Author: EBB

Wednesday.

September 18, 1845.

Of course you cannot do otherwise than go with your sister — or it will be ‘Every man out of his humour’ perhaps — and you are not so very ‘savage’ after all.

On Monday then, if you do not hear — to the contrary.

Papa has been walking to and fro in this room, looking thoughtfully and talking leisurely — and every moment I have expected I confess, some word (that did not come) about Pisa. Mr. Kenyon thinks it cannot end so — and I do sometimes — and in the meantime I do confess to a little ‘savageness’ also — at heart! All I asked him to say the other day, was that he was not displeased with me — and he wouldn’t; and for me to walk across his displeasure spread on the threshold of the door, and moreover take a sister and brother with me, and do such a thing for the sake of going to Italy and securing a personal advantage, were altogether impossible, obviously impossible! So poor Papa is quite in disgrace with me just now — if he would but care for that!

May God bless you. Amuse yourself well on Saturday. I could not see you on Thursday any way, for Mr. Kenyon is here every day  . . . staying in town just on account of this Pisa business, in his abundant kindness . . .. On Monday then.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

 

Wednesday Evening.

September 18, 1845.

But one word before we leave the subject, and then to leave it finally; but I cannot let you go on to fancy a mystery anywhere, in obstacles or the rest. You deserve at least a full frankness; and in my letter I meant to be fully frank. I even told you what was an absurdity, so absurd that I should far rather not have told you at all, only that I felt the need of telling you all: and no mystery is involved in that, except as an ‘idiosyncrasy’ is a mystery. But the ‘insurmountable’ difficulty is for you and everybody to see; and for me to feel, who have been a very byword among the talkers, for a confirmed invalid through months and years, and who, even if I were going to Pisa and had the best prospects possible to me, should yet remain liable to relapses and stand on precarious ground to the end of my life. Now that is no mystery for the trying of ‘faith’; but a plain fact, which neither thinking nor speaking can make less a fact. But don’t let us speak of it.

I must speak, however, (before the silence) of what you said and repeat in words for which I gratefully thank you — and which are not ‘ostentatious’ though unnecessary words — for, if I were in a position to accept sacrifices from you, I would not accept such a sacrifice  . . . amounting to a sacrifice of duty and dignity as well as of ease and satisfaction  . . . to an exchange of higher work for lower work  . . . and of the special work you are called to, for that which is work for anybody. I am not so ignorant of the right uses and destinies of what you have and are. You will leave the Solicitor-Generalships to the Fitzroy Kellys, and justify your own nature; and besides, do me the little right, (over the over-right you are always doing me) of believing that I would not bear or dare to do you so much wrong, if I were in the position to do it.

And for all the rest I thank you — believe that I thank you  . . . and that the feeling is not so weak as the word. That you should care at all for me has been a matter of unaffected wonder to me from the first hour until now — and I cannot help the pain I feel sometimes, in thinking that it would have been better for you if you never had known me. May God turn back the evil of me! Certainly I admit that I cannot expect you  . . . just at this moment,  . . . to say more than you say,  . . . and I shall try to be at ease in the consideration that you are as accessible to the ‘unicorn’ now as you ever could be at any former period of your life. And here I have done. I had done living, I thought, when you came and sought me out! and why? and to what end? That, I cannot help thinking now. Perhaps just that I may pray for you — which were a sufficient end. If you come on Saturday I trust you to leave this subject untouched, — as it must be indeed henceforth.

I am yours,

E.B.B.

No word more of Pisa — I shall not go, I think.

 

Wednesday Morning.

September 17, 1845.

I write one word just to say that it is all over with Pisa; which was a probable evil when I wrote last, and which I foresaw from the beginning — being a prophetess, you know. I cannot tell you now how it has all happened — only do not blame me, for I have kept my ground to the last, and only yield when Mr. Kenyon and all the world see that there is no standing. I am ashamed almost of having put so much earnestness into a personal matter — and I spoke face to face and quite firmly — so as to pass with my sisters for the ‘bravest person in the house’ without contestation.

Sometimes it seems to me as if it could not end so — I mean, that the responsibility of such a negative must be reconsidered  . . . and you see how Mr. Kenyon writes to me. Still, as the matter lies,  . . . no Pisa! And, as I said before, my prophetic instincts are not likely to fail, such as they have been from the beginning.

