Huntingdon,
24 Dec. 1775.
Talk not to me of the new year. I am a new man. I'll be sworn to it, that I am not the same identical J. H. that I was three months ago. You have created me (yes, I know what I say) created me anew.
As to thanking you for the bliss which I taste with you; to attempt it would be idle. What thanks can express—
But I will obey you in not giving such a loose to my pen as I gave the day before yesterday. That letter, and the verses that it contained, which were certainly too highly coloured, pray commit to the flames. Yet, pray too, as I begged you yesterday, do not imagine that I thought less chastely of you because I wrote them. No; I believe your mind to be as chaste as the snow, which, while I write, is driving against my window. You know not what I think of you. One time perhaps you may.
The lines which I repeated to you this morning, I send you. Upon my honour they are not mine. I think of them quite as you do. Surely an additional merit in them is, that to the uninitiated, in whom they might perhaps raise improper ideas, they are totally unintelligible.
On better thoughts I will not send you the lines. They were written by the author of The Seasons, and (your favourite) The Castle of Indolence; but they are not meet for a female eye.
YOU ARE READING
Love and Madness by Herbert Croft
Historical FictionIn 1775, Mr James Hackman, an army officer who subsequently became a clergyman, met and fell in love with Martha Ray (or Reay), a singer and for many years the mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty (and inventor of the eponym...
