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[Page 297]
7
W.S.D. to Mr. William Leslie.
"London, 21st October, 1843.
" I am at length enabled to furnish an answer to your letter of the 30th ult., by enclosing a copy of one just received from my legal adviser, in whose hands I have entirely placed myself; a course that you will remember I mentioned to you when you were last in Town, had become imperative on me, in future, in regard to the distressing subject upon which you have written me. "
" In acknowledging your letter of the 11th inst., there appears nothing to notice but that part relating to your youngest Brother. You cannot doubt my disposition, nay my extreme anxiety to comply with every wish of yours. But, I would just put it to you whether, after having avoided intercourse with your Sisters when they were in Town, (for reasons well-known to you) I could, without the greatest inconsistency, adopt a different conduct on the present occasion, more especially under the VERY peculiar circumstances. I don't think you have given this sufficient consideration."
Mr. William Leslie to W.S.D.
"Warthill, Tuesday Night, 24th October 1843.
"Your letter of the 21st arrived by this day's post, and both it and the enclosure I shall transmit to-morrow to my Brother, who is by this time in London. I never have as yet taken nor do I now intend to take any part in the dispute between you and my Brother Patrick, but in reference to the concluding paragraph of your letter under acknowledgment, you will permit me to say that the whole spirit in which you have taken this matter up is so totally at variance with what I had reason to expect; and your feelings of animosity so bitter towards a young and unoffending member of my family (one who in word or deed could never have injured you, and who as your Sister's Son is entitled to hold the same place in your family circle as if no breach had taken place between us,) I am reluctantly constrained to consider the thing as personal, for what could Tom have done to offend you more than me? and shall not intrude upon you again with any communication on any subject. In my own mind I have for some time questioned the propriety of my maintaining without some explanations, friendly relations with one who had treated my Father and family in the manner you did, but my doubts are now at an end, and the only satisfaction, if such it can be called, which is left to me on this distressing occasion, is that matters have thus been brought to a crisis by you and you alone. I wished Gilbert to have come here, where one and all of us would have welcomed him with affection: I wished Tom to be introduced into your family as one of their nearest relatives, thinking I should thereby be paving the way for a reconciliation between the two families.
"Both my overtures have been rejected, and I now cast the whole upon your hands."
If Mr. William Leslie will consult Johnson's Dictionary, he will discover how impecfectly his words are adapted to the case. "Animosity" signifies "vehemence of hatred," or "passionate malignity," and this I could not be supposed to feel towards an unoffending youth of 17: but I may perhaps pardonably, if not allowably, acknowledge such a moderate degree of "Resentment,' which means "a deep sense of injury," or " a strong perception of good and ill," to have dictated my jealous care to shield my children from pernicious example, and thus to have suggested the propriety of admitting no more intimacy or social intercourse with a family, some of whose leading members had treated me so unworthily.
A highly intelligent friend to whom I sent the above letter, wrote to me as follows:-
"I return you Mr. William Leslie's letter. He says he answers yours the same day he received it. It has internal evidence of having been prepared before hand, it having evidently been settled that whatever you wrote should be taken as a handle to shake off the engagement to admit your Son into the Canton House; and the only thing to determine was to fix the plausible point of offence.