If you wish to come, it must not be until Saturday at soonest. I have a headache and am weary at heart with all this vexation — and besides there is no haste now: and when you do come, if you do, I will trust to you not to recur to one subject, which must lie where it fell  . . . must! I had begun to write to you on Saturday, to say how I had forgotten to give you your MSS. which were lying ready for you  . . . the Hood poems. Would it not be desirable that you made haste to see them through the press, and went abroad with your Roman friends at once, to try to get rid of that uneasiness in the head? Do think of it — and more than think.

For me, you are not to fancy me unwell. Only, not to be worn a little with the last week’s turmoil, were impossible — and Mr. Kenyon said to me yesterday that he quite wondered how I could bear it at all, do anything reasonable at all, and confine my misdoings to sending letters addressed to him at Brighton, when he was at Dover! If anything changes, you shall hear from —

E.B.B.

Mr. Kenyon returns to Dover immediately. His kindness is impotent in the case.

 

September 16, 1845.

I scarcely know how to write what is to be written nor indeed why it is to be written and to what end. I have tried in vain — and you are waiting to hear from me. I am unhappy enough even where I am happy — but ungrateful nowhere — and I thank you from my heart — profoundly from the depths of my heart  . . . which is nearly all I can do.

One letter I began to write and asked in it how it could become me to speak at all if ‘from the beginning and at this moment you never dreamed of‘  . . . and there, I stopped and tore the paper; because I felt that you were too loyal and generous, for me to bear to take a moment’s advantage of the same, and bend down the very flowering branch of your generosity (as it might be) to thicken a little the fence of a woman’s caution and reserve. You will not say that you have not acted as if you ‘dreamed’ — and I will answer therefore to the general sense of your letter and former letters, and admit at once that I did state to you the difficulties most difficult to myself  . . . though not all  . . . and that if I had been worthier of you I should have been proportionably less in haste to ‘bid you leave that subject.’ I do not understand how you can seem at the same moment to have faith in my integrity and to have doubt whether all this time I may not have felt a preference for another  . . . which you are ready ‘to serve,’ you say. Which is generous in you — but in me, where were the integrity? Could you really hold me to be blameless, and do you think that truehearted women act usually so? Can it be necessary for me to tell you that I could not have acted so, and did not? And shall I shrink from telling you besides  . . . you, who have been generous to me and have a right to hear it  . . . and have spoken to me in the name of an affection and memory most precious and holy to me, in this same letter  . . . that neither now nor formerly has any man been to my feelings what you are  . . . and that if I were different in some respects and free in others by the providence of God, I would accept the great trust of your happiness, gladly, proudly, and gratefully; and give away my own life and soul to that end. I would do it  . . . not, I do  . . . observe! it is a truth without a consequence; only meaning that I am not all stone — only proving that I am not likely to consent to help you in wrong against yourself. You see in me what is not: — that, I know: and you overlook in me what is unsuitable to you  . . . that I know, and have sometimes told you. Still, because a strong feeling from some sources is self-vindicating and ennobling to the object of it, I will not say that, if it were proved to me that you felt this for me, I would persist in putting the sense of my own unworthiness between you and me — not being heroic, you know, nor pretending to be so. But something worse than even a sense of unworthiness, God has put between us! and judge yourself if to beat your thoughts against the immovable marble of it, can be anything but pain and vexation of spirit, waste and wear of spirit to you  . . . judge! The present is here to be seen  . . . speaking for itself! and the best future you can imagine for me, what a precarious thing it must be  . . . a thing for making burdens out of  . . . only not for your carrying, as I have vowed to my own soul. As dear Mr. Kenyon said to me to-day in his smiling kindness  . . . ‘In ten years you may be strong perhaps’ — or ‘almost strong’! that being the encouragement of my best friends! What would he say, do you think, if he could know or guess . . .! what could he say but that you were  . . . a poet! — and I  . . . still worse! Never let him know or guess!

And so if you are wise and would be happy (and you have excellent practical sense after all and should exercise it) you must leave me — these thoughts of me, I mean  . . . for if we might not be true friends for ever, I should have less courage to say the other truth. But we may be friends always  . . . and cannot be so separated, that your happiness, in the knowledge of it, will not increase mine. And if you will be persuaded by me, as you say, you will be persuaded thus  . . . and consent to take a resolution and force your mind at once into another channel. Perhaps I might bring you reasons of the class which you tell me ‘would silence you for ever.’ I might certainly tell you that my own father, if he knew that you had written to me so, and that I had answered you — so, even, would not forgive me at the end of ten years — and this, from none of the causes mentioned by me here and in no disrespect to your name and your position  . . . though he does not over-value poetry even in his daughter, and is apt to take the world’s measures of the means of life  . . . but for the singular reason that he never does tolerate in his family (sons or daughters) the development of one class of feelings. Such an objection I could not bring to you of my own will — it rang hollow in my ears — perhaps I thought even too little of it: — and I brought to you what I thought much of, and cannot cease to think much of equally. Worldly thoughts, these are not at all, nor have been: there need be no soiling of the heart with any such: — and I will say, in reply to some words of yours, that you cannot despise the gold and gauds of the world more than I do, and should do even if I found a use for them. And if I wished to be very poor, in the world’s sense of poverty, I could not, with three or four hundred a year of which no living will can dispossess me. And is it not the chief good of money, the being free from the need of thinking of it? It seems so to me.

