Mary Hays’s Concluding Note to the Love Letters, 23 August 1781.1 After a stay of five weeks at Fordingbridge, I returned to my friends, with an aching heart (accompanied by Miss Eccles), and experienced the truth of an observation which my Eccles once made, “that it was a wretched hope to expect an alleviation of our distresses from a change of place.” The following summer I revisited this country, where after residing near three months, employed in a melancholy contemplation of the uncertainty of all human enjoyments, and the peculiar severity of my fate, I again returned to the bosom of my friends, whose affectionate sympathy is the only source from which I derive consolation. This day is the anniversary of that fatal day, which blasted all the fond hopes of my youth!
Death to me is the most pleasing theme of contemplation! All its terrors I have already undergone, and I impatiently expect “To see the shadows rise – and be dismist.”3 Mary Hays
August 23, 1781 1 Brooks, Correspondence 232; Wedd, Love Letters 219. Wedd's title: "Concluding Note to the Love Letters." 2 Lines from William Congreve's play, The Mourning Bride (1697), Act I, scene 1. 3 Line from Nicholas Rowe's tragedy, Jane Shore (1714), Act V, scene 1. |
MARY HAYS: LIFE, WRITINGS, AND CORRESPONDENCE > MARY HAYS CORRESPONDENCE > 1778-1780 Volume 2 > Letters 121-133 >