My dear Pres
I received your Columbia letter last week in Abingdon. There is
much in its tone and feeling for which I blame myself: for the fault is in me
that my silence should have permitted the fervid and excitable feelings of
youth to bring you into injustice towards me as I am, rather than as I seem.
All this may be put right at another time.
The first thing to be done is to put you rectus in curia by paying your tailors. Write them to send me their
bills immediately to Abingdon, and they shall be paid. Tell them if they are
not prompt about it I shall be on the circuit and they will incur a delay of
three or four weeks.
During September to October I heard nothing of you. I was at
court all the time. In November I went to Cabell to obtain money for you – was disappointed
– spent the entire month in vain, and worse than in vain. For bad weather &
exposure on the journey homeward brought me home sick. I found two letters from you. All the money
which I had before I went to Cabell I had given to Eliza.
I had returned disappointed, and found myself unable to, from
indisposition to raise money for you. The tenant in C. had promised to remit me
a part of his rent at an early day. I was tantalized with the double hope of
his remitting, & of my restoration to good health: either of which would
have enabled me to meet your wishes. In both I was disappointed during the
whole winter. In December, I was well but a few days.
In January, when my malady changed its character, or rather I had
a new attack, I had but one day of health: and that was the first day of the
year. In February and the early part of March I was sick all the time: not
dangerously, nor suffering severely, but so much so as to be unfit for exertion
or business, for any thing in short but swallowing drugs, and lying on a couch
from one end of the week to the other.
But this annoying state of things is ended, I trust for many a
day to come, and with it, the difficulty of providing the means of meeting your
engagements as well as my own. For you may bear in mind, that all tis time I
had other demands, and those of the most urgent sort, upon my purse. But I will
not weary you with a detail of them, or for whom contracted.
Let it suffice that though not originally mine, I had become
bound for others to a large amount, and while you, with the usual tendency to exaggeration
of very young men, considered yourself wretched, neglected and maltreated
because your tailor had to wait a while for his bill; I likewise had my
creditors, larger in amount, & more urgent in demand: had to endure
sickness, suffering, their importunities, and my own mortification at the state
of things which h surrounded me.: and to pant for a recovery which should put
it in my power to end it.
I have,
during this time, received a good deal of money, tis true, but was under an
insuperable necessity of expending it in such a manner as to relive me from the
most urgent claims. If I had not done so, severe pecuniary loss must have
ensured to me. All this, I would, under other circumstances, have explained to
you. But the unconquerable laziness and languor of disease and the constant
hope of receiving a remittance from Cabell, or recovery, served as excuses from
day to day.
You may
therefore see that I might have other causes operating with me than the
cold-hearted indifference which you are pleased to ascribe to me. This is a
species of imputation which is usually tried mostly justly by weighing the general
scope of a man’s character, and the tendency of his actions, rather than by his
professions of attachment, however ardent or often repeated.
For my own
part, if I have fallen in your good opinion or regard, I shall not endeavor to
regain lost ground by protestation that I possess all the virtues under heaven.
I shall rather leave it to your own sense of right to ponder on the facts which
surrounded me, and of which you were ignorant, and to determine whether I am
what you were angry enough to suppose me.
As to my
own feelings or my own character, I deny nothing, I boast of nothing. If they
are to be known or appreciated or inferred only by my acting as my own eulogist
or historian, I am content to remain under the ban of the misconstruction which
I may encounter, but which will only be temporary.
Fail not to
send me the tailors claims at once. I have provided the means of meeting them
without inconvenience.
Lizzie is
well, and, I suppose will be at home soon. She is so near concurring with you
in ill report concerning me that I suppose you are both nearer right, than, in
my self complacency I had been willing to admit. I must be a very savage.
But in
spite of all that I will say I am
Yours most
affectionately
B.R. Johnston
[B. R. Johnston = Beverly Randolph Johnston (1803-1876)
Lizzie = Eliza Mary Johnston (1825-1909)
Pres = John Preston Johnston (1824-1847).]
[Many thanks to Sue Davis, William Myers, Mary Davy and Sally
Young for their ongoing research collaboration.]
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