An Englishwoman's Love-Letters

Beloved: This is your first letter from me: yet it is not the first I have written to you. There are letters to you lying at love's dead-letter office in this same writing--so m...

Dearest: Your name woke me this morning: I found my lips piping their song before I was well back into my body out of dreams. I wonder if the rogues babble when my spirit is nes...

Dearest and rightly Beloved: You cannot tell how your gift has pleased me; or rather you _can_, for it shows you have a long memory back to our first meeting: though at the time...

In all the world, dearest, what is more unequal than love between a man and a woman? I have been spending an amorous morning and want to share it with you: but lo, the task of b...

Most Beloved: I have been thinking, staring at this blank piece of paper, and wondering how _there_ am I ever to say what I have in me here--not wishing to say anything at all,...

Beloved: I have been trusting to fate, while keeping silence, that something from you was to come to-day and make me specially happy. And it has: bless you abundantly! You have...

My Friend: Do you think this a cold way of beginning? I do not: is it not the true send-off of love? I do not know how men fall in love: but I could not have had that come-down...

Now _why_, I want to know, Beloved, was I so specially "good" to you in my last? I have been quite as good to you fifty times before,--if such a thing can be from me to you. Or...

Beloved: Is the morning looking at you as it is looking at me? A little to the right of the sun there lies a small cloud, filmy and faint, but enough to cast a shadow somewhere....

Dearest: Did you find your letter? The quicker I post, the quicker I need to sit down and write again. The grass under love's feet never stops growing: I must make hay of it whi...

Oh, Dearest: I have danced and I have danced till I am tired! I am dropping with sleep, but I must just touch you and say good-night. This was our great day of publishing, deare...

Dearest: It has been such a funny day from post-time onwards:-- congratulations on the great event are beginning to arrive in envelopes and on wheels. Some are very kind and dea...

A long time hence, when we are a safely wedded pair, you shall turn them over. It _may_ be a short time; but I will keep them however long. Indeed I must ever keep them; they ta...

Own Dearest: Come I did not think that you would, or mean that you should seriously; for is it not a poor way of love to make the object of it cut an absurd or partly absurd fig...

You told me, dearest, that I should find your mother formidable. It is true; I did. She is a person very much in the grand pagan style: I admire it, but I cannot flow in that so...

But, Dearest: When I think of you I never question whether what I think would be true or false in the eyes of others. All that concerns you seems to go on a different plane wher...

Dearest: Do I not write you long letters? It reveals my weakness. I have thought (it had been coming on me, and now and then had broken out of me before I met you) that, left to...

Dearest: Not having had a letter from you this morning, I have read over some back ones, and find in one a bidding which I have never fulfilled, to tell you what I _do_ all day....

Dearest, Dearest: How long has this happened? You don't tell me the day or the hour. Is it ever since you last wrote? Then you have been in pain and grief for four days: and I n...

Yes, Dearest, "Patience!" but it is a virtue I have little enough of naturally, and used to be taught to pray for as a child. And I remember once really hurting clear Mother-Aun...

Dearest: I am in a simple mood to-day, and give you the benefit of it: I shall become complicated again presently, and you will hear from me directly that happens.

Why, my Beloved: Since you put it to me as a point of conscience (it is only lying on your back with one active leg doing nothing, and the other dying to have done aching, which...

Saving your presence, dearest, I would rather have Prince Otto, a very lovable character for second affections to cling to. Richard Feverel would never marry again, so I don't a...

Dearest: How, when, and where is there any use wrangling as to which of us loves the other the best ("the better," I believe, would be the more grammatical phrase in incompetent...

My Own Beloved: And I never thanked you yesterday for your dear words about the resurrection pie; that comes of quarreling! Well, you must prove them and come quickly that I may...

Oh, wings of the morning, here you come! I have been looking out for you ever since post came. Roberts is carrying orders into town, and will bring you this with a touch of the...

Dearest: I have made a bad beginning of the week: I wonder how it will end? it all comes of my not seeing enough of you. Time hangs heavy on my hands, and the Devil finds me the...

Dearest: Here comes a letter to you from me flying in the opposite direction. I won't say I am not wishing to go; but oh, to be a bird in two places at once! Give this letter, t...

