There is no fear of any of us
forgetting when the acute stage is passed. I should be ashamed of
myself for having felt as keenly and spoken with as little reserve
as I have if it were any one but you; but I feel no shame at any
length to which grief can take me when it is about you. I can call
to mind no word which ever passed between us three which had been
better unspoken: no syllable of irritation or unkindness; nothing
but goodness and kindness ever came out of you, and such as our best
was we gave it to you as you gave yours to us. Who may not well be
plunged up to the lips in sorrow at parting from one of whom he can
say this in all soberness and truth? I feel as though I had lost an
only son with no hope of another....'
The love is almost pathetically lavish. Letters like these reveal to us
a man so avid of affection that he must of necessity erect every barrier
and defence to avoid a mortal wound. His sensibility was _rentree_,
probably as a consequence of his appalling childhood; and the indication
helps us to understand not only the inordinate suspiciousness with which
he behaved to Darwin, but the extent to which irony was his favoured
weapon.
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