Eliza Fenwick, Barbados, to Miss Hays, 11 [sic] Cross Street, Islington, 10 December 1821.1 Barbadoes Decr
10th 1821 At length my dear Friend I have
received your book, of the fate of which I have made so many anxious enquiries.
It was doubly welcome by the hands of Capn Richardson because he had seen you, & Mr & Mrs T. Hayes,2 which seemed like a renewal of
old times and in fancy I was instantly transported back to a very happy day I
passed with you in the very house your brother & his family now inhabit.
We could not help welcoming Capn Richardson like an old friend. His
stay was short at this Island & a mistake in the delivery of a card of
invitation prevented his dining with us, to meet the family of a young Lady
that he brought from England, who was formerly a pupil of ours, but he took tea
with us when we happened to have a good many chance visitors & danced two
Country dances with Mrs Rutherford. He was excessively delighted with Pats fine
eyes My letter by Mr Johnstone of the Royal Fusiliers will have apprised you of our intended emigration. I acknowledge it is a bold experiment but every thing tends to make me believe it a wise one. I am wearied of having a large nominal income on my books, and yet unable to command the use of it. Never will I again yield (as I have unfortunately done here) to the procrastinating habit the people indulge in, in this Island. Many who prefer’d letting their accounts accumulate from quarter to quarter ^while abounding in cash^ are now partaking the general distress & unable to collect a dollar scarcely. But the more powerful inducements are my impaired health and the welfare of our children. It has been a dreadful year of intense heat, unmitigated drought and cutaneous diseases. Boils & blains have covered Children in particular. Ours from the cool manner in which we rear them have escaped the worst of these eruptions but the youngest (Orlando) has had a succession of boils from head to foot and has still a visitation of fever once in every 24 hours which has reduced him considerably. When the long prayed for rains came fever broke out and has carried off many victims with even more than its usual rapidity. The physical evils of these climates are indeed numerous. I am always impatient of heart but this year it seemed impossible to endure its intensity from day to day. Only within these few days has the air been cooled by North East winds for month after month the sickening breezes from the South robbed us of vigour of mind and body. Did I not in my last invite you to
America? My heart has nourished the invitation if my pen Your excellent last letter of June 12th conveyed a great obligation by its little epitome of ^the history of^ all your family, and the house where you now dwell. I feel a great encrease of respect for Mrs T. Hays for her worthy manner of enduring the change of her style of living. The relinquishment of a carriage & its dependencies is a hard trial of female temper. Mrs Francis I always respected & admired. I was grieved to read of the misfortunes of some others. Is it Mrs Wedd (Emma I think) who is suffering the heavy dispensation of a deranged mind? I sympathize in the losses of Mrs Lanfear & Mrs Wheeler, and who than myself can more truly appreciate their affliction! I have witnessed some dreadful calamities of that nature necessary for some wise end, though it is hard to bear and not murmur.3 Whenever I get hold
of an English Newspaper, which now seldom happens as my former supplier flew in
a pet with his correspondents irregularities, & counter-manded the Courier. By the bye what a gross
calumniator that editor seems to be. Well, when I read of these pageants I have not seen
Godwins new book (not new now I suppose) nor had I heard mention of Queen Mab
before your letter. I abhor its author but infinitely more his wife who of all
human beings is the object of my sincerest detestation. I am highly pleased
with your account of the Answer to Malthus, and <–> glad that he has made
a votive offering at the shrine of Christianity. Let us hope it was done in
sincerity, & singleness of heart. I have just read & Eliza is now
reading, The Heart of Midlothian. It
seized with a painful intentness on my feelings and unless ^misled by^ the
present impression <–> I should pronounce it the best of his ^W. Scotts^
works. The Monastery pained me. I did not like that this genius should adopt
supernatural agency & that of ^no^ very dignified kind. It has however fine
portraits and beautiful passages. The Abbot pleased me excessively and
Kenilworth also, but Jenny Deans & Rebecca are holy creatures, whose
excellencies are indeed as you justly call ^them^ perfect specimens of the
Moral sublime.4 I long to get to America that I may get at books. I am not a subscriber
