature rejoices; yet to me this mirth, this
universal joy, seems mockery--Why is this? Why do I suffer my mind
thus to be pervaded by melancholy? Why am I thus steeped in gloom?
She is going--Thursday morning is the time fixed--And what is that to
me?--Madman that I am!--Who am I? Does she, can she, ought she to

think of me?--And why not? Am I not a man; and is she more than
mortal?--She is! She is!--Shew me the mortal who presumes to be her
equal!
But what do I wish? What would I have? Is it my intention or my desire
to make her wretched? What! Sink her whom I adore in the estimation
of the world; and render her the scoff of the foolish, the vain, and the
malignant?--I!--I make her wretched!--I!--
Oliver, she treats me with indifference--cold, calm, killing indifference!
Yet kind, heavenly kind even in her coldness! Her cheerful eye never
turns from me, nor ever seeks me. To her I am a statue--Would I were!
Why does she not hate me? Openly and absolutely hate me!--And could
I wish her to love? Do I love? Do I? Dare I? Have I the temerity so
much as to suspect I love?--Who am I? The insignificant son of--!
And who is she? The daughter of a Baronet--Pshaw! What is a
Baronet?--Away with such insolent, such ridiculous distinctions. She is
herself! Let Folly and Inferiority keep their distance!
But I?--Low bred and vulgar let Pride and Error call me, but not villain!
I the seducer of men's daughters! Noble men and still nobler daughters!
I! Why, would I be so very vile a thing? Would I, if I could?
Yet who shall benumb the understanding, chain up the fancy, and
freeze sensation? Can I command myself deaf when she sings, dead
when she speaks, or rush into idiotism to avoid her enchantments?
Despise me, Oliver, if thou wilt, but the deep sense I have of my own
folly does but increase the distemper of my brain. She herself pities me,
yet does not suspect my disease. 'Tis evident she does not; for her soul
is above artifice. She kindly asked--was I not well? I owned I was not
quite so cheerful as I could wish to be; and [wouldst thou think it?] was
presumptuous enough to hint that I thought the enlivening air of France
might do me good. Thou seest how frantic I am! She answered with the
utmost ease, and without the most distant suspicion of my selfish, my
audacious motive, that she would speak to Sir Arthur. But I was
obliged to request her to forbear, till I had first tried to gain my father's

consent, of which indeed I had but feeble hopes.
Every way miserable, why am I obliged to think and speak of my father
with so little respect? Indeed he is--Well, well!--He is my father--I am
convinced he is become wealthy; nay indeed he gives me to understand
as much, when he wishes to gain any purpose, by endeavouring to
excite avarice in me, which he hopes is, and perhaps supposes must be,
mine and every man's ruling passion. Yet, no; he cannot: his complaints
of me for the want of it are too heartfelt, too bitter.
He has kept me in ignorance, as much as was in his power. Reading,
writing, and arithmetic is his grand