Letter from Arthur Hallam, Somersby, to William Henry Brookfield, 1832 August : autograph manuscript signed with initials.

Discussing his struggles with "...the pressure of a severe anxiety;" saying "Well you may have thought my conduct atrocious & atrocious in sober fact it may be considered; but I have not been without excuse. When your first letter reached me, months ago, I was very unwell, & very wretched - not merely hypped, as usual, but suffering the pressure of a severe anxiety, which, although past, has left me much worn in spirit. As I began to get better Alfred came up to town & persuaded me to go abroad with him. So we went to the Rhine for a month, & as we had little coin between us, talked much of economy, but the only part of our principles we reduced to practice was the reduction of such expenses, as letterwriting &c. Really I often vowed to Alfred I would write to you & as often he got into a pet, & jingled the bag of Naps, whose glad ringing sound began to come daily fainter on the ear, and their fair golden forms daily to occupy less space in the well stuffed portmanteau. We have now returned, & are at Somersby. I fear I cannot stay here long : but I snatch the gift of the hour, & am thankful. I have been very miserable since I saw you : my hopes grow fainter & fewer, yet I hope on, & will, until the last ray is gone, & then -- Emily, thank Heaven, is better than she has been, & I think rather more cheerful. Somersby looks glorious in full pride of leafy summer. I would I could fully enjoy it : but ghosts of the Past & wraiths of the Future are perpetually troubling me. I am a very unfortunate being; yet when I look with Emily's eyes, I sometimes think there is happiness received for me. Certainly I am by nature sanguine & hopeful; I was not framed for despondency : if circumstances were as I wish them I hardly think I should moodily seek for new causes of disquiet. One thing I fear must be -- even if I succeed to the utmost of my hopes, I think the affection of my own family, the faces of my home, the faces of my [in]fancy, will be lost to me. Already [I] see it clearly diminishing : yet, whatever guilt may weigh down my soul, towards my father at least I feel I have acted uprightly. I am certain I have not deserved contempt or indifference : but pity rather & tender counsel & perpetual love. I have been writing you an unwarrantable letter : soon I will write again & more reasonably perhaps, although I expect little else than misery & slavery on my return home. I heard the other day from Trench : he is at Stradbally, mild & happy - bless him! & thinking about the Church & the Morning Watch still;" relating news of other mutual friends and adding "Alfred better in health & spirits than I have seen him this long while. Now goodbye old cove, for the present, but prithee don't talk of alienation & all that when thou writest next. If sometimes under the immediate touch of new pain or pleasure I do not look on all sides & remember how much existence there is out of my actual mood, why bear with me a little : it is selfish, but it is human : a word, a bone, a look at any time, I believe, recalls me to a sense of what I owe to those whom I love, inter alios, to master Brooks."