Love Letters of Nathaniel Hawthorne Volume I Part 2

TO MISS PEABODY

_Boston_, Monday Eveg July 15th [1839]

_My blessed Dove_,

Your letter was brought to me at East Cambridge this afternoon:--otherwise I know not when I should have received it; for I am so busy that I know not whether I shall have time to go to the Custom-House these two or three days. I put it in my pocket, and did not read it till just now, when I could be quiet in my own chamber--for I always feel as if your letters were too sacred to be read in the midst of people--and (you will smile) I never read them without first was.h.i.+ng my hands!

And so my poor Dove is sick, and I cannot take her to my bosom. I do really feel as if I could cure her. [Portion of letter missing] Oh, my dearest, do let our love be powerful enough to make you well. I will have faith in its efficacy--not that it will work an immediate miracle--but it shall make you so well at heart that you cannot possibly be ill in the body. Partake of my health and strength, my beloved. Are they not your own, as well as mine? Yes--and your illness is mine as well as yours; and with all the pain it gives me, the whole world should not buy my right to share in it.

My dearest, I will not be much troubled, since you tell me (and your word is always truth) that there is no need. But, oh, be careful of yourself--remembering how much earthly happiness depends on your health. Be tranquil--let me be your Peace, as you are mine. Do not write to me, unless your heart be unquiet, and you think that you can quiet it by writing.

G.o.d bless mine own Dove. I have kissed those three last words. Do you kiss them too.

Miss Sophia A. Peabody, Care of Dr. N. Peabody, Salem, Ma.s.s.

TO MISS PEABODY

Wednesday eveg. July 17th [1839]

_My Dearest_,

I did not know but you would like another little note--and I think I feel a strange impulse to write, now that the whole correspondence devolves on me. And I wrote my other note in such a hurry, that I quite forgot to give you the praise which you so deserved, for bearing up so stoutly against the terrible misfortune of my non-appearance.

Indeed, I do think my Dove is the strongest little dove that ever was created--never did any creature live, who could feel so acutely, and yet endure so well.

This note must be a mere word, my beloved--and I wish I could make it the very tenderest word that ever was spoken or written. Imagine all that I cannot write.

G.o.d bless you, mine own Dove, and make you quite well against I take you to your home--which shall be on Sat.u.r.day eveg, without fail. Till then, dearest, spend your time in happy thoughts and happy dreams--and let my image be among them. Good bye, mine own Dove--I have kissed that holy word.

YOUR OWN, OWN, OWNEST.

My Dove must not look for another note.

To Miss Sophia A. Peabody, Care of Dr. N. Peabody, Salem, Ma.s.s.

TO MISS PEABODY

_Boston_, July 24th, 1839--8 o'clock P.M.

_Mine own_,

I am tired this evening, as usual, with my long day's toil; and my head wants its pillow--and my soul yearns for the friend whom G.o.d has given it--whose soul He has married to my soul. Oh, my dearest, how that thought thrills me! We _are_ married! I felt it long ago; and sometimes, when I was seeking for some fondest word, it has been on my lips to call you--"Wife"! I hardly know what restrained me from speaking it--unless a dread (for _that_ would have been an infinite pang to me) of feeling you shrink back, and thereby discovering that there was yet a deep place in your soul which did not know me. Mine own Dove, need I fear it now? Are we not married? G.o.d knows we are.

Often, I have silently given myself to you, and received you for my portion of human love and happiness, and have prayed Him to consecrate and bless the union. Yes--we are married; and as G.o.d Himself has joined us, we may trust never to be separated, neither in Heaven nor on Earth. We will wait patiently and quietly, and He will lead us onward hand in hand (as He has done all along) like little children, and will guide us to our perfect happiness--and will teach us when our union is to be revealed to the world. My beloved, why should we be silent to one another--why should our lips be silent--any longer on this subject? The world might, as yet, misjudge us; and therefore we will not speak to the world; but why should we not commune together about all our hopes of earthly and external as well [as] our faith of inward and eternal union? Farewell for tonight, my dearest--my soul's bride!

