[Postmark: June 19, 1846]
Friday Morning.
I shall hardly be able, I am afraid, to get your letter . .
if one should come through your dear goodness, my own Ba
. . . before I go out . . having to meet the Procters’ party in
Town : so I will just write my joy at its being little more now
than twenty-four hours before I shall see you, I trust. The
day is cool and nearer rain than I fancied probable – but, oh
the task-work, Egyptian bondage, that much going-out would
be to me, who am tired (unreasonably) beforehand on this
first and most likely last occasion during the year. It is a
pity that I am so ignorant about Hahn-Hahn’s books – one,
‘ Faustina,’ I got last night, but have neither heart nor time to
‘ get it up ‘ in a couple of hours.
Something you said on Mrs. Jameson’s authority amused
me – the encomium on my grace in sitting still to see the
play and not jumping on the stage to act too – as if it were
not the best privilege one finds in being ‘known’ never
so little, that it dispenses one from having to make oneself
known. When you are shipwrecked among Caribbee
Indians you are forced to begin professing ‘ I can make
baskets, and tell fortunes, and foresee eclipses so don’t
eat me ! ‘ And even there if they threatened nothing of
the kind, I should be content to live and die as unhonoured
as one of their own cabbage-trees.
I must go now – the day gets hotter, but then our day
draws nearer – All my heart is yours, best of dearest loves,
my own Ba, as I am your own –