Wednesday Morning. (Kentish Town, 1820)
My dearest girl,
I have had a walk this morning with a book in my hand, but as usual I have been occupied with nothing but you: I wish I could say in an agreeable manner. I am tormented day and night. They talk of my going to Italy. ’Tis certain I shall never recover if I am to be so long separate from you: yet with all this devotion to you I cannot persuade myself into any confidence of you.
Past experience connected with the fact of my long separation from you gives me agonies which are scarcely to be talked of. ... I am literally worn to death, which seems my only recourse. I cannot forget what has pass’d. What? Nothing with a man of the world, but to me dreadful.
I will get rid of this as much as possible. When you were in the habit of1 flirting with Brown, you would have left off, could your own heart have felt one half of one pang mine did. Brown is a good sort of Man — he did not know he was doing me to death by inches. I feel the effect of every one of those hours in my side now; and for that cause, though he has done me many services, though I know his love and friendship for me, though at this moment I should be without a pence were it not for2 his assistance, I will never see or speak to him until we are both old men, if we are to be. I will resent my heart having been made a football. You will call this madness. I have heard you say that it was not unpleasant to wait a few years — you have amusements — your mind is away — you have not brooded over one idea as I have, and how should you?
You are to me an object3 intensely desirable — the air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy. I am not the same to you — no — you can wait — you have a thousand activities — you can be happy without me. Any party, any thing to fill up the day has been enough.