him, then I should most miserably lament that she refused him; but I also know as certainly, that if she told me that upon second thoughts she had accepted him, I should be too unhappy to be able to look as I ought to do. In short, dearest Mary, I heartily wish it had never happened. I was obliged to tell John [Elliot] of it, as the report was going to be made a subject of joking, which would have been very unpleasant for Fanny. He was very much surprised, and notwithstanding his great dislike to disparity of years, he regretted her refusal deeply. He is a great admirer of Lord John's, and was delighted with him when he was here. He says that in spite of the drawbacks he is clearly of the opinion that she has made a great mistake, and hopes that it may take another turn still. You may fancy how I am longing to talk to your Father about it. He says in his last letter that his eyes were only just opened to Lord John's being an old man, when he looked on him in this new light. …
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MINTO, November 15, 1840 My birthday--it frightens me to be twenty-five. To think how days, months, and years have slipped away and how unfulfilled resolutions remain to reproach me. Long walk with Papa--talked to me about Lord John very kindly. Had a long letter from Miss Lister--tells me a good deal about him, and the more I hear the more I am forced to admire and like. Then why am I so ungrateful? Oh! why so obstinate? I can only hope for the sake of my character that Dryden is right that "Love is not in our choice but in our fate."
At the beginning of the new year the family moved up to London. The next entry, dated from the Admiralty, expressive in its brevity, runs: "A surprising number of visitors, one very alarming, no less than Lord John--and I saw him." Then, a week later, on February 8: "The agitation of last Monday over again. … After all, perhaps he only wished to show that he is friendly still. It is like his kindness, but he did not look merry."
In March she wrote to her married sister, Lady Mary Abercromby, an account of her feelings and perplexities.
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ADMIRALTY, March 16, 1841 DEAREST MARY,--Tho' it is not nearly my day for writing, a long letter from you to Mama, principally about myself, has determined me to do so--and to do so this minute, while I feel that I have courage for the great effort (yes, you may laugh, but it is a terrible effort) of saying to you all that you have the best right to abuse me for not having said before. If it was really saying, oh how happy I should be! but there is something so terribly distinct in one's thoughts as soon as they are on paper, and I have longed each day a thousand times to have you by my side to help me to read them and to listen to all my nonsense. I felt it utterly impossible to write them, altho' I also felt that my silence was most unfair upon you and would have made me, in your place, either very suspicious or very angry. It has made you suspicious, but now let it only make you angry--as angry as you please--for I have not changed and I do not suppose I ever shall. When we first came to town, nothing having taken place between us since my positive refusal from Minto, except the contradiction sent by us to the report in the papers, Miss Lister asked me if I was the same as ever; and when I said yes, and forbade her the subject for the future, she only begged that I would see him and allow myself to know him better. I said I would do so, provided she was quite sure he was ready to blame himself alone for the consequences, which she said he would. Accordingly, wherever we met I allowed him to speak to me. I begged Lizzy always to join in our talk, if she could, as it made me much happier, but this she has not done nearly as much as I wished. Whenever I knew we were to meet him, I also took care to tell Lizzy that it would be no pleasure to me, and that if it was at dinner, I hoped I should not sit next to him. I said these things to her oftener than I should naturally have done, because I saw that in her wish to disbelieve them she really did so, and I wished to make her understand me, in case either Papa or Mama or the boys should be speaking of it before her. You will say, why did I not speak more to Mama herself?--partly because I was afraid of bringing forward the subject, partly because I knew what I had to say would make her sorry, and partly because I was not at times so very sure as to have courage to say it must all come to an end. However, after a dinner at Lady Holland's last week, when he was all the evening by me, I felt I must speak--that it would be very wrong to allow it to go on in the same way, and that we had no right to expect the world to see how all advances to intimacy, since we came to town, have been made by him in the face of a refusal. I do not despise the gossip of the world where there is so much foundation for it, and I have felt it very disagreeable to know that busy eyes were upon us several times. It must therefore stop, but do not imagine that I have been acting without thought. I am perfectly easy about him--I mean that he will blame nobody but himself, as I have taken care never to understand anything that he has said that he might mean to be particular, and the few times that he ventured to approach the subject he spoke in so perfectly hopeless and melancholy a way as to satisfy me. I am also easy about Miss Lister, as only a week ago she said how sorry she was to see that I was happier in society without than with him; but both he and they must see that it cannot go on so. What a stone I am--but it is needless to speak of that. Only when I think of all his goodness and excellence, above all his goodness in fixing upon me among so many better fitted to him, I first wonder and wonder whether he really can be in earnest, then reproach myself bitterly for my hardness--and then the children: to think of rejecting an opportunity of being so useful--or at least of trying to be so! All these thoughts, turned over and over in my mind oftener than I myself knew before we left Minto, did make me think that perhaps I had decided rashly. Now do not repeat this, dear Mary; I have said more to you than to anybody yet--but I am sorry it is time to stop, I have so much more to say. I cannot say how grateful I am to Papa and Mama for leaving me so free in all this, and to you for writing. Ever your most affectionate sister, FANNY
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The day after this letter was written she saw Lord John again. "He called and had a long conversation with Mama. … Mama liked him better than ever."
Lady Minto to Lady Mary Abercromby ADMIRALTY, March 18, 1841 … I must now return to the subject. I told you of the conversation I had with Fanny when she spoke so openly and so sensibly of her feelings. … She said she was too old to think it necessary to be what is called desperately in love, and without feeling that his age was an objection or that the disparity was too great, yet, she said, if he had been a younger man she would have decided long ago. And that is the truth. It is his age alone that prevents her at once deciding in his favour. It prevents those feelings arising in her mind, without which it would be a struggle to accept him, and this she never will do. She was therefore desirous that he should know the state of her feelings, that she might be again at her ease. He had seen her manner cold towards him, and wrote to say that he would call upon me yesterday. I was horribly frightened, as I hate lovers, and you must allow that it was a difficult task to go through. … However, he put me so completely at my ease by his sensible, open, gentle manner, that my task was less difficult than I expected--except that I fell in love with him so desperately, he touched my heart so deeply that I could scarcely refrain from promising him Fanny whenever he chose. There is a depth of feeling and humility about him, and a candour and generosity in his judgments, that I never saw so strongly in anyone before, and every word that he spoke made me regret more and more the barrier that prevents him from becoming one of us. I said, of course, Fanny's wish and ours could only be for him to do what he considered best for his own happiness, and that half-measures did not answer; that he now knew the whole truth and it was for him to judge how to act. He said then, "I cannot have a doubt; I will visit you less frequently; I will speak very little to you in public, but I cannot, unless you positively forbid me, renounce the intimacy now established with your family." I said, of course, that it would be a great happiness to us all not to lose him, but that I was very doubtful of the wisdom of his decision, as it might only be rendering himself more unhappy. "That," he said, "is my affair, and I am willing to run the risk." … Fanny, to whom I told everything, says she is now quite happy, and her mind at ease.
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He seems, however, to have made up his mind to keep away from them for some weeks. The next mention of him is on May 7th, more
