Daily Life August 20, 1899

With a most unusual welcome to matrimony, Thomas Hardy’s wife, Emma, writes to the former Elspeth Thomson, who had recently married Kenneth Grahame, the secretary to the Bank of England and future author of The Wind in the Willows

IT IS really too “early days” with you to be benefited by advice from one who has just come to the twenty-fifth year of matrimony . . .

Do I know your choice, perhaps I have met him — perhaps not. However it is impossible to give “directions for use” — besides characters change so greatly with time and circumstances. I can scarcely think that love proper, and enduring, is in the nature of men — as a rule — perhaps there is no woman “whom custom will not stale.” There is ever a desire to give but little in return for our devotion, & affection — theirs being akin to children’s — a sort of easy affectionateness — & at fifty, a man’s

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