Your ever most affectionate and grateful
Ba.
Will you let your servant put this letter into the post for Miss Mitford? She upset me by her book, but had the most affectionate intentions, and I am obliged to her for what she meant. Then I am morbid, I know.
Tell dearest Miss Bayley, with my love, I shall write to her soon.
[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysées:
February 26, [1852].
Never believe of me so bad a thing as that I could have received from you, my ever dear and very dear friend, such a letter as you describe, and rung hollow in return. I did not get your letter, so how could I send an answer? Your letter's lost, like some other happy things. But I thank you for it fervently, guessing from what you say the sympathy and affection of it. I thank you for it most gratefully.
As for poor dear Miss Mitford's book, I was entirely upset by the biography she thought it necessary or expedient to give of me. Oh, if our friends would but put off anatomising one till after one was safely dead, and call to mind that, previously, we have nerves to be agonised and morbid brains to be driven mad! I am morbid, I know. I can't bear some words even from Robert. Like the lady who lay in the grave, and was ever after of the colour of a shroud, so I am white-souled, the past has left its mark with me for ever. And now (this is the worst) every newspaper critic who talks of my poems may refer to other things. I shall not feel myself safe a moment from references which stab like a knife.
But poor dear Miss Mitford, if we don't forgive what's meant as kindness, how are we to forgive what's meant as injury? In my first agitation I felt it as a real vexation that I couldn't be angry with her. How could I, poor thing? She has always loved me, and been so anxious to please me, and this time she seriously thought that Robert and I would be delighted. Extraordinary defect of comprehension!