Eliza Gregory, Low Leyton, to Mary Hays, 22 Hatton Garden, 28 March 1801.1
My dear Miss Hays The uneasiness I
felt on perusing your melancholy letter on Saturday was increased by the
necessity I was under of dispatching your messenger without a line in return.
But I was fully occupied, & had an appointment on business to which I was
compelled to attend; & the subsequent fatigue & care of removal have
left me no leisure for writing since we arrived here. I am sincerely pained at
the despondency you express, for however we may differ on some opinions, there
are many more in which I feel self-elation in believing we agree, & if, as
I am gratified by your assurance, my good opinion is still far from indifferent
to you, rely upon my cordial sympathy in every happy, or every disastrous event
that can befal you. No defence of your conduct can be necessary to me, nor to
any with whom you are acquainted; & if in vindication of Miss Hamilton I
urged anything that bore such an implication, I must have widely deviated from
my meaning. I meant not, I could not possibly mean to wound you in the
slightest degree, but to exculpate her as in similar circumstances I would
exculpate you from the suspicion of being actuated by the diabolical spirit of
revenge. Of this I am convinced she is incapable. She considered, what I
believe was generally understood, the novels of Emma Courtenay [sic], & the
Victim of Prejudice as systematic productions, composed for the purpose of
exhibiting the evils which resulted from certain opinions & practises
established in the world, & sanctioned by it. These she considered as
salutary checks upon the vicious propensities of mankind, & every attempt
to destroy them as calculated to have an injurious operation upon the best
interests of society. With these sentiments the virtues or talents of those who
opposed them must have been so far from an argument to withold her vindication
that E Gregory Low Leyton March 28th As I fear to trust the MSS pr post I will return it the first opportunity that occurs
Address: Miss Hays | No 22. | Hatton Garden Postmark: 30 March 1801, 12 o’clock
Penny Post Unpaid 1 Misc. Ms. 2177, Pforzheimer Collection, NYPL; not in Brooks, Correspondence. For Gregory, see her previous letter to Hays, dated 29 July 1796. 2 Hays's review of Elizabeth Hamilton's Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah appeared in the Analytical Review 23 (1796), 429-30. It provoked a bitter response from Hamilton to Hays; see above, Hamilton to Hays, 13 March 1797. Gregory was a friend of Hamilton and was attempting in this letter to mediate between the two novelists' ongoing feud, fueled by Hamilton's recent caricature of Hays as Miss Bridgetina Botherim in Modern Philosophers (1801), exposing the deficiencies of the Godwinian philosophy Hamilton believed Hays had espoused in her novels, Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796) and The Victim of Prejudice (1799). 3 discreditted] MS |
MARY HAYS: LIFE, WRITINGS, AND CORRESPONDENCE > MARY HAYS CORRESPONDENCE > 1800-1809 > 1801 >