“You complain of my ill-treating you in word, thought, and deed.[7] I am sorry—at times I feel bitterly sorry that I ever made you unhappy. My excuse is that those words have been wrung from me by the sharpness of my feelings. At all events, and in any case, I have been wrong: could I believe that I did it without any cause, I should be the most sincere of penitents. I could give way to my repentant feelings now, I could recant all my suspicions, I could mingle with you heart and soul, though absent, were it not for some parts of your letters. Do you suppose it possible I could ever leave you? You know what I think of myself, and what of you: you know that I should feel how much it was my loss, and how little yours.
“‘My friends laugh at you.’ I know some of them: when I know them all, I shall never think of them again as friends, or even acquaintance. My friends have behaved well to me in every instance but one; and there they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my conduct—spying upon a secret I would rather die than share it with anybody’s confidence. For this I cannot wish them well; I care not to see any of them again. If I am the theme, I will not be the friend of idle gossips. Good gods, what a shame it is our loves should be so put into the microscope of a coterie! Their laughs should not affect you—(I may perhaps give you reasons some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people to hate me well enough, for reasons I know of, who have pretended a great friendship for me)—when in competition with one who, if he never should see you again, would make you the saint of his memory. These laughers, who do not like you, who envy you for your beauty, who would have God-blessed me from you for ever, who were plying me with discouragements with respect to you eternally! People are revengeful: do not mind them. Do nothing but love me: if I knew that for certain, life and health will in such event be a heaven, and death itself will be less painful. I long to believe in immortality: I shall never be able to bid you an entire farewell. If I am destined to be happy with you here, how short is the longest life! I wish to believe in immortality—I wish to live with you for ever. Do not let my name ever pass between you and those laughers: if I have no other merit than the great love for you, that were sufficient to keep me sacred and unmentioned in such society. If I have been cruel and unjust, I swear my love has ever been greater than my cruelty—which lasts but a minute, whereas my love, come what will, shall last for ever. If concession to me has hurt your pride, God knows I have had little pride in my heart when thinking of you. Your name never passes my lips—do not let mine pass yours. Those people do not like me.
“After reading my letter, you even then wish to see me. I am strong enough to walk over: but I dare not—I shall feel so much pain in parting with you again. My dearest love, I am afraid to see you: I am strong, but not strong enough to see you. Will my arm be ever round you again, and, if so, shall I be obliged to leave you again?
“My sweet love, I am happy whilst I believe your first letter. Let me be but certain that you are mine heart and soul, and I could die more happily than I could otherwise live. If you think me cruel, if you think I have slighted you, do muse it over again, and see into my heart. My love to you is ‘true as truth’s simplicity, and simpler than the infancy of truth’—as I think I once said before. How could I slight you? how threaten to leave you? Not in the spirit of a threat to you—no, but in the spirit of wretchedness in myself. My fairest, my delicious, my angel Fanny, do not believe me such a vulgar fellow. I will be as patient in illness and as believing in love as I am able.”
(III.)
(This is the last letter of the series. Its date is uncertain; but may, as already intimated, be towards July 10, 1820. It follows next after our No. 2.)
“My dearest Girl,—I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy. The fact is, I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I will not go on at this rate. A person in health, as you are, can have no conception of the horrors that nerves and a temper like mine go through.
“What island do your friends propose retiring to? I should be happy to go with you there alone, but in company I should object to it: the backbitings and jealousies of new colonists, who have nothing else to amuse themselves, is unbearable. Mr. Dilke came to see me yesterday, and gave me a very great deal more pain than pleasure. I shall never be able any more to endure the society of any of those who used to meet at Elm Cottage[8] and Wentworth Place. The last two years taste like brass upon my palate. If I cannot live with you, I will live alone.
“I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated from you. For all this, I am averse to seeing you: I cannot bear flashes of light, and return into my glooms again. I am not so unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you yesterday. To be happy with you seems such an impossibility: it requires a luckier star than mine—it will never be.
“I enclose a passage from one of your letters which I want you to alter a little: I want (if you will have it so) the matter expressed less coldly to me.