The sexagenarian; or, the recollections of a literary life (Volume 1 of 2)Beloe, William
General
The sexagenarian; or, the recollections of a literary life (Volume 1 of 2)
Beloe, William
Authors, English; Beloe, William, 1756-1817; English literature -- Anecdotes
At Paris our heroine fell in the way of a plain downright man of business
from America, with no particular recommendation either of fortune,
person, or talent; but strange to tell, she almost instantaneously
conceived for him a passion yet more violent and uncontroulable than
that which she had formerly experienced for Mr. F. To him she sacrificed
every thing, even her modesty; for though she without scruple lived with
him as his wife, she refused to be married to him even according to the
slight and unsatisfactory ceremonial then observed in France. Her reasons
for this conduct were somewhat whimsical. She did not choose that he
should be made liable to debts formerly incurred by her, and she also
entertained the idea, that an avowed marriage with her, would expose him
to certain family inconveniencies and embarrassments.
But alas! for such hasty attachments! neither did our American return
her passion with a suitable enthusiasm. He left her at Paris in a state
of pregnancy, under pretext of business, which required his presence at
one of the sea-ports, and with a promise of speedy return. He did not
perform this promise. She followed him to the sea-side. Here she was
delivered of a daughter. The cold-blooded American pleaded business in
London; but promised her, that if she would go quietly back to Paris,
he would soon return from England, and rejoin her. But though they did
meet again, passion was quite exhausted on his part, never more, by any
arts or exertions of her’s, to be revived. To be brief—he chose another
companion, and recommended to her to do the same. This was rather too
much to be endured. The lady did not indeed, in imitation of Sappho,
precipitate herself from another Leucadian rock; she chose a more vulgar
mode of death; she put some lead into her pockets, and threw herself into
the water. She did not, however, use lead enough, as there was still gas
sufficient left in her head to counterpoise it. She was rescued from the
watery bier, and lived again to experience the feverish varieties of the
tender passion.
The anguish of her grief did not endure any very considerable time, for
within a few months she united herself to a man, whose peculiarities of
opinion were as strange and as preposterous as her own. Mark, reader, she
did not marry him. No! that would have been pitiful, wondrous pitiful,
on both sides. She had already demonstrated her amorous creed, the great
maxim of which was, that
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies.
Her new lover had, on the subject of marriage, already and solemnly
declared, that “so long as he should seek to engross one woman to
himself, and to prohibit his neighbour from proving his superior desert,
and reaping the fruits of it, he would be guilty of the most odious of
all monopolies.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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