Chipping Norton
August 10th 1877
My Dearest Eugénie,
I was very pleased to receive your last letter although I must confess that I felt a keen sense of disappointment at the news it contained, relative to the probable postponement of your visit to England, and I think I fully realised for the moment the truth of the proverb, “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick”, however I shall hope still that our next meeting may not be so very far distant, I seem getting more anxious than ever to see you, darling, again.
I am glad you have had Fanny with you for a few days for I feel sure it was a pleasure, I suppose she will have left before this reaches you, on Sunday morning I trust.
I shall hope to hear that your dinner party went off well, so you wished I could have been there? and I, dearest Eugénie, felt equally as much what a happiness it would have been to be near my darling.
I have not yet heard from Dover to know how my Mother bore the journey but I hope pretty well, I daresay she would be a day or two getting over it.
I am still busy rose budding in my leisure time, but that is not much, for a week or two now I expect we shall be very hardly pressed to turn out the beer fast enough, for harvest is just about commencing here.
It was so wet last Tuesday that I did not go to play croquet so missed my chance of a flirtation with Miss Cruso! however I think you may trust me dear.
Ah! I would not exchange my own Eugénie’s love for all this world could offer, your sweet affection, darling girl, is, and always must be, far, far more to me than all the world beside. Do you know it will be nineteen weeks to-morrow since we were engaged, I was thinking a day or two ago that in all human probability more than half the term had passed and another such a period will find us entered upon that dear companionship which I trust, and believe, most sincerely will be indeed for our mutual happiness, oh! my love, these nineteen weeks have I feel sure been but the forerunners of many a happy day, I like to look back to that memorable 31st March and feel, as I do most surely, that our love has never wavered but has rather grown and bound our hearts ever more close together. I have never felt a single doubt but that I have gained the true love of a dear affectionate girl, without whose affection my life would now be indeed but a blank, and the proudest happiest moment of my existence will be the one when I can first call her by the name of “wife” and feel I have received into my keeping a sacred charge and, with God’s help, darling, you shall find in the years to come, that your Julius is not altogether unworthy of your dear trusting love.
And now I must say good night for I have a heavy day to-morrow and must get up at the unusually early hour of 4 a.m.
With best love believe me ever
Your own true lover
Julius Sladden
Saturday Morning.
I have no time to add more to my letter which I have just read over; will my darling smile and think her lover a little spooney? Perhaps she will, but somehow I fancy she will not mind that, knowing that it is only the overflowing of a heart full of love for her.
