Produced by Suzanne Shell, Louise Pryor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net {Transcriber's note: The author's spelling and hyphenation are inconsistent, and have not been changed except in the case of obvious typographical errors, which are listed at the end of this e-text. Spellings and accents in foreign languages are particularly eccentric.} RECORDS OF LATER LIFE BY FRANCES ANN KEMBLE NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1882. COPYRIGHT, 1882, BY HENRY HOLT & CO. RECORDS OF LATER LIFE. PHILADELPHIA, October 26th, 1834. DEAREST MRS. JAMESON, However stoutly your incredulity may have held out hitherto against the various "authentic" reports of my marriage, I beg you will, upon receipt of this, immediately believe that I was married on the 7th of June last, and have now been a wife nearly five mortal months. You know that in leaving the stage I left nothing that I regretted; but the utter separation from my family consequent upon settling in this country, is a serious source of pain to me.... With regard to what you say, about the first year of one's marriage not being as happy as the second, I know not how that may be. I had pictured to myself no fairyland of enchantments within the mysterious precincts of matrimony; I expected from it rest, quiet, leisure to study, to think, and to work, and legitimate channels for the affections of my nature.... In the closest and dearest friendship, shades of character, and the precise depth and power of the various qualities of mind and heart, never approximate to such a degree, as to preclude all possibility of occasional misunderstandings. "Not e'en the nearest heart, and most our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh." It is impossible that it should be otherwise: for no two human beings were ever fashioned absolutely alike, even in their gross outward bodily form and lineaments, and how should the fine and infinite spirit admit of such similarity with another? But the broad and firm principles upon which all honorable and enduring sympathy is founded, the love of truth, the reverence for right, the abhorrence of all that is base and unworthy, admit of no difference or misunderstanding; and where these exist in the relations of two people united for life, it seems to me that love and happiness, as perfect as this imperfect existence affords, may be realized....