Letter from Thomas Raffles to Mary Anne Rawson (English MS 415/188)
My dear Miss Read
I cannot express to you how
much pain I feel in the long delay
which has attended the acknowledget
of your most interesting letter of
the March last. Not a day has
passed, I can truly assure you...
without serious?, & I may say, anxious
thoughts respecting the important
subject to which it refers - and
delayed from day to day to
write in the hope that tomorrow, and
tomorrow, would yield me the leisure
and what was still more to the
purpose, the cue, for the trifling
service you was so good as to seek
at my hands -- but no such tomorrow
has yet arrived. I have tried
but I can accomplish nothing
I did indeed once string couplets
and do now & then put a few rhymes
together still but then, I have
never sought them -- they have
come unasked, and unexpected
& now that I [deleted word]? have earnestly
desired them -– they refuse to obey
my call -- & every effort has
utterly failed. And this is the state
of mind in reference to your request
in which I have been for the
last two months -- Ashamed of my
delay -- yet reluitant to write to
tell you, what I have been
compelled to disclose after all
& what, it I had told sooner, I
should have communicated, though
not with less regret, yet certainly
with an easier conscience
the same circumstances which
have caused the delay in this com-
munication to you, have also oper-
ated to keep me from Mr Roscoe, as
least in a great degree -- though
till lately the pressure of business
when him, relating to the subject
of slavery which has of recently
been much agaitated here, to get
with a consideration of
his infirmities & [?]
indisposition, has induced
him to regard an application to
him as unsuitable. I But
independently of these things, I
could not but think I should go
to him with a poor[?] face, to ask[?]
his help when as yet I had done
nothing my self. I will however,
apply to him, now -- And if he
should comply, and it should
unhappily be too late, his verses
may adorn a second edition of your
work.