Crossing the River (12 page)

My Dearest,

I have, these past few days, been discouraged from writing by the mighty apparatus of the seas. But being unable to hold off and tolerate further delay, I now try my eyes by candlelight and attempt to form characters that, I trust, will not try your own. At present, I cannot imagine writing with pleasure to any on land or sea but your own dear self, my head being full of the petty concerns of this valuable vessel, and the lives of the people who dwell hereabouts, whose fortunes are entrusted to my care. These are, indeed, petty concerns when set against my love for you, for I can declare, with honour, that barely an hour of my past life comes to mind with any pleasure, excepting valuable and precious time I have passed in your company, and for that I think the innumerable miseries and pains of my previous unhappy life, not a dear purchase. My affection for you goes beyond any words I can find or use, and I simply wish that it were possible for you to travel with me, and strengthen my purpose in fatigue and difficulty, without actually suffering them. How trifling they would seem to me! But, I submit, I travel abroad in the comfortable knowledge that my better, precious part is safely at home, and though she understands absence to be painful, she knows it is so for her sake. I am engaged in active business, and have some new scene every day to relieve my mind; besides I have long been used to suffering. On the contrary, you, by marriage to one such as I, have exposed yourself to anxieties to which you were a stranger. I know you have done this willingly, and I love you all the greater for this sacrifice.

My last letter concluded abruptly, for I was ill and disconcerted by an incident in business. I feared it might give rise to bad consequences, and sadly this came to pass. I take a good deal of raillery among the sea-captains, for they
know
I have not a secure knowledge of life, and I
know
they have not. They claim I am melancholy; I tell them they have lost their wits. They say I am a slave to a single woman; I claim they are a slave to hundreds, of all qualities. They wonder at my
lack
of humour, I pity theirs. They declare they can form no idea of my happiness, I counter with knowledge that being pleased with a drunken debauch, or the smile of a prostitute, can never give one such as I pleasure. They pretend, all the while, to appeal to experience against me, but I stand firm. On my own ship such discord recently swelled into near-mutiny, for there is among my officers one in particular who sees me as little more than a
gentleman-passenger
. I had been warned, prior to our departure, that I might expect trouble in abundance from Mr Davy, the Boatswain, and he recently unleased his drunken invective on myself and others of our company, and then in a flight of madness attempted to seize the ship. But no more of this business, except to say that, indeed, all was very nearly lost, but now we are found. It seems that the disparity between my dear late father’s great reputation, and my own youthful 26 years, fired some hereabouts, under the skilful guidance of Mr Davy, into a frenzy of hostility, the assumption being that I owed everything to my connections, and nothing to my own experience or abilities. But again, I say, no more of this business.

I confess that, when alone, the recollection of my past with you overpowers me with a tender concern, and such thoughts give me a pleasure, second only to that of being actually with you. I have written myself into tears, yet I feel a serenity I never imagined till I was able to call you mine. To win your love was my principal desire, and without it, all that you possessed, and might have bestowed upon me, would have seemed dull by comparison. I have the confidence that you love me, a confidence which renders me superior to all the little entertainments that might allure me, and all the difficulties which are daily thrown in my way. Whatever dangers and hardships I meet, I declare that no one has heard me complain. Those of my company who pity me because I appear not to be fond of what
they
call pleasure, know not what renders me superior to it. I was once, in earlier times, as eager as they after pleasure, but you have thoroughly refined my state, so that my sole pleasure is to dream of our future children, and our family life together. What I have in view at the end of this voyage, is so fixed in my thoughts, that to be acknowledged and rewarded by you, outweighs any hardship that I might possibly suffer.