The obstacles then are of another character, and the stronger for being so. Believe that I am grateful to you — how grateful, cannot be shown in words nor even in tears  . . . grateful enough to be truthful in all ways. You know I might have hidden myself from you — but I would not: and by the truth told of myself, you may believe in the earnestness with which I tell the other truths — of you  . . . and of this subject. The subject will not bear consideration — it breaks in our hands. But that God is stronger than we, cannot be a bitter thought to you but a holy thought  . . . while He lets me, as much as I can be anyone’s, be only yours.

E.B.B.

Thursday.
September 11, 1845.

Will you come on Friday  . . . to-morrow  . . . instead of Saturday — will it be the same thing? Because I have heard from Mr. Kenyon, who is to be in London on Friday evening he says, and therefore may mean to visit me on Saturday I imagine. So let it be Friday — if you should not, for any reason, prove Monday to be better still.

May God bless you —

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

Tuesday.

September 9, 1845.

One reason against printing the tragedies now, is your not being well enough for the necessary work connected with them,  . . . a sure reason and strong  . . . nay, chiefest of all. Plainly you are unfit for work now — and even to complete the preparation of the lyrics, and take them through the press, may be too much for you, I am afraid; and if so, why you will not do it — will you? — you will wait for another year, — or at least be satisfied for this, with bringing out a number of the old size, consisting of such poems as are fairly finished and require no retouching. ‘Saul’ for instance, you might leave — ! You will not let me hear when I am gone, of your being ill — you will take care  . . . will you not? Because you see  . . . or rather I see  . . . you are not looking well at all — no, you are not! and even if you do not care for that, you should and must care to consider how unavailing it will be for you to hold those golden keys of the future with a more resolute hand than your contemporaries, should you suffer yourself to be struck down before the gate  . . . should you lose the physical power while keeping the heart and will. Heart and will are great things, and sufficient things in your case — but after all we carry a barrow-full of clay about with us, and we must carry it a little carefully if we mean to keep to the path and not run zigzag into the border of the garden. A figure which reminds me  . . . and I wanted no figure to remind me  . . . to ask you to thank your sister for me and from me for all her kindness about the flowers. Now you will not forget? you must not. When I think of the repeated trouble she has taken week after week, and all for a stranger, I must think again that it has been very kind — and I take the liberty of saying so moreover  . . . as I am not thanking you. Also these flowers of yesterday, which yesterday you disdained so, look full of summer and are full of fragrance, and when they seem to say that it is not September, I am willing to be lied to just so. For I wish it were not September. I wish it were July  . . . or November  . . . two months before or after: and that this journey were thrown behind or in front  . . . anywhere to be out of sight. You do not know the courage it requires to hold the intention of it fast through what I feel sometimes. If it (the courage) had been prophesied to me only a year ago, the prophet would have been laughed to scorn. Well! — but I want you to see. George’s letter, and how he and Mrs. Hedley, when she saw Papa’s note of consent to me, give unhesitating counsel. Burn it when you have read it. It is addressed to me  . . . which you will doubt from the address of it perhaps  . . . seeing that it goes βα  . . . ρβαριζων. We are famous in this house for what are called nick-names  . . . though a few of us have escaped rather by a caprice than a reason: and I am never called anything else (never at all) except by the nom de paix which you find written in the letter: — proving as Mr. Kenyon says, that I am just ‘half a Ba-by’  . . . no more nor less; — and in fact the name has that precise definition. Burn the note when you have read it.

