“. . . Enough of these paltry and repining thoughts.
Would that [want of money] were the worst of evils. You have a grief upon your
mind which requires all your fortitude to keep at bay. Do not imagine it is
unfelt by me. Before your account reached me I read the malignant and
despicable triumph of ‘The
Times.’ It was not ‘Alonzo’ but William Godwin who was brought to the bar, and
not to be tried, but to be condemned. It was in vain to croak, having seriously
warned you as I did: you were of a different opinion; and to have been more
urgent would only have produced disagreeable feelings, not conviction, but with
me it was a moral certainty that if your name were only whispered, the
condemnation of your tragedy was ensured. J. P.
Kemble well knew this; and hence his refusals and forebodings.
Yet it pleased me to see that malignity itself was obliged to own the play had
beauties. It then asks, if it were any wonder? Good God! how disgusting is the
naive and open impudence of such a question, when joined to the ribald abuse by
which it was preceded. I cannot relieve you; that is—do not think the phrase
too strong—that is my misery: yet I wish you would tell me what is the state of
your money affairs? I am in great anxiety. I form a thousand pictures of
hovering distress of the dear children, the house you have to support, and the
thoughts that are perhaps silently corroding your heart. Do not subtract from
the truth in
| CORRESPONDENCE WITH ARNOT. | 27 |
