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BLACKDEEP, 26_th_ _March_ 1839.
DEAREST MOTHER,—This letter came this morning, and I send it at once to
you at Ely. Am I to answer it? When I read some parts I wished he had
been near me that I might have caught him by the throat. I should have
exulted that for once I could move him, although it should be by terror.
It is strange that not until now did I know he was so brutal. Notice
that, according to him, if a wife leaves her husband it must be for a
rival. He does not understand how much she can hate him, body and soul,
and with no thought of a lover; that her loathing needs no other passion
to inflame it, and that the touch of his clean finger may be worse to her
than a leper’s embrace.
When I had written so far I was afraid. I knelt down and cried to our
Father who is in Heaven.—Your loving daughter,