NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences & Extensive Biographies. Герман Мелвилл
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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.
TO MISS PEABODY
Boston, August 21st, 1839
My dearest will be glad to know that her husband has not had to endure the heavy sunshine this afternoon;—he came home at three o'clock or thereabout, and locking the door, betook himself to sleep—first ensuring himself sweet slumber and blissful dreams (if any dreams should come) by reperusing his sweet wife's letter. His wife was with him at the moment of falling asleep, and at the moment of awaking; but she stole away from him during the interval. Naughty wife! Nevertheless, he has slept and is refreshed—slept how long he does not know; but the sun has made a far progress downward, since he closed his eyes.
Oh, my wife, if it were possible that you should vanish from me, I feel and know that my soul would be solitary forever and ever. I almost think that there would be no "forever" for me. I could not encounter such a desolate Eternity, were you to leave me. You are my first hope and my last. If you fail me (but there is no such if) I might toil onward through this life without much outward change, but I should sink down and die utterly upon the threshold of the dreary Future. Were you to find yourself deceived, you would betake yourself at once to God and Heaven, in the certainty of there finding a thousand-fold recompense for all earthly disappointment; but with me, it seems as if hope and happiness would be torn up by the roots, and could never bloom again, neither in this soil nor the soil of Paradise.
August 22d. Five or six o'clock P.M. I was interrupted by the supper bell, while writing the foregoing sentence; and much that I might have added has now passed out of my mind—or passed into its depths. My beloved wife, let us make no question about our love, whether it be true. Were it otherwise, God would not have left your heart to wreck itself utterly—His angels keep watch over you—they would have given you early and continued warning of the approach of Evil in any shape.
Two letters has my Dove blessed me with, since that of Monday—both beautiful—all three, indeed, most beautiful. There is a great deal in all of them that should be especially answered; but how may this be effected in one little sheet?—moreover, it is my pleasure to write in a more desultory fashion.
Nevertheless, propound as many questions as you see fit, in your letters, but, dearest, let it be without expectation of a set response.
When I first looked at that shadow of the Passing Hour, I thought her expression too sad; but the more I looked the sweeter and pleasanter it grew—and now I am inclined to think that few mortals are waited on by happier Hours than is my Dove, even in her pensive moods. My beloved, you make a Heaven round about you, and dwell in it continually; and as it is your Heaven, so is it mine. My heart has not been very heavy—not desperately heavy—any one time since I loved you; not even your illness and headaches, dearest wife, can make me desperately sad. My stock of sunshine is so infinitely increased by partaking of yours, that even when a cloud flits by, I incomparably prefer its gloom to the sullen, leaden tinge that used to overspread my sky. Were you to bring me, in outward appearance, nothing save a load of grief and pain, yet I do believe that happiness, in no stinted measure, would somehow or other be smuggled into the dismal burthen. But you come to me with no grief—no pain—you come with flowers of Paradise; some in bloom, many in the bud, and all of them immortal.
August 23d—between 7 and 8 P.M. Dearest wife, when I think how soon this letter will greet you, it makes my heart yearn towards you so much the more. How much of life we waste! Oh, beloved, if we had but a cottage somewhere beyond the sway of the east wind, yet within the limits of New England, where we could be always together, and have a place to be in—what could we desire more? Nothing—save daily bread, (or rather bread and milk, for I think I should adopt your diet) and clean white apparel every day for mine unspotted Dove. Then how happy I would be—and how good! I could not be other than good and happy, when your kiss would sanctify me at all my outgoings and incomings. And you should draw, and paint, and sculpture, and make music, and poetry too, and your husband would admire and criticise; and I, being pervaded with your spirit, would write beautifully and make myself famous for your sake, because perhaps you would like to have the world acknowledge me—but if the whole world glorified me with one voice, it would be a meed of little value in comparison with my wife's smile and kiss. For I shall