Friday, February 16, 1821

1821

February

Friday 16

7 3/4

12

..

Before breakfast, took another sheet and wrote a page and a half in a rather different style from yesterday –

Came upstairs at 11 1/4. Letter from Marian (Market Weighton) to say my father had written to Mr. Thompson to give up the purchase of Godley, according to our advice – Marian thinks he has altogether given up the thought, yet the object for buying it still remains the same, and if it comes to public auction and can be bought worth while, my father will do what is for the best – All which means I know not what; but perhaps he will have the place after all –

Very affectionate letter from Mariana (Lawton).Speaking of envying Isabella when I am at Langton, she says I have sometimes envied even Isabella, yes poor Isabel, who, did she know all, would give worlds were they in her power to be the thing I am.  What, Fred? Your fond, your faithful, your acknowledged wife. Is it not so?

This is a home question.  I have never yet acknowledged it so as to be binding, but I believe she loves me.  All my former affection for her has been returning ever since our last meeting.  I do feel for her what I can never feel for any other.  She may make almost anything and were she now quite at liberty I should not, could not, hesitate a moment. Witness the two pages and quarter that I sat down and wrote immediately on reading her letter.  Told her how I had been affected by reading Léontine de Blondheim, the whole only just readable if it were to fall into other hands than hers, the following in crypt:

I know not what to make of myself, but that I am at heart romantic as ever and that, be it hid and smothered as it may, I still feel all the fervour of impassioned tenderness and still adore as fondly and as faithfully as ever – You cannot divine what I sometimes endure, and fate forbid you should, yet I am patient, Mary.  You love me and I am happy, and surely few years more will end my wants, my faults, and follies in the arms of her who is a Léontine to me and all I love and all I hope for in my wife –

She rallies me on what I said in my last about Miss Milne –

After writing all this to Mariana, added another page and half to what I wrote before breakfast to Vallance, which kept me till after four –

In the afternoon from 5 to 6 10/60, walked with my aunt along the fields to Lower brea – thence by upper brea lane to Quarryhouse gate on the Northowram road and returned the same way –

In the evening read (to myself) from page 113 to 180, Outline of the Spanish American Revolution –

Martha Ingham came and staid till just after 8 –

Very fine day – Barometer 1/2 degree above fair – Fahrenheit 31 1/2° at 9 p.m. –

WYAS Finding Numbers SH:7/ML/E/5/0005 and SH:7/ML/E/5/0006