July 25th. 8 o'clock, P.M. How does my Dove contrive to live and thrive, and keep her heart in cheerful trim, through a whole fortnight, with only one letter from me? It cannot be indifference; so it must be heroism--and how heroic! It does seem to me that my spirit would droop and wither like a plant that lacked rain and dew, if it were not for the frequent shower of your gentle and holy thoughts. But then there is such a difference in our situations. My Dove is at home--not, indeed, in her home of homes--but still in the midst of true affections; and she can live a spiritual life, spiritual and intellectual. Now, my intellect, and my heart and soul, have no share in my present mode of life--they find neither labor nor food in it; everything that I do here might be better done by a machine. I _am_ a machine, and am surrounded by hundreds of similar machines;--or rather, all of the business people are so many wheels of one great machine--and we have no more love or sympathy for one another than if we were made of wood, bra.s.s, or iron, like the wheels of other pieces of complicated machinery. Perchance--but do not be frightened, dearest--the soul would wither and die within me, leaving nothing but the busy machine, no germ for immortality, nothing that could taste of heaven, if it were not for the consciousness of your deep, deep love, which is renewed to me with every letter. Oh, my Dove, I have really thought sometimes, that G.o.d gave you to me to be the salvation of my soul.

(Rest of letter missing)

TO MISS PEABODY

_Boston_, July 30th, 8 (or thereabouts) P.M. [1839]

_Beloved_,

There was no letter from you to-day; and this circ.u.mstance, in connection with your mention of a headache on Sunday, made me apprehensive that my Dove is not well. Yet surely she would write, or cause to be written, intelligence of the fact (if fact it were) to the sharer of her well-being and ill-being. Do, dearest, give me the a.s.surance that you will never be ill without letting me know, and then I shall always be at peace, and will not disquiet myself for the non-reception of a letter; for really, I would not have you crowd your other duties into too small a s.p.a.ce, nor dispense with anything that it is desirable to do, for the sake of writing to me. If you were not to write for a whole year, I still should never doubt that you love me infinitely; and I doubt not that, in vision, dream, or reverie, our wedded souls would hold communion throughout all that time.

Therefore I do not ask for letters while you are well, but leave all to your own heart and judgment; but if anything, bodily or mental, afflicts my Dove, her beloved _must_ be told.

And why was my dearest wounded by that silly sentence of mine about "indifference"? It was not well that she should do anything but smile at it. I knew, just as certainly as your own heart knows, that my letters are very precious to you--had I been less certain of it, I never could have trifled upon the subject. Oh, my darling, let all your sensibilities be healthy--never, never, be wounded by what ought not to wound. Our tenderness should make us mutually susceptible of happiness from every act of each other, but of pain from none; our mighty love should scorn all little annoyances, even from the object of that love. What misery (and what ridiculous misery too) would it be, if, because we love one another better than all the universe besides, our only gain thereby were a more exquisite sensibility to pain for the beloved hand and a more terrible power of inflicting it!

Dearest, it never shall be so with us. We will have such an infinity of mutual faith, that even real offenses (should they ever occur) shall not wound, because we know that something external from yourself or myself must be guilty of the wrong, and never our essential selves. My beloved wife, there is no need of all this preachment now; but let us both meditate upon it, and talk to each other about it;--so shall there never come any cloud across our inward bliss--so shall one of our hearts never wound the other, and itself fester with the sore that it inflicts. And I speak now, when my Dove is not wounded nor sore, because it is easier than it might be hereafter, when some careless and wayward act or word of mine may have rubbed too roughly against her tenderest of hearts. Dearest, I beseech you grant me freedom to be careless and wayward--for I have had such freedom all my life. Oh, let me feel that I may even do you a little wrong without your avenging it (oh how cruelly) by being wounded.

(Rest of letter missing)

TO MISS PEABODY

_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 inc.u.mbrances behind, and float upward and embrace you in the heavenly suns.h.i.+ne. 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 cheris.h.i.+ng 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 inst.i.tution 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. n.o.body ever had a wife but me--n.o.body 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 a.s.sociate 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.