[Postmark: July 15, 1846]
Wednesday Evening.
Well ! I anticipated your asking, I think, and told you
fully this morning. It was a chronicle I sent you, rather
than a letter. And nothing is left to tell you for I did
not go out all day . . nor yesterday. Which was wrong.
But I had visitor on visitor to-day, . . my old maid coming
to bring me her baby to look at, to Flush’s infinite delight.
Whenever she comes he devotes hmself to her, stays with
her down-stairs, lies on the corner of her gown, and, for the
most part, forbears going to sleep. To-morrow I mean to
go out . . to-morrow, when you are beginning to think
rather less of me.
Isn’t it ungrateful of me ? I think so.
I am glad, at least, that I do not appear to you ‘ sus-
picious.’ Because I dislike suspicious people myself, and
it has struck me often in the midst of the dislike . . ‘ That
is how I must appear to him.’ Ah but you are too
indulgent to me, my own dearest . . too dearest ! . . .
and you draw crooked inferences for me, shutting both the
eyes . . the near-sighted eye and far-sighted eye. Or is it,
in that strange sight of yours, that I walk between the far
and the near objects, in an invisible security ? Or is it
(which were best) that I am too near to be seen even by
the near-sighted eye, . . like a hand brought close to the
eyelashes, which, for over-closeness, nobody can see ? Let
me be too near to be seen always too near ! dearest,
dearest ! Never will I complain that you do not see me !
Be sure of that, now.
Once I used to be more uneasy, and to think that I
ought to make you see me. But Love is better than Sight,
and Love will do without Sight. Which I did not under-
stand at first. I knew it was enough for me, that you
should love me. That it was enough for you, I had to learn
afterwards.
And ‘ Grateful ‘ is my word and not yours. I am
grateful to you, if to owe you all the sense of life, all the
renewal of hope, all the possibility of happiness . . if to
owe these things to another, consciously, feelingly, shall
pass for gratitude, . . then I am grateful to you, Robert.
Do you not know it, that I should say it again ? For me,
it seems to me that I can do nothing in return. To love
you ! Why no woman in the world could do less.
I am glad, both for the public and Tennyson, that his
poems sell so well and presently you will do as well or
better and I, half as well perhaps ; so that we shall be
too rich, which will spoil it all . . won’t it ?
Mr. Horne sent me the Daily News to-day, . . the
number containing his verses on Haydon . . and I cut
from it an advertisement, for the purpose of bidding you
observe that the land journey, or river-voyage, is very much
cheaper than the sea-voyage by the steamers unless the
direct vessel to Leghorn should go as last year, and I fear
it will not. The steamer-charges of the Oriental company
are immense. Nineteen guineas to Gibraltar even !
Twenty-eight, I think, to Naples. As for the advertisement,
I send it only for what it suggests. And there is time
enough for calculations, all ways suggestible.
May God bless you, dear, dear ! How is the head ?
Shall it be better, without me, until Saturday ? Say how
it is.
Among all my visitors, the only one I expected, never
came ! No Mrs. Jameson again to-day !
Dearest, I am your very own
BA.