Transcriber's note
The author's spelling and hyphenation are inconsistent, and have not beenchanged except in the case of obvious typographical errors, which arelisted at the end of this e-text. Spellings and accents in foreignlanguages are particularly eccentric.
Records of Later Life
BY
FRANCES ANN KEMBLE
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1882.
COPYRIGHT, 1882,BYHENRY HOLT & CO.
RECORDS OF LATER LIFE.
Philadelphia, October 26th, 1834.
Dearest Mrs. Jameson,
However stoutly your incredulity may have held out hitherto against thevarious "authentic" reports of my marriage, I beg you will, upon receiptof 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 inleaving the stage I left nothing that I regretted; but the utterseparation from my family consequent upon settling in this country, is aserious source of pain to me....
With regard to what you say, about the first year of one's marriage notbeing as happy as the second, I know not how that may be. I had picturedto myself no fairyland of enchantments within the mysterious precinctsof matrimony; I expected from it rest, quiet, leisure to study, tothink, and to work, and legitimate channels for the affections of mynature....
In the closest and dearest friendship, shades of character, and theprecise depth and power of the various qualities of mind and heart,never approximate to such a degree, as to preclude all possibility ofoccasional misunderstandings.
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh."
It is impossible that it should be otherwise: for no two human beingswere ever fashioned absolutely alike, even in their gross outward bodilyform and lineaments, and how should the fine and infinite spirit admitof such similarity with another? But the broad and firm principles uponwhich 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 theseexist in the relations of two people united for life, it seems to methat love and happiness, as perfect as this imperfect existence affords,may be realized....
Of course, kindred, if not absolutely similar, minds, do exist; but theydo not often meet, I think, and hardly ever unite. Indeed, though theenjoyment of intercourse with those who resemble us may be very great, Isuppose the influence of those who differ from us is more wholesome; forin mere unison of thought and feeling there could be no exercise forforbearance, toleration, self-examination by comparison with anothernature, or the sifting of one's own opinions and feelings, and testingtheir accuracy and value, by contact and contrast with opposite feelingsand opinions. A fellowship of mere accord, approaching to identity inthe nature of its members, would lose much of the uses of humanintercourse and its worth in the discipline of life, and, moreover,render the separation of death intolerable. But I am writing you adisquisition, and no one needs it less....
I did read your praise of me, and thank you for it; it is