_Custom House_, August 8th, 1839
Your letter, my beloved wife, was duly received into your husband's
heart yesterday. I found it impossible to keep it all day long, with
unbroken seal, in my pocket; and so I opened and read it on board of a
salt vessel, where I was at work, amid all sorts of bustle, and gabble
of Irishmen, and other incommodities. Nevertheless its effect was very
blessed, even as if I had gazed upward from the deck of the vessel,
and beheld my wife's sweet face looking down upon me from a
sun-brightened cloud. Dearest, if your dove-wings will not carry you
so far, I beseech you to alight upon such a cloud sometimes, and let
it bear you to me. True it is, that I never look heavenward without
thinking of you, and I doubt whether it would much surprise me to
catch a glimpse of you among those upper regions. Then would all that
is spiritual within me so yearn towards you, that I should leave my
earthly incumbrances behind, and float upward and embrace you in the
heavenly sunshine. Yet methinks I shall be more content to spend a
lifetime of earthly and heavenly happiness intermixed. So human am I,
my beloved, that I would not give up the hope of loving and cherishing
you by a fireside of our own, not for any unimaginable bliss of higher
spheres. Your influence shall purify me and fit me for a better
world--but it shall be by means of our happiness here below.
Was such a rhapsody as the foregoing ever written in the Custom House
before? I have almost felt it a sin to write to my Dove here, because
her image comes before me so vividly--and the place is not worthy of
it. Nevertheless, I cast aside my scruples, because, having been awake
ever since four o'clock this morning (now thirteen hours) and abroad
since sunrise, I shall feel more like holding intercourse in dreams
than with my pen, when secluded in my room. I am not quite hopeless,
now, of meeting you in dreams. Did you not know, beloved, that I
dreamed of you, as it seemed to me, all night long, after that last
blissful meeting? It is true, when I looked back upon the dream, it
immediately became confused; but it had been vivid, and most happy,
and left a sense of happiness in my heart. Come again, sweet wife!
Force your way through the mists and vapors that envelope my
slumbers--illumine me with a radiance that shall not vanish when I
awake. I throw my heart as wide open to you as I can. Come and rest
within it, Dove.
Oh, how happy you make me by calling me your husband--by subscribing
yourself my wife. I kiss that word when I meet it in your letters; and
I repeat over and over to myself, "she is my wife--I am her husband."
Dearest, I could almost think that the institution of marriage was
ordained, first of all, for you and me, and for you and me alone; it
seems so fresh and new--so unlike anything that the people around us
enjoy or are acquainted with. Nobody ever had a wife but me--nobody a
husband, save my Dove. Would that the husband were worthier of his
wife; but she loves him--and her wise and prophetic heart could never
do so if he were utterly unworthy.
_My own Room._ August 9th--about 10 A.M. It is so rare a thing for
your husband to find himself in his own room in the middle of the
forenoon, that he cannot help advising his Dove of that remarkable
fact. By some misunderstanding, I was sent on a fruitless errand to
East Cambridge, and have stopped here, on my return to the Custom
House, to rest and refresh myself--and what can so rest and refresh me
as to hold intercourse with my darling wife? It must be but a word and
a kiss, however--a written word and a shadowy kiss. Good bye, dearest.
I must go now to hold controversy, I suppose, with some plaguy little
Frenchman about a peck of coal more or less; but I will give my
beloved another word and kiss, when the day's toil is over.
_About 8 o'clock P.M._--I received your letter, your sweet, sweet
letter, my sweetest wife, on reaching the Custom House. Now as to that
swelled face of ours--it had begun to swell when we last met; but I
did not tell you, because I knew that you would associate the idea of
pain with it, whereas, it was attended with no pain at all. Very glad
am I, that my Dove did not see me when one side of my face was swollen
as big as two, for the image of such a monstrous one-sidedness, or
double-sidedness, might have haunted her memory through the whole
fortnight. Dearest, is it a weakness that your husband wishes to look
tolerably comely always in your eyes?--and beautiful if he could!! My
Dove is beautiful, and full of grace; she should not have an ugly
mate. But to return to this "naughty swelling"--it began to subside
on Tuesday, and has now, I think, entirely disappeared, leaving my
visage in its former admirable proportion. Nothing is now the matter
with me; save that my heart is as much swollen as my cheek
was--swollen with love, with pent-up love, which I would fain mingle
with the heart-blood of mine own sweet wife. Oh, dearest, how much I
have to say to you!--how many fond thoughts.
Dearest, I dare not give you permission to go out in the east winds.
The west wind will come very often I am sure, if it were only for the
sake of my Dove. Have nothing to do with that hateful east wind.
Miss Sophia A. Peabody,
Care of Dr. N. Peabody,
Salem, Mass.