And then I take it into my head, as you do not distinguish my sisters, you say, one from the other, to send you my own account of them in these enclosed ‘sonnets’ which were written a few weeks ago, and though only pretending to be ‘sketches,’ pretend to be like, as far as they go, and are like — my brothers thought — when I ‘showed them against’ a profile drawn in pencil by Alfred, on the same subjects. I was laughing and maintaining that mine should be as like as his — and he yielded the point to me. So it is mere portrait-painting — and you who are in ‘high art,’ must not be too scornful. Henrietta is the elder, and the one who brought you into this room first — and Arabel, who means to go with me to Pisa, has been the most with me through my illness and is the least wanted in the house here,  . . . and perhaps  . . . perhaps — is my favourite — though my heart smites me while I write that unlawful word. They are both affectionate and kind to me in all things, and good and lovable in their own beings — very unlike, for the rest; one, most caring for the Polka,  . . . and the other for the sermon preached at Paddington Chapel,  . . . that is Arabel  . . . so if ever you happen to know her you must try not to say before her how ‘much you hate &c.’ Henrietta always ‘managed’ everything in the house even before I was ill,  . . . because she liked it and I didn’t, and I waived my right to the sceptre of dinner-ordering.

I have been thinking much of your ‘Sordello’ since you spoke of it — and even, I had thought much of it before you spoke of it yesterday; feeling that it might be thrown out into the light by your hand, and greatly justify the additional effort. It is like a noble picture with its face to the wall just now — or at least, in the shadow. And so worthy as it is of you in all ways! individual all through: you have made even the darkness of it! And such a work as it might become if you chose  . . . if you put your will to it! What I meant to say yesterday was not that it wanted more additional verses than the ‘ten per cent’ you spoke of  . . . though it does perhaps  . . . so much as that (to my mind) it wants drawing together and fortifying in the connections and associations  . . . which hang as loosely every here and there, as those in a dream, and confound the reader who persists in thinking himself awake.

How do you mean that I am ‘lenient’? Do you not believe that I tell you what I think, and as I think it? I may think wrong, to be sure — but that is not my fault: — and so there is no use reproaching me generally, unless you can convict me definitely at the same time: — is there, now?

And I have been reading and admiring these letters of Mr. Carlyle, and receiving the greatest pleasure from them in every way. He is greatly himself always — which is the hardest thing for a man to be, perhaps. And what his appreciation of you is, it is easy to see — and what he expects from you — notwithstanding that prodigious advice of his, to write your next work in prose! Also Mrs. Carlyle’s letter — thank you for letting me see it. I admire that too! It is as ingenious ‘a case’ against poor Keats, as could well be drawn — but nobody who knew very deeply what poetry is, could, you know, draw any case against him. A poet of the senses, he may be and is, just as she says — but then it is of the senses idealized; and no dream in a ‘store-room’ would ever be like the ‘Eve of St. Agnes,’ unless dreamed by some ‘animosus infans,’ like Keats himself. Still it is all true  . . . isn’t it? . . . what she observes of the want of thought as thought. He was a seer strictly speaking. And what noble oppositions — (to go back to Carlyle’s letters)  . . . he writes to the things you were speaking of yesterday! These letters are as good as Milton’s picture for convicting and putting to shame. Is not the difference between the men of our day and ‘the giants which were on the earth,’ less  . . . far less  . . . in the faculty  . . . in the gift,  . . . or in the general intellect,  . . . than in the stature of the soul itself? Our inferiority is not in what we can do, but in what we are. We should write poems like Milton if [we] lived them like Milton.

I write all this just to show, I suppose, that I am not industrious as you did me the honour of apprehending that I was going to be  . . . packing trunks perhaps  . . . or what else in the way of ‘active usefulness.’

Say how you are — will you? And do take care, and walk and do what is good for you. I shall be able to see you twice before I go. And oh, this going! Pray for me, dearest friend. May God bless you.

E.B.B.

 

Saturday.

September 8, 1845.

I am in the greatest difficulty about the steamers. Will you think a little for me and tell me what is best to do? It appears that the direct Leghorn steamer will not sail on the third, and may not until the middle of October, and if forced to still further delay, which is possible, will not at all. One of my brothers has been to Mr. Andrews of St. Mary Axe and heard as much as this. What shall I do? The middle of October, say my sisters  . . . and I half fear that it may prove so  . . . is too late for me — to say nothing for the uncertainty which completes the difficulty.

On the 20th of September (on the other hand) sails the Malta vessel; and I hear that I may go in it to Gibraltar and find a French steamer there to proceed by. Is there an objection to this — except the change of steamers  . . . repeated  . . . for I must get down to Southampton — and the leaving England so soon? Is any better to be done? Do think for me a little. And now that the doing comes so near  . . . and in this dead silence of Papa’s  . . . it all seems impossible,  . . . and I seem to see the stars constellating against me, and give it as my serious opinion to you that I shall not go. Now, mark.

