God bless you, dear.
Always affectionately yours,
F. A. B.
Philadelphia, Wednesday, February 21st, 1838.
My Dear Mrs. Jameson,
LETTER TO MRS. JAMESON. Although it was a considerable disappointment to me not to see you again, after the various rumors and last most authentic announcement of your coming to Philadelphia, yet, upon the whole, I think it is as well that we did not meet again, simply to renew that dismalest of ceremonies, leave-taking. I had not the hope which you expressed, that a second edition of our parting would have been less painful than the first.... I think I should have felt less gloomily on that occasion, if I had not had to leave you in such a dismal den of discomfort. External things always, even in moments of strong emotion, affect me powerfully; and that dreariest room, the door of which closed between us, left a most forlorn impression upon my memory.
I have been of late myself living in an atmosphere darkened by distress.... Typhus fever has carried off our most intimate friend, Mr. B——, after but a fortnight's illness; and closed, almost at its opening, a career which, under all worldly aspects, was one of fair and goodly promise. He has left a young widow, to whom he had been married scarcely more than two years, and a boy-baby who loses in him such a preceptor as few sons in this country are trained under. I have lost in him one of the few persons who cheer and make endurable my residence here. Doubtless our loss is reckoned by Him who decrees it, and I pray that none of us, by impatience of suffering, may forfeit the precious uses of sorrow. Our friend and neighbor, W——, has just endured a most dreadful affliction in the death of his youngest child, his only daughter, one girl among six sons, the very darling of his heart, loved above all the others, who, while she was still a baby, not a year old, drew from him that ludicrously pathetic exclamation, "Oh, the man that marries one's daughter must be hateful!" She died of scarlet fever, which, after passing so lightly by our doorposts, has entered, like the destroying angel, our poor friend's dwelling. His brother has been at the point of death with it too, and I cannot but rejoice in trembling when I think how happily we escaped from this terrible plague. As you may suppose, my spirits have been a good deal affected by all the sorrow around me.
Mirabile dictu! I have read the volume of Scott's Life which you left here, also the volume of Miss Edgeworth, with which I was disappointed; also the volume of Milton: not the Treatise on Divorce, and the Areopagitica, alone; but Letters, Apologies for Smectymnuus, and Denunciations against Episcopacy, and all. Did you do as much? Moreover, I am just finishing Carlyle's "French Revolution"; so that you see, as my friend Mr. F—— says, I am improving; and if I should ever happen to read another book, I will be sure to mention the circumstance in my letters.
Very truly yours,
F. A. B.