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received and much more likely to be read in French.
I have this instant and reced
yours of the 6th of Novr. I dined today at Shairpe's where through whose hands I received it,
must I confess to you that I more feared the pain which the contents might
me than that I could promise myself much pleasure from it. Though I got it
a few minutes before we sat down to table I did not open it as I should formerly have done
but thought it better to wait till I had had a glass or two of wine and worked myself
up into a kind of resolution to be in some degree indifferent about whatever news it might
bring me. Constrained in my writing, vexed at the miscarriage of my letters and at
some of yours having been opened, mortified at the light I seemed to stand in in your
opinion our correspondence seemed to have lost its sweets. The task of setting about
to exculpate myself from the my having done it over & over so often in idea and
from my having entirely forgotten everything which I had really written on that subject
became more & more irksome to me and had made me put off post after post
for these 8 weeks past the writing to you at all. Now however that I have read
your letter thought it is not very rich in news yet the expressions of affection in
it have made me as it were a new man. I never felt so much pleasure from
or ever stood so much in need of affectionate expressions from you.
What you tell me
about your acquaintance with the Sister of Mr Pole Carew was more interesting to me than
you imagined it would be as that gentleman is arrived here about a week or ten days
and is just come now to lodge in the next rooms to mine, we are becoming very thick
and I promise myself some how or other some advantage from his acquaintance. Cultivate
you at the same time that of his sister. More about in another letter or perhaps in another part of this.
I rejoice at the good train your german translation is in, but cannot help wishing
very anxiously that it could be in French.
Must I tell you that for the space of 3 weeks
or thereabouts a woman occupied almost my whole attention. A Princess one of the first houses
in Moscow and a relation of my friends took it into her head notwithstanding all my awkwardness to
fall terribly in love with me. She came here on some business without her husband and it was not till by
dint of very warm letters from him and all possible excuses at an end that she could prevail on herself to
set off from hence on her return. She is on the other side of 30 of a stately deportment but with an extraordinary
degree of delicacy. I must of course be every day in her company. She could not keep from shewing me that very
great partiality before her relations that made her very much criticized by them. She has been gone a fortnight.
You may imagine I was in love with her of course. The recollection will always be very flattering & a recital will one day or other
I hope entertain you not a little.
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Identifier: | JB/539/113/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 539.
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1780-12-02 |
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539 |
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113 |
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002 |
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Correspondence |
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Samuel Bentham |
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