Thursday.
[Post-mark, February 26, 1846.]
As for the 'third person,' my sweet Ba, he was a wise speaker from the beginning; and in our case he will say, turning to me—'the late Robert Hall—when a friend admired that one with so high an estimate of the value of intellectuality in woman should yet marry some kind of cook-maid animal, as did the said Robert; wisely answered, "you can't kiss Mind"! May you not discover eventually,' (this is to me) 'that mere intellectual endowments—though incontestably of the loftiest character—mere Mind, though that Mind be Miss B's—cannot be kissed—nor, repent too late the absence of those humbler qualities, those softer affections which, like flowerets at the mountain's foot, if not so proudly soaring as, as, as!...' and so on, till one of us died, with laughing or being laughed at! So judges the third person! and if, to help him, we let him into your room at Wimpole Street, suffered him to see with Flush's eyes, he would say with just as wise an air 'True, mere personal affections may be warm enough, but does it augur well for the durability of an attachment that it should be wholly, exclusively based on such perishable attractions as the sweetness of a mouth, the beauty of an eye? I could wish, rather, to know that there was something of less transitory nature co-existent with this—some congeniality of Mental pursuit, some—' Would he not say that? But I can't do his platitudes justice because here is our post going out and I have been all the morning walking in the perfect joy of my heart, with your letter, and under its blessing—dearest, dearest Ba—let me say more to-morrow—only this now, that you—ah, what are you not to me! My dearest love, bless you—till to-morrow when I will strengthen the prayer; (no, lengthen it!)
Ever your own.
'Hawthorn'[25]—to show how Spring gets on!
E.B.B. to R.B.
Thursday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 27, 1846.]
If all third persons were as foolish as this third person of yours, ever dearest, first and second persons might follow their own devices without losing much in the way of good counsel. But you are unlucky in your third person as far as the wits go, he talks a great deal of nonsense, and Flush, who is sensible, will have nothing to do with him, he says, any more than you will with Sir Moses:—he is quite a third person singular for the nonsense he talks!
So, instead of him, you shall hear what I have been doing to-day. The sun, which drew out you and the hawthorns, persuaded me that it was warm enough to go down-stairs—and I put on my cloak as if I were going into the snow, and went into the drawing-room and took Henrietta by surprise as she sate at the piano singing. Well, I meant to stay half an hour and come back again, for I am upon 'Tinkler's ground' in the drawing-room and liable to whole droves of morning visitors—and Henrietta kept me, kept me, because she wanted me, besought me, to stay and see the great sight of Capt. Surtees Cook—plus his regimentals—fresh from the royal presence at St. James's, and I never saw him in my life, though he is a sort of cousin. So, though I hated it as you may think, ... not liking to be unkind to my sister, I stayed and stayed one ten minutes after another, till it seemed plain that he wasn't coming at all (as I told her) and that Victoria had kept him to dinner, enchanted with the regimentals. And half laughing and half quarrelling, still she kept me by force, until a knock came most significantly ... and 'There is Surtees' said she ... 'now you must and shall stay! So foolish,' (I had my hand on the door-handle to go out) 'he, your own cousin too! who always calls you Ba, except before Papa.' Which might have encouraged me perhaps, but I can't be sure of it, as the very next moment apprized us both that no less a person than Mrs. Jameson was standing out in the passage. The whole 36th. regiment could scarcely have been more astounding to me. As to staying to see her in that room, with the prospect of the military descent in combination, I couldn't have done it for the world! so I made Henrietta, who had drawn me into the scrape, take her up-stairs, and followed myself in a minute or two—and the corollary of this interesting history is, that being able to talk at all after all that 'fuss,' and after walking 'up-stairs and down-stairs' like the ancestor of your spider, proves my gigantic strength—now doesn't it?
For the rest, 'here be proofs' that the first person can be as foolish as any third person in the world. What do you think?
And Mrs. Jameson was kind beyond speaking of, and talked of taking me to Italy. What do you say? It is somewhere about the fifth or sixth proposition of the sort which has come to me. I shall be embarrassed, it seems to me, by the multitude of escorts to Italy. But the kindness, one cannot laugh at so much kindness.