But I have had the kindest of letters from dear Mr. Kenyon, urging it — .

Well — I have no time for writing any more — and this is only a note of business to bespeak your thoughts about the steamers. My wisdom looks back regretfully  . . . only rather too late  . . . on the Leghorn vessel of the third of September. It would have been wise if I had gone then.

May God bless you, dearest friend.

E.B.B.

But if your head turns still,  . . . do you walk enough? Is there not fault in your not walking, by your own confession? Think of this first — and then, if you please, of the steamers.

So, till Monday! —

 

September 4, 1845.

Indeed my headaches are not worth enquiring about — I mean, they are not of the slightest consequence, and seldom survive the remedy of a cup of coffee. I only wish it were the same with everybody — I mean, with every head! Also there is nothing the matter otherwise — and I am going to prove my right to a ‘clean bill of health’ by going into the park in ten minutes. Twice round the inner enclosure is what I can compass now — which is equal to once round the world — is it not?

I had just time to be afraid that the parcel had not reached you. The reason why I sent you the poems was that I had a few copies to give to my personal friends, and so, wished you to have one; and it was quite to please myself and not to please you that I made you have it; and if you put it into the ‘plum-tree’ to hide the errata, I shall be pleased still, if not rather more. Only let me remember to tell you this time in relation to those books and the question asked of yourself by your noble Romans, that just as I was enclosing my sixty-pounds debt to Mr. Moxon, I did actually and miraculously receive a remittance of fourteen pounds from the selfsame bookseller of New York who agreed last year to print my poems at his own risk and give me ‘ten per cent on the profit.’ Not that I ever asked for such a thing! They were the terms offered. And I always considered the ‘per centage’ as quite visionary  . . . put in for the sake of effect, to make the agreement look better! But no — you see! One’s poetry has a real ‘commercial value,’ if you do but take it far away enough from the ‘civilization of Europe.’ When you get near the backwoods and the red Indians, it turns out to be nearly as good for something as ‘cabbages,’ after all! Do you remember what you said to me of cabbages versus poems, in one of the first letters you ever wrote to me? — of selling cabbages and buying Punches?

People complain of Dr. Chambers and call him rough and unfeeling — neither of which I ever found him for a moment — and I like him for his truthfulness, which is the nature of the man, though it is essential to medical morality never to let a patient think himself mortal while it is possible to prevent it, and even Dr. Chambers may incline to this on occasion. Still he need not have said all the good he said to me on Saturday — he used not to say any of it; and he must have thought some of it: and, any way, the Pisa-case is strengthened all round by his opinion and injunction, so that all my horror and terror at the thoughts of his visit, (and it’s really true that I would rather suffer to a certain extent than be cured by means of those doctors!) had some compensation. How are you? do not forget to say! I found among some papers to-day, a note of yours which I asked Mr. Kenyon to give me for an autograph, two years ago.

May God bless you, dearest friend. And I have a dispensation from ‘beef and porter’ εις τους αιωνας. ‘On no account’ was the answer!

 

Sunday.

[August 31, 1845.]

I did not think you were angry — I never said so. But you might reasonably have been wounded a little, if you had suspected me of blaming you for any bearing of yours towards myself; and this was the amount of my fear — or rather hope  . . . since I conjectured most that you were not well. And after all you did think  . . . do think  . . . that in some way or for some moment I blamed you, disbelieved you, distrusted you — or why this letter? How have I provoked this letter? Can I forgive myself for having even seemed to have provoked it? and will you believe me that if for the past’s sake you sent it, it was unnecessary, and if for the future’s, irrelevant? Which I say from no want of sensibility to the words of it — your words always make themselves felt — but in fulness of purpose not to suffer you to hold to words because they have been said, nor to say them as if to be holden by them. Why, if a thousand more such words were said by you to me, how could they operate upon the future or present, supposing me to choose to keep the possible modification of your feelings, as a probability, in my sight and yours? Can you help my sitting with the doors all open if I think it right? I do attest to you — while I trust you, as you must see, in word and act, and while I am confident that no human being ever stood higher or purer in the eyes of another, than you do in mine, — that you would still stand high and remain unalterably my friend, if the probability in question became a fact, as now at this moment. And this I must say, since you have said other things: and this alone, which I have said, concerns the future, I remind you earnestly.

