ABSTRACT
Thurs., 19 Oct., 1815. Dear Miss H . - I am forced to be the replier to your letter, for Mary has been i l l and gone from home these five weeks yesterday. She has left me very lonely and very miserable. I stroll about, but there is no rest but at one's o w n fireside, and thse half being past, and keep up as well as I can. She has begunere is no rest for me there now. I look forward to the wor to show some favorable symptoms. The return of her disorder has been frightfully soon this time, with scarce a six month's interval. I am almost afraid my worry of spirits about the E.I. House was partly the cause of her illness, but one always imputes it to the cause next at hand; more probably it comes from some cause we have no control over or conjecture of. It cuts sad great slices out of the time, the little time we shall have to live together. I don't know but the recurrence of these illnesses might help me to sustain her death better than if we had had no partial separations. But I won't talk of death. I wi l l imagine us immortal, or forget that we are otherwise; by God's blessing in a few weeks we may be making our meal together, or sitting in the front row of the Pit at Drury Lane, or taking our evening walk past the theatres, to look at the outside of them at least, if not to be tempted in . Then we forget we are assailable, we are strong for the time as rocks, the wind is tempered to the shorn Lambs. Poor C. L loyd , and poor Priscilla, I feel I hardly feel enough for h im, my own calamities press about me and involve me in a thick integument not to be reached at by other folks' misfortunes. But I feel all I can, and all the kindness I can towards you all. God bless you. I hear nothing from Coleridge. Yours truly
To Wil l iam Wordsworth
May, 1833 Mary is i l l again. Her illnesses encroach yearly. The last was three months, followed by two of depression most dreadful. I look back upon her earlier attacks wi th longing. Nice little durations of six weeks or so, followed by complete restoration - shocking as they were to me then. In short, half her life she is dead to me, and the other half is made anxious with fears and lookings forward to the next shock. Wi th such prospects, it seemed to me necessary that she should no longer live with me, and be fluttered with continual removals, so I am come to live with her, at a M r Walden's, and his wife, who take in patients, and have arranged to lodge and board us only. They have had the care of her before. I see little of her: alas! I too often hear her. Sunt lachrymae rerum - and you and I must bear it.
