128 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, x 



Jessie's engagement to Sismondi took place, and the 

 followin^ is Mr Clifford's congratulatory letter: 



William Clifford to Jessie Allen. 



MY DEAR FRIEND, 1[1819]. 



I cannot help writing direct to yourself, though with 

 the risk of being somewhat in the way, to tell you my most 

 earnest wishes for your happiness. You have chosen a very 

 able, a most excellent man, who loves you very ardently 

 at least I believe all this, but Mrs Wedgwood sneers so at 

 my penetration that I am afraid of putting it on paper. 

 You must make it a marriage article that M. Sismondi is 

 to be no longer my enemy. I expect to find in him an 

 affectionate friend-in-law. You know I was always mag- 

 nanimous, and did justice to his 1001 fine qualities, in spite 

 of his perverse dislike to my poor self, and I do not grudge 

 him the best wife in the world. 



I long to be among you, but I should have been terribly 

 in the way during all this secret concoction, and I had a 

 lucky escape of it. 



God bless you, my dear friend. When you see M. Sis- 

 mondi will you remember to make him my warmest congratu- 

 lations, and for the life of you let there be no change in 

 your kindness to your own G. a name, however, so little 

 respectful that I cannot reconcile myself to writing it, 

 though truly glad to hear it once again. 



Saturday, WHITFIELD. 



Jessie married Sismondi in April, 1819. He was then 46 

 and she was 42. The plunge, when taken, proved at first 

 more than she could endure, and she was wretched at leaving 

 her sisters and England. But she gradually became inured 

 to the separation, and her deep attachment to Sismondi and 

 his passionate devotion to her made her completely happy. 



Jean Charles Leonard Simon de Sismondi (to give him 

 his full name), born in 1773, came of an Italian family which 

 had been settled in Geneva for two or more generations, and 

 bore the name Simond. He called himself de Sismondi, 



