_Boston_, Decr. 11th, 1839--7 P.M.
_Belovedest_,
I am afraid you will expect a letter tomorrow--afraid, because I feel
very sure that I shall not be able to fill this sheet tonight. I am
well, and happy, and I love you dearly, sweetest wife;--nevertheless,
it is next to impossibility for me to put ideas into words. Even in
writing these two or three lines, I have fallen into several long fits
of musing. I wish there was something in the intellectual world
analogous to the Daguerrotype (is that the name of it?) in the
visible--something which should print off our deepest, and subtlest,
and delicatest thoughts and feelings as minutely and accurately as the
above-mentioned instrument paints the various aspects of Nature. Then
might my Dove and I interchange our reveries--but my Dove would get
only lead in exchange for gold. Dearest, your last letter brought the
warmth of your very heart to your husband--Belovedest, I cannot
possibly write one word more, to-night.
This striving to talk on paper does but remove you farther from me. It
seems as if Sophie Hawthorne fled away into infinite space the moment
I try to fix her image before me in order to inspire my pen;--whereas,
no sooner do I give myself up to reverie, than here she is again,
smiling lightsomely by my side. There will be no writing of letters in
Heaven; at least, I shall write none then, though I think it would add
considerably to my bliss to receive them from my Dove. Never was I so
stupid as to-night;--and yet it is not exactly stupidity, either, for
my fancy is bright enough, only it has, just at this time, no command
of external symbols. Good night, dearest wife. Love your husband, and
dream of him.
Decr. 12th--6 P.M. Blessedest--Dove-ward and Sophie Hawthorne-ward
doth your husband acknowledge himself "very reprehensible," for
leaving his poor wife destitute of news from him such an interminable
time--one, two, three, four days tomorrow noon. After seven years'
absence, without communication, a marriage, if I mistake not, is
deemed to be legally dissolved. Does it not appear at least seven
years to my Dove, since we parted? It does to me. And will my Dove, or
naughty Sophie Hawthorne, choose to take advantage of the law, and
declare our marriage null and void? Oh, naughty, naughty, naughtiest
Sophie Hawthorne, to suffer such an idea to come into your head! The
Dove, I am sure, would not disown her husband, but would keep her
heart warm with faith and love for a million of years; so that when he
returned to her (as he surely would, at some period of Eternity, to
spend the rest of eternal existence with her) he would seem to find in
her bosom the warmth which his parting embrace had left there.
Very dearest, I do wish you would come to see me, this evening. If we
could be together in this very parlour of ours, I think you, and both
of us, would feel more completely at home than we ever have before in
all our lives. Your chamber is but a room in your mother's house,
where my Dove cannot claim an independent and separate right; she has
a right, to be sure, but it is as a daughter. As a wife, it might be a
question whether she has a right. Now this pleasant little room, where
I sit, together with the bed-room in which I intend to dream tonight
of my Dove, is my dwelling, my castle, mine own place wherein to be,
which I have bought, for the time being, with the profits of mine own
labor. Then is it not our home?
(Rest of letter missing)