Beloved: You know of the method for making a cat settle down in a strange place by buttering her all over: the theory being that by the time she has polished off the butter she...

Dearest: I cannot say I have seen Pisa, for the majority had their way, and we simply skipped into it, got ourselves bumped down at the Duomo and Campo Santo for two hours, fell...

Dearest: The Italian paper-money paralyzes my brain: I cannot calculate in it; and were I left to myself an unscrupulous shopman could empty me of pounds without my becoming con...

My Dearest: Florence is still eating up all my time and energies: I promised you there should be austerity and self-denial in the matter of letter-writing: and I know you are un...

Beloved: I had your last letter on Friday: all your letters have come in their right numbers. I have lost count of mine; but I think seven and two postcards is the total, which...

Dearest: We were to have gone down with the rest into Florence yesterday: but soft miles of Italy gleamed too invitingly away on our right, and I saw Arthur's eyes hungry with t...

Beloved: Rain swooped down on us from on high during the night, and the country is cut into islands: the river from a rocky wriggling stream has risen into a tawny, opaque torre...

Dearest: Venice is round me as I write! Well, I will not waste my Baedeker knowledge on you,--you too can get a copy; and it is not the panoramic view of things you will be want...

Beloved: The weather is as gray as England to-day, and much rainier. To feel it on my cheeks and be back north with that and warmer things, I would go out in it in the face of p...

Dearest: St. Mark's inside is entirely different from anything I had imagined. I had expected a grove of pillars instead of these wonderful breadths of wall; and the marble over...

My Own, Own Beloved: Say that my being away does not seem too long? I have not had a letter yet, and that makes me somehow not anxious but compunctious; only writing to you of a...

Beloved: If two days slip by, I don't know where I am when I come to write; things get so crowded in such a short space of time. Where I left off I know not: I will begin where...

Dearest: This letter will travel with me: we leave to-day. Our movements are to be too restless and uncomfortable for the next few days for me to have a chance of quiet seeing o...

Dearest: I saw an old woman riding a horse astride: and I was convinced on the spot that this is the rightest way of riding, and that the sidesaddle was a foolish and affected i...

My Dearest: See what an effect your "gallous young hound" episode has had on me. I send it back to you roughly done into rhyme. I don't know whether it will carry; for, outside...

Dearest: I have been doing something so wise and foolish: mentally wise, I mean, and physically foolish. Do you guess?--Disobeying your parting injunction, and sitting up to see...

Beloved: I look at this ridiculous little nib now, running like a plow along the furrows! What can the poor thing do? Bury its poor black, blunt little nose in the English langu...

Dearest: To-day I came upon a strange spectacle: poor old Nan-nan weeping for wounded pride in me. I found her stitching at raiment of needlework that is to be mine (piles of it...

Can you help me to what follows? If it is a true poem it ought now to be able to sing itself to me at large from an outer world which at this moment is all gray and roaring. To-...

Dearest: If anybody has been "calling me names" that are not mine, they do me a fine injury, and you did well to purge the text of their abuse. I agree with no authority, howeve...

Dearest: I suppose your mother's continued absence, and her unexplanation of her further stay, must be taken for unyielding disapproval, and tells us what to expect of February....

Beloved: No, not Browning but Tennyson was in my thoughts at our last ride together: and I found myself shy, as I have been for a long time wishing to say things I could not. Wh...

Dearest: It was so nice and comedy to see the Mother-Aunt this morning importantly opening a letter from you all to herself with the pleasure quite unmixed by any inclosure for...

My Dearest: Arthur and the friend went off together yesterday. I am glad the latter stayed just long enough after you left for me to have leisure to find him out human. Here is...

Beloved: I wish you could have been with me to look out into this garden last night when the spirit moved me there. I had started for bed, but became sensitive of something outs...

Beloved: We have been having a great day of tidyings out, rummaging through years and years of accumulations--things quite useless but which I have not liked to throw away. My s...

Beloved: I am getting quite out of letter-writing, and it is your doing, not mine. No sooner do I get a line from you than you rush over in person and take the answer to it out...

My Own Own Love: You have given me a spring day before the buds begin,-- the weather I have been longing for! I had been quite sad at heart these cold wet days, really _down_;--...

