Letter – Thomas Wentworth Beaumont to Emily Swinburne – 4 Jan 1824

Miss Emily Swinburne 						Lyons Jany 4th 1824



Miss Emily

      I am compelled by the situation in which I am placed, with whatever reluctance to declare to the World all that passed between Sir John and Lady Swinburne and myself from the time that your Sister accepted me.  I am on the point of being excluded from the world & my sisters are to lose their protector, and I am to be overwhelmed with disgrace for having done that for which my conscience entirely acquits me, and which circumstances* that are well known to you left me no choice in adopting.  In order to rescue myself from this state, I shall write to those among my friends who have taken the greatest interest in this affair, and state frankly the unkind Conduct I have continually received from your Mother, and at times from Sir John.  It will be necessary for me to assure them that until the moment of my leaving Capheaton I had your concurrence in the opinion I entertained of your Mother’s endeavours to thwart me in gaining the confidence and entire affections of your Sister, and the propriety of the measures I took for resisting them.   I have therefore to request of you that whenever you may be asked, you will mention candidly what you know of my Conduct and of your Mother.

      The  assistance** you gave me in obtaining Walks by ourselves in London, Lady S’s flattery in order to remove any impression I had been able to make on your Sister’s mind, my expostulations with Lady S in Grosvenor Place, in which I stated Sir John’s Swinburne’s conduct respecting the Settlements and your Mother’s Conduct to you for some days after that Conversation, what passed at Chelsea and your Mother’s conversations to you at Capheaton shortly before I left you - the Socinian Service on the last Sunday and her immediately removing the book from which the prayers were read - her making the Codicil to her Will, and the unwarrantable insinuations she expressed before your Sister in the Library.   All these I have no doubt have made too deep an impression on your Mind to be forgot and in defence of my family and of myself, as well as to show that your Sister’s affections were not placed upon a person unworthy of them, I ask you to declare the Truth.  It must and shall be known, that punishment may fall on the Guilty.  As I told you in Grosvenor Place, in this affair those will ultimately suffer and have cause to repent, who swerve from their Duty to God.

      Believe me to be, Miss Emily,

      Most truly yours,

                        (Signed).     T. W. Beaumont 



[Notes presumably added in a different hand to the original letter:]

* Emily recollects no circumstance that he can allude to except his telling her of the Dream and Vision that compelled him to act as he did.

** Emily never walked alone with him and Elizabeth in London except at Chelsea.