Who dotes yet doubts, suspects yet strongly loves!”
The evidence of the love he had for his wife and of the agony his jealousy caused him is abundant. His letters to her are tender and effusive. Such extracts as these are a specimen of them: “I am quite tired of this wandering, and every hour I wish myself again with you. God bless you, my dearest Kate, and believe me wholly yours.” “This is a warm, bright, beautiful day, and I am sitting at an open window in the Eutaw House; and while I write there is above me a clear, blue, cloudless sky,—just such a day as I yearn to have with you at Fonthill.” “I saw Mr. Mackay to-day. He spoke of you in terms of unmitigated praise, and said you were every way worthy of my most devoted affection. Of course he made conquest of my whole heart. I do love to hear you praised, and value it most highly when, as in the present instance, it is the spontaneous offering of the candid and the good.” “Your two letters have been received, and I thank you, my dearest Kate, for your kind attentions in writing to me so often. Indeed, your messages are always welcome.” “I seem quite lonely without you, and even in this short absence have often wished you were here. But the three weeks will pass away, and then we shall see each other again.” Many witnesses in the trial testified to the happy domestic life of the couple, their devoted attentions and confiding tenderness up to the time of their dissension. And that the change which then occurred was as secretly painful as it was publicly marked is beyond doubt. He appeared no longer on the stage, but shunned society, even shrank from his friends, wore a gloomy and absorbed air, and brooded in solitude. The following verses—as unjust as they are severe, for jealousy is always more or less insane, a morbid fixture displacing the freedom of the mind—reflecting his feelings were found after his death, in his handwriting, copied into one of his scrap-books at the date of the divorce trial:
Away from my heart, for thy spirit is vain
As the meanest of insects that flutter in air;
I have broken the bonds of our union in twain,
For the spots of deceit and of falsehood are there.
The woman who still in the day-dawn of youth
Can hold out her hand to the kisses of all,
Whose tongue is polluted by guile and untruth,
Doth justify man when he breaks from her thrall.