Backed by the natural
repugnance of her mother to the match, Miss Welsh still rebelled, bracing
herself with the reflection, "Men and women may be very charming without
having any genius;" and to his renewed appeal (1825), "It lies with
you whether I shall be a right man or only a hard and bitter Stoic,"
retorting, "I am not in love with you ... my affections are in a state of
perfect tranquillity." But she admitted he was her "only fellowship and
support," and confiding at length the truth about Irving, surrendered in
the words, "Decide, and woe to me if your reason be your judge and not
your love." In this duel of Puck and Theseus, the latter felt he had won
and pressed his advantage, offering to let her free and adding warnings
to the blind, "Without great sacrifices on both sides, the possibility
of our union is an empty dream." At the eleventh hour, when, in her own
words, she was "married past redemption," he wrote, "If you judge fit, I
will take you to my heart this very week. If you judge fit, I will this
very week forswear you for ever;" and replied to her request that her
widowed mother might live under their wedded roof in terms that might
have become Petruchio: "It may be stated in a word. The man should bear
rule in the house, not the woman. This is an eternal axiom, the law of
nature which no mortal departs from unpunished.
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