In "Lizzie" Melville's Words: A Day in the Life

Okay, so this excerpt is really long, so long that Harrogate almost didn't post it. But Harrogate thought it might interest several of the Board Members in terms of the letter's Rhetoric, its provision of an intimate glimpse-at-a-now-famous-couple, &c. Perhaps, too, the letter tangentially intersects with M's research interests in the configurations of domestic space.

Anyway. Harrogate is currently reading Andrew Delbanco's amazing Melville biography, which contains this fully excerpted letter written from Elizabeth Shaw Melville to her stepmother Hope Savage Shaw. Delbanco qualifies this letter with a passage that itself merits a block quote. The letter, dated December 1847, conveys:

the heady mood in those New York days, making as clear as decency would permit that she and her "industrious boy" took domestic but still flirtatious pleasure in each other as she managed the household while he threw himself into his writing

And here is the letter:

We breakfast at 8 o'clock, then Herman goes to walk, and I fly up to put his room to rights, so that he can sit down to his desk immediately on his return. The I bid him good bye, with many charges to be an industrious boy and not upset the inkstand, and then flourish the duster, make the bed, etc., in my own room. Then I go downstairs and read the papers a little while, and after that I am ready to sit down to my work--whatever it may be--darning stockings--making or mending for myself or Herman--at all events I haven't seen a day yet, without some sewing or other to do. If I have letters to write, as is the case to-day, I usually do them first--but whatever I am about, I do not much more than get thoroughly engaged in it, than ding-dong goes the bell for luncheon. This is half past 12 o'clock--by this time we must expect callers, and so must be dressed immediately after lunch. Then Herman insists upon my taking a walk of an hour's length at least. So unless I can have rain or snow for an excuse, I usually sally out and make a pedestrian tour a mile or two down Broadway. By the time I come home it is two o'clock and after, and then I must make myself look as bewitchingly as possible to meet Herman at dinner. This being accomplished, I have only about an hour of available time left. At four we dine, and after dinner is over, Herman and I come up to our room and enjoy a cosy chat for an hour or so--or he reads me some of the chapters he has been writing in the day. Then he goes down town for a walk, looks at the papers in the reading room, etc., and returns about half-past seven or eight. Then my work or my book is laid aside, and as he does not use his eyes by very little by candle light, I either read to him, or take a hand at whist for his amusement, or he listens to our reading or conversation, as best pleases him. For we all collect in the parlor in the evening, and generally one of us reads aloud for the benefit of the whole. Then we retire very early--at 10 o'clock we all disperse.