Come to me! I will not understand a word you have written till you come. Who has been using your hand to strike me like this, and why do you lend it? Oh, if it is she, you do no...

No, no, I cannot read it! What have I done that you will not come to me? They are mad here, telling me to be calm, that I am not to go to you. I too am out of my mind--except th...

I have to own that I know your will now, at last. Without seeing you I am convinced: you have a strong power in you to have done that! You have told me the word I am to say to y...

To-day, dearest, a letter from you reached me: a fallen star which had lost its way. It lies dead in my bosom. It was the letter that lost itself in the post while I was traveli...

You are very ill, they tell me. Beloved, it is such kindness in them to have regard for the wish they disapprove and to let me know. Knowledge is the one thing needful whose lac...

The pain of it was less than it might have been, since our looks did not meet. To have seen your eyes shut out their recognition of me would have hurt me too much: I must have c...

Do you remember, Beloved, when you came on your birthday, you said I was to give you another birthday present of your own choosing, and I promised? And it was that we were to do...

Dearest: It is dreadful to own that I was glad at first to know that you and your mother were no longer together, glad of something that must mean pain to you! I am not now. Whe...

I cannot picture you anyhow else, though my life is full of the silence you have made. My heart seems to have stopped on the last beat the sight of your handwriting gave it.

Dearest: Every day I am giving myself a little more pain than I need--for the sake of you. I am giving myself your letters to read again day by day as I received them. Only one...

Do you forgive me for coming into your life, Beloved? I do not know in what way I can have hurt you, but I know that I have. Perhaps without knowing it we exchange salves for th...

Dearest: The thought keeps troubling me how to give myself to you most, if you should ever come back for me when I am no longer here. These poor letters are all that I can leave...

Beloved: I remember my second birthday. I am quite sure of it, because my third I remember so infinitely well.--Then I was taken in to see Arthur lying in baby bridal array of l...

Beloved: I think that small children see very much as animals must do: just the parts of things which have a direct influence on their lives, and no memory outside that. I remem...

I used to stand at the foot of the stairs a long time, when by myself, before daring to start up: and then it was always the right foot that went first. And a fearful feeling us...

Here in my pain, Beloved, I remember keenly now the one or two occasions when as a small child I was consciously a cause of pain to others. What an irony of life that once of th...

Dearest: I could never have made any appeal _from_ you to anybody: all my appeal has been _to_ you alone. I have wished to hear reason from no other lips but yours; and had you...

Dearest and Dearest: So long as you are still this to my heart I trust to have strength to write it; though it is but a ghost of old happiness that comes to me in the act. I hav...

Dearest: There is always one possibility which I try to remember in all I write: even where there is no hope a thing remains _possible_:--that your eye may some day come to rest...

Dearest: I feel constantly that we are together still: I cannot explain. When I am most miserable, even so that I feel a longing to fly out of reach of the dear household voices...

My own one beloved, my dearest dear! Want me, please want me! I will keep alive for you. Say you wish me to live,--not come to you: don't say that if you can't--but just wish me...

To-night, Beloved, the burden of things is too much for me. Come to me somehow, dear ghost of all my happiness, and take me in your arms! I ache and ache, not to belong to you....

Dearest: I have not written to you for three weeks. At last I am better again. You seem to have been waiting for me here: always wondering when I would come back. I do come back...

A secret, dearest, that will be no secret soon: before I am done with twenty-three I shall have passed my age. Beloved, it hurts me more than I can say that the news of it shoul...

Beloved: I woke last night and believed I had your arms round me, and that all storms had gone over me forever. The peace of your love had inclosed me so tremendously that when...

Dearest: If you will believe any word of mine, you must not believe that I have died of a broken heart should science and the doctors bring about a fulfillment of their present...

I am frightened, dearest, I am frightened at death. Not only for fear it should take me altogether away from you instead of to you, but for other reasons besides,--instincts whi...

Dearest: I am to have news of you. Arthur came to me last night, and told me that, if I wished, he would bring me word of you. He goes to-morrow. He put out the light that I mig...

If faith could still remove mountains, surely I should have seen you long ago. But if I were to see you now, I should fear that it meant you were dead.

Dearest: To-day Arthur came and brought me your message: I have at my heart your "profoundly grateful remembrances." Somewhere else unanswered lies your prayer for God to bless...