Charlotte Temple

of the latter entered the heart of his adversary. He fell, and expired almost instantly. Montraville had received a slight wound: and, overcome with the agitation of his mind, and loss of blood, was carried in a state of insensibility to his distracted wife. A dangerous illness and obstinate delirium ensued, during which he raved incessantly for Charlotte: but a strong constitution and the tender assiduities of Julia, in time overcame the disorder. He recovered, but to the end of his life was subject to severe fits of melancholy, and while he remained at New York,20 frequently retired to the churchyard, where he would weep over the grave, and regret the untimely fate of the lovely Charlotte Temple.

XXXV

Conclusion

Shortly after the interment of his daughter, Mr. Temple, with his dear little charge and her nurse, set forward for England. It would be impossible to do justice to the meeting scene between him, his Lucy, and her aged father. Every heart of sensibility can easily conceive their feelings. After the first tumult of grief was subsided, Mrs. Temple gave up the chief of her time to her grandchild, and as she grew up and improved, began to almost fancy she again possessed her Charlotte.

It was about ten years after these painful events, that Mr. and Mrs. Temple, having buried their father, were obliged to come to London on particular business,21 and brought the little Lucy with them. They had been walking one evening, when, on their return they found a poor wretch sitting on the steps of the door. She attempted to rise as they approached, but from extreme weakness was unable, and after several fruitless efforts fell back in a fit. Mr. Temple was not one of those men who stand to consider whether by assisting an object in distress they shall not inconvenience themselves, but, instigated by the impulse of a noble, feeling heart, immediately ordered her to be carried into the house and proper restoratives applied.

She soon recovered; and fixing her eyes on Mrs. Temple, cried⁠—“You know not, madam, what you do; you know not whom you are relieving, or you would curse me in the bitterness of your heart. Come not near me, madam, I shall contaminate you. I am the viper that stung your peace. I am the woman who turned the poor Charlotte out to perish in the street. Heaven have mercy! I see her now,” continued she, looking at Lucy; “such, such was the fair bud of innocence that my vile arts blasted ere it was half blown.”

It was in vain that Mr. and Mrs. Temple entreated her to be composed and to take some refreshment. She only drank half a glass of wine; and then told them that she had been separated from her husband seven years, the chief of which she had passed in riot, dissipation, and vice, till, overtaken by poverty and sickness, she had been reduced to part with every valuable, and thought only of ending her life in a prison; when a benevolent friend paid her debts and released her; but that, her illness increasing, she had no possible means of supporting herself, and her friends were weary of relieving her. “I have fasted,” said she, “two days, and last night laid my aching head on the cold pavement: indeed, it was but just that I should experience those miseries myself, which I had unfeelingly inflicted on others.”

Greatly as Mr. Temple had reason to detest Mrs. Crayton, he could not behold her in this distress without some emotions of pity. He gave her shelter that night beneath his hospitable roof, and the next day got her admission into an hospital: where, having lingered a few weeks, she died, a striking example that vice, however prosperous in the beginning, in the end leads only to misery and shame.

Endnotes

1. The above lines, in the original American edition, are given on the title pages of both volumes. The first two, as shown here, are credited to “Romeo and Juliet,” but they do not appear in that work. Other lines which Mrs. Rowson may have had in mind, and attempted to quote from memory, appear, however, in Act V, Scene V, as follows:

   “But one, poor one, one poor and loving child,
   But one thing to rejoice and solace in.”

   The second bit of verse seems to have been written by Mrs. Rowson herself. ↩

2. The famous Fleet Prison in London for centuries had been a general receptacle for debtors. In the eighteenth century it had become a scene of the worst forms of brutality, and even vice, in consequence of the extortions exacted by keepers, but primarily chargeable to a system by which wardens were able to underlet privileges. ↩

3. If there be a hero in “Charlotte Temple” and “Lucy Temple,” it is Blakeney, and yet this is the last that the reader sees of him. There is something fine in a romance which makes of the man who thus brought together Henry Temple and Lucy Eldridge, the benefactor, a quarter of a century afterward, of the daughter of their unfortunate child, Charlotte. The reader wishes to know more of him. We must find in the absence of further information new evidence of the fidelity with which the author conformed her narrative to events that had actually taken place. ↩

4. These lines seem to be original with Mrs. Rowson. ↩

5. The word “old” in this paragraph does not appear in late editions. It is now restored to its place from the original American text. When Mrs. Rowson was writing her story, the living Earl of Derby had held the title about thirteen years, and was then thirty-seven years old. The “old Earl” was his grandfather, Edward Stanley, who had held the title forty-two years, and died in 1776, at the age of eighty-seven. One of