My dearest friend — you have followed the most generous of impulses in your whole bearing to me — and I have recognised and called by its name, in my heart, each one of them. Yet I cannot help adding that, of us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part  . . . I mean, to a generous nature like your own, to which every sort of nobleness comes easily. Mine has been more difficult — and I have sunk under it again and again: and the sinking and the effort to recover the duty of a lost position, may have given me an appearance of vacillation and lightness, unworthy at least of you, and perhaps of both of us. Notwithstanding which appearance, it was right and just (only just) of you, to believe in me — in my truth — because I have never failed to you in it, nor been capable of such failure: the thing I have said, I have meant  . . . always: and in things I have not said, the silence has had a reason somewhere different perhaps from where you looked for it. And this brings me to complaining that you, who profess to believe in me, do yet obviously believe that it was only merely silence, which I required of you on one occasion — and that if I had ‘known your power over yourself,’ I should not have minded  . . . no! In other words you believe of me that I was thinking just of my own (what shall I call it for a motive base and small enough?) my own scrupulousness  . . . freedom from embarrassment! of myself in the least of me; in the tying of my shoestrings, say! — so much and no more! Now this is so wrong, as to make me impatient sometimes in feeling it to be your impression: I asked for silence — but also and chiefly for the putting away of  . . . you know very well what I asked for. And this was sincerely done, I attest to you. You wrote once to me  . . . oh, long before May and the day we met: that you ‘had been so happy, you should be now justified to yourself in taking any step most hazardous to the happiness of your life’ — but if you were justified, could I be therefore justified in abetting such a step, — the step of wasting, in a sense, your best feelings  . . . of emptying your water gourds into the sand? What I thought then I think now — just what any third person, knowing you, would think, I think and feel. I thought too, at first, that the feeling on your part was a mere generous impulse, likely to expand itself in a week perhaps. It affects me and has affected me, very deeply, more than I dare attempt to say, that you should persist so — and if sometimes I have felt, by a sort of instinct, that after all you would not go on to persist, and that (being a man, you know) you might mistake, a little unconsciously, the strength of your own feeling; you ought not to be surprised; when I felt it was more advantageous and happier for you that it should be so. In any case, I shall never regret my own share in the events of this summer, and your friendship will be dear to me to the last. You know I told you so — not long since. And as to what you say otherwise, you are right in thinking that I would not hold by unworthy motives in avoiding to speak what you had any claim to hear. But what could I speak that would not be unjust to you? Your life! if you gave it to me and I put my whole heart into it; what should I put but anxiety, and more sadness than you were born to? What could I give you, which it would not be ungenerous to give? Therefore we must leave this subject — and I must trust you to leave it without one word more; (too many have been said already — but I could not let your letter pass quite silently  . . . as if I had nothing to do but to receive all as matter of course so!) while you may well trust me to remember to my life’s end, as the grateful remember; and to feel, as those do who have felt sorrow (for where these pits are dug, the water will stand), the full price of your regard. May God bless you, my dearest friend. I shall send this letter after I have seen you, and hope you may not have expected to hear sooner.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

Monday, 6 p.m. — I send in disobedience to your commands, Mrs. Shelley’s book — but when books accumulate and when besides, I want to let you have the American edition of my poems  . . . famous for all manner of blunders, you know; what is to be done but have recourse to the parcel-medium? You were in jest about being at Pisa before or as soon as we were? — oh no — that must not be indeed — we must wait a little! — even if you determine to go at all, which is a question of doubtful expediency. Do take more exercise, this week, and make war against those dreadful sensations in the head — now, will you?

 

Friday Evening.

August 30, 1845.

I do not hear; and come to you to ask the alms of just one line, having taken it into my head that something is the matter. It is not so much exactingness on my part, as that you spoke of meaning to write as soon as you received a note of mine  . . . which went to you five minutes afterwards  . . . which is three days ago, or will be when you read this. Are you not well — or what? Though I have tried and wished to remember having written in the last note something very or even a little offensive to you, I failed in it and go back to the worse fear. For you could not be vexed with me for talking of what was ‘your fault’  . . . ‘your own fault,’ viz. in having to read sentences which, but for your commands, would have been blotted out. You could not very well take that for serious blame! from me too, who have so much reason and provocation for blaming the archangel Gabriel. — No — you could not misinterpret so, — and if you could not, and if you are not displeased with me, you must be unwell, I think. I took for granted yesterday that you had gone out as before — but to-night it is different — and so I come to ask you to be kind enough to write one word for me by some post to-morrow. Now remember  . . . I am not asking for a letter — but for a word  . . . or line strictly speaking.

Ever yours, dear friend,

E.B.B.