to the book Societies here – One, called the literary association, refuse all
members till their number is reduced; & the other I was deter’d from
offering myself to, by being told one of their earliest rules was an exclusion
of all School keepers. Lately a
member assured me the law was obsolete and would not be called in exercise
against me, but it would be ill worth my while to pay £10, which is the first
subscription for the little reading I could have while I remain here. Therefore I only get at books as
some of my acquaintance purchase them, and no one I know, has yet got
Anastatius or Peters letters.6 There is not a circulating library in the Island only the book Associations I have
named. – Your life of
Catherine of Medicis is admirable. I prefer
it I think to any other in the book though I am both surprised and pleased with
the ingenuity you have used in bringing forward Catherine of Russias talents so
Thursday Octr 12th I have this moment received tidings of the Death of Colonel Piper of the 4th or Kings own! He paid me a morning visit on Sunday after Church sickened on Monday & died last night. He had a pension for gallant conduct at Waterloo & a shattered arm & having served his three years in the West Indies was expecting to go home in April & retire to his native Devonshire. I knew him there many years since. He was a polite fashionable man, fond of music, of dancing, and of society. Without strong intellect he was also without vicious habits & his ease & Gentlemanly manners rendered him an acceptable visitor & his death has affected me. I was prepared for it by hearing from another officer of the regiment last night that black vomits had begun. The first is I believe the unvarying forerunner of death. Two officers died last week. One in 24 hours after the attack & in town the fever has had many victims. Eliza joins in every affectionate wish & gratified by your wish that she shd write she will do so, but by the next opportunity. To-day she has a severe & most unusual head ache. Farewell Farewell write immediately & believe me ever yours E. Fenwick Address: To | Miss Hays | 41 Cross Street | Islington Postmark: 17 and 19 January 1822 1 Fenwick Family Papers, Correspondence, 1798-1855, New York Historical Library; Wedd, Fate of the Fenwicks 213-17; Brooks, Correspondence 353-57. 2 Reference is to Hays's last known publication, Memoirs of Queens (1821); the other reference is to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Hays, with whom Hays had lived for many years in their home in Wandsworth. 3 In her previous letter, Hays had related much news of her family; here Fenwick is reciprocating with inquiries about many of Hays's relations she would have met while living in London: Mrs. Thomas Hays (her husband had suffered considerable financial setbacks c. 1817 and had moved from Wandsworth to a lesser house in Mill Street, Bermondsey, near the location of his business with George Wedd); Elizabeth Dunkin Francis, the teacher; Sarah Dunkin Wedd, one of Hays's favorite nieces and who plays a substantial role in Hays's will (she was not suffering dementia at this time); "Emma" would have been Emma Hills, but she was clearly not suffering dementia at this time either, since Elizabeth Lanfear dedicated her 1819 novel, Fatal Errors, to her; Lanfear was still mourning the loss of her son, John, in 1817; the last reference is to Sarah Wheeler, daughter of Sarah Hays Hills, and another of the numerous nieces and nephews of Mary Hays. She married William Wheeler of Islington in 1808; Wheeler and William Hills, husband of Emma Hills, were business partners. 4 Godwin's rebuttal to Malthus, Of Population: An Enquiry Concerning the Power of Increase in the Numbers of Mankind, appeared in 1820. Queen May: A Philosophical Poem, appeared in 1813, the first significant work of poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley, who would elope with Godwin's daughter, Mary, in 1816, causing a breach in the family (and with many of Godwin's friends, such as Fenwick) over her lack of discretion and the fact that she cohabited with Shelley while he was still legally married to his first wife. 5 References here to numerous works by Sir Walter Scott -- The Heart of Midlothian (1818), The Monastery and The Abbot (1820), Kenilworth (1821) -- including two of his famous characters, Jenny Dean from Heart of Midlothian, and Rebecca from Ivanhoe (1820). 6 Reference is to Thomas Hope's novel, Anastasius (1819), and J. G. Lockhart's Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk (1818). 7 References are to several of the biographical accounts in Hays's Memoirs of Queens (1821).
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