Frank Henley to Oliver Trenchard

London, Grosvenor Street

Oliver, I must fly!—There is neither peace nor safety for me if I remain—Resolution begins to faint under these repeated and oppressive struggles—Life is useless, virtue inefficient, time murdered, and I must fly!—Here I can do nothing but doubt, hope, despair, and linger in uncertainty: my body listless, my mind incoherent, my days wasted in vain reveries on absurd possibilities, and my nights haunted by the confused phantoms of a disturbed and sickly brain!—I must fly!

But whither?—I know not!—If I mean to be truly master of my affections, seas must separate us! Impossibility must be made more impossible!—'Tis that, Oliver, which kills me, that ignis fatuus of false hope—Were she even married, if her husband were not immortal, I feel as if my heart would still dwell and feed on the meagre May-be! It refuses to renounce her, and makes a thousand and a thousand efforts to oblige me again to urge its just claims.

I am in the labyrinth of contradictions, and know not how to get out. My own feelings, my remarks on hers, the looks, actions and discourse of this dangerous lover are all embroiled, all incongruous, all illusory. I seem to tempt her to evil by my stay, him I offend, and myself I torment—I must therefore begone!

Oliver, our hearts are united!—Truth and principle have made them one, and prejudice and pride have not the power to dissever them!—She herself feels this intimately, yet persists in her mistake. I think, Oliver, it is not what the world or what she understands by love which occasions this anarchy of mind. I think I could command and reprove my passions into silence. Either I mistake myself, or even now, situated as I am, I could rejoice were there a certainty, nay were there but strong probabilities, that her favourite purpose on Clifton should be effected. But the more I meditate, and my hours, days, and weeks pass away and are lost in meditation on this subject, the more does my mind persist in its doubts, and my heart in its claims.

Surely, Oliver, she is under a double mistake! Surely her reasonings both on him and me are erroneous.

I must be honest, Oliver, and tell thee all my feelings, fears, and suspicions. They may be false. I hope they are, but they exist. I imagine I perceive in him repeated and violent struggles to appear what he is not, nay what I doubt he would despise himself for being!

Is not this an unjustifiable, a cruel accusation? Why have I this keen this jealous sensibility? Is it not dishonourable to my understanding?

Yet should there be real danger, and I blind to it! Should I neglect to warn her, or rather to guard and preserve her from harm, where shall I find consolation?

Oliver! There are times when these fears haunt me so powerfully that my heart recoils, my blood freezes, and my whole frame is shaken with the terrific dream!—A dream?—Yes, it must be a dream! If not, the perversion of his mind and the obduracy of his heart are to me wholly incomprehensible!

I must be more guarded—Wrongfully to doubt were irreparably to injure!
My first care must be to be just.

Mark, Oliver, how these wanderings of the mind mislead and torment me! One minute I must fly, to recover myself, and not to disturb and way-lay others; the next I must stay, to protect her who perhaps is best able to protect herself!

I have no plan: I labour to form one in vain. That single channel into which my thoughts are incessantly impelled is destructive of all order and connexion. The efforts of the understanding are assassinated by the emotions of the heart; till the reproaches of principle become intolerable, and the delusions of hope distracting!—A state of such painful inutility is both criminal and absurd.

The kindness of the father, brother, and aunt, the sympathising tenderness which bursts from and overcomes the benign Anna, the delay of the marriage—Oliver!—I was recapitulating the seeming inspirations of my good angel, and have conjured up my chief tormentor!—This delay!—Where does it originate?—With whom?—With—! I must fly!—This of all motives is the most irrefragable! I must fly!—But when, or how, or where, what I must undertake, whither go, or what become, is yet all vague and incoherent conjucture.

F. HENLEY