Friday.
August 8, 1845.
It is very kind to send these flowers — too kind — why are they sent? and without one single word . . . which is not too kind certainly. I looked down into the heart of the roses and turned the carnations over and over to the peril of their leaves, and in vain! Not a word do I deserve to-day, I suppose! And yet if I don’t, I don’t deserve the flowers either. There should have been an equal justice done to my demerits, O Zeus with the scales!
After all I do thank you for these flowers — and they are beautiful — and they came just in a right current of time, just when I wanted them, or something like them — so I confess that humbly, and do thank you, at last, rather as I ought to do. Only you ought not to give away all the flowers of your garden to me; and your sister thinks so, be sure — if as silently as you sent them. Now I shall not write any more, not having been written to. What with the Wednesday’s flowers and these, you may think how I in this room, look down on the gardens of Damascus, let your Jew say what he pleases of them — and the Wednesday’s flowers are as fresh and beautiful, I must explain, as the new ones. They were quite supererogatory . . . the new ones . . . in the sense of being flowers. Now, the sense of what I am writing seems questionable, does it not? — at least, more so, than the nonsense of it.
Not a word, even under the little blue flowers!!! —
E.B.B.