“I know,” she wrote, “the goodness of your heart will readily forgive me for this freedom, and your friendship for Mr. Watt will, I am sure, excuse me for pointing out a few things that press upon his mind. I am very sorry to tell you that both his health and spirits have been much worse since you left Soho. It is all that I can do to keep him from sinking under that fatal depression. Whether the badness of his health is owing to the lowness of his spirits, or the lowness of his spirits to his bad health, I cannot pretend to tell. But this I know, that there are several things that prey so upon his mind as to render him perfectly miserable. You know the bond that he is engaged in to Vere’s house has been the source of great uneasiness to him. It is still so, and the thought of it bows him down to the very ground. He thinks that company has used both you and him very ill in refusing to release him, when you can give them security for a vast deal more than you are bound for. Forgive me, dear Sir, if I express myself wrong. It is a subject I am not used to write on. I know if you can you will set his mind at rest on this affair. I need not tell you that the seeing him so very unhappy must of consequence make me so. There is another affair that sits very heavy on his mind; that is, some old accounts that have remained unsettled since the commencement of the business. They never come across his mind but he is rendered unfit for doing anything for a long time. A thousand times have I begged him to mention them to you.... I am sure he would suffer every kind of anxiety rather than ask you to do a thing you seemed not to approve of. I know the humanity of your nature would make you cheerfully give relief to any of the human race that was in distress, as far as was within your power. The knowledge of this makes me happy in the thought that you will exert every nerve to give ease to the mind of your friend. Believe me, there is not on earth a person who is dearer to him than you are. It causes him pain to give you trouble. The badness of his constitution, and his natural dislike to business, make him leave many things undone that he knows ought to be done, and, when it is perhaps too late, to make himself unhappy at their being neglected.... In his present state of weakness, every ill, however trifling, appears of a gigantic size, while on the other hand every good is diminished. Again, I repeat, that from the certain knowledge I have of his temper, nothing could contribute more to his happiness and make him go on cheerfully with business than having everything finished as he goes along, and have no unsettled scores to look back to and brood over in his mind.”[197] [197] Mrs. Watt to Mr. Boulton, then in London, 15th April, 1781. Boulton MSS.