Now, with Frances promised to him, Gilbert could enjoy everything properly, could execute, verbally at least, a wild fantasia. Among the first of his friends to be written to was Mildred Wain, because, as he says in a later letter, he felt towards her deep gratitude "for forming a topic of conversation on my first visit to a family with which I have since formed a dark and shameful connection."
DEAR MILDRED,
On rising this morning, I carefully washed my boots in hot water and blacked my face. Then assuming my coat with graceful ease and with the tails in front, I descended to breakfast, where I gaily poured the coffee on the sardines and put my hat on the fire to boil. These activities will give you some idea of my frame of mind. My family, observing me leave the house by way of the chimney, and take the fender with me under one arm, thought I must have something on my mind. So I had.
My friend, I am engaged. I am only telling it at present to my real friends: but there is no doubt about it. The next question that arises is—whom am I engaged to? I have investigated this problem with some care, and, as far as I can make out, the best authorities point to Frances Blogg. There can I think be no reasonable doubt that she is the lady. It is as well to have these minor matters clear in one's mind.
I am very much too happy to write much; but I thought you might remember my existence sufficiently to be interested in the incident.
Waldo has been of so much help to me in this and in everything, and I am so much interested in you for his sake and your own, that I am encouraged to hope our friendship may subsist. If ever I have done anything rude or silly, it was quite inadvertent. I have always wished to please you.
To Annie Firmin he wrote:
I can only think of the day, one of the earliest I can recall of my life, when you came in and helped me to build a house with bricks. I am building another one now, and it would not have been complete without your going over it.
To others he wrote such sentences as he could put together in the whirlwind of his happiness. For himself he stammered in a verse that grew with the years into his great love poetry.
God made thee mightily, my love,
He stretched his hands out of his rest
And lit the star of east and west
Brooding o'er darkness like a dove.
God made thee mightily, my love.