Transcription
New York February 28th 1845
My dear Sister
Your Kind letter of 16th Inst. addressed / to Sarah was duly received, and ever since I have been / flattering myself that she would gladly avail herself of so / opportune an opening for retrieving her past neglect of her / good Mother and Sisters, yet I fear ere I am again to / be disappointed and perhaps for the first time made to / feel that my wife is not all the good being for which / I have been giving her credit. There is , in Sarah’s not / writing, something so unnatural _ so abhorrent to my / ideas of the nature of an attachment that a child _ / more especially a daughter, should have for a mother, / that I can scarce realise it when I think that it / is my own wife who is the one I am complaining of. / I have used argument _ persuasion and even threatened / to keep myself away from her in the evenings until a / late bed hour to induce her to write, but thus far to / no purpose. This last threat I must put in practice / and see if it will not be of some avail; for she / has apparently more dread of my absenting my self /
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From home than any thing else. If I scold, she has / found that in the next moment I have forgotten my / intention of playing the angered husband: and now / she seems to think my threats of staying out is mere / moonshine from the fact of my never yet having been / away from her of an evening so late as ten o’clock.
I shall give her to next Monday, when if the letter is / not written, I shall commence and will not come home / after dinner ‘till twelve O’clock at night so long as she / may be disposed to play the incorrigible. It is not, / as I have before said, from a want of affection or / interest in her family that she is thus negligent, but it / arises from a natural dislike to letter writing, originating, I think, / in a diffidence of her powers for composition, and also a / want of firmnefs and decision in availing herself of the / time being, and quiting her conscience with a [mirrored?] / resolve to write at an early day, which day never comes.
We have as yet no settled plans for the summer, / We have some plans, which if accomplished, will enable / Mary to be with Sarah which I very much wish, as Sarah / will shortly want some one with her, when a Mother or / a Sister would be more acceptable to her, as well as more / in consonance with my own [^ feelings] than any other person.
If these plans fail I shall find myself in somewhat
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Of a quandary: the very thought of remaining under the / same roof with Mrs L. together with such a houseful / of boarders, makes me shudder; and rather than this I / will try and find some quiet place in the country in / the neighborhood of the city, even though it be among / strangers.
As to our visit to Boston the coming Summer it / must depend upon circumstances; yet I cannot see / any reason why Sarah should not make you a visit / and perhaps I, myself, may be able to make a flying trip / if for no other purpose than to make the personal / acquaintance of my new cou-[??]-s, at the same time / gratifying the curiosity of those who may wish to see / what kind of a personage Sarah’s new York / Husband my be.
The weather has been most delightful for better than a / week – more like the latter days of May than Feb’y – indeed / I am almost persuaded that I have had a touch of the / wondrous sleeping propensities of Rip Van Winkle of / yore, and that I must have snoozed away the usually / disagreeable days of Feb’y, March, + April and that it truly / is the veritable month of May. Who Knows but that / some “Brobdignag” of a Mesmerizer has been playing / his pranks upon the good people of this planet and /
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Putting all mankind into a Mesmeric sleep from which / they have just awakened, and that in truth it is now really / summer and not Winter?
Don’t get frightened at what I have been saying / in regard to inducing Sarah to write and fancy that I am / about to act unkindly to her, This, I do not think is in my /
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Nature any more than that I would stay away from her as / I have said, she Knows what I have written and perhaps / the fear of my putting in practice what I have threatened / my induce her to write. In haste,
Yours aff
William Irving
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[ADDRESS]
Mrs George Wakes
67 Temple Street
Boston
[POSTMARK 1 - red ink, oval]
FORWARDED BY
Hale & SONS
[??]
NEW YORK [?]
[POSTMARK 2 - red ink, rectangle]
[faint - illegible]Transcriber
Kathryn AlexanderLanguage
English
