R.B.
R.B. to E.B.B.
[Post-mark, June 9, 1845.]
Just after my note left, yours came—I will try so to answer it as to please you; and I begin by promising cheerfully to do all you bid me about naming days &c. I do believe we are friends now and for ever. There can be no reason, therefore, that I should cling tenaciously to any one or other time of meeting, as if, losing that, I lost everything—and, for the future, I will provide against sudden engagements, outrageous weather &c., to your heart's content. Nor am I going to except against here and there a little wrong I could get up, as when you imply from my quick impulses and the like. No, my dear friend—for I seem sure I shall have quite, quite time enough to do myself justice in your eyes—Let time show!
Perhaps I feel none the less sorely, when you 'thank' me for such company as mine, that I cannot avoid confessing to myself that it would not be so absolutely out of my power, perhaps, to contrive really and deserve thanks in a certain acceptation—I might really try, at all events, and amuse you a little better, when I do have the opportunity,—and I do not—but there is the thing! It is all of a piece—I do not seek your friendship in order to do you good—any good—only to do myself good. Though I would, God knows, do that too.
Enough of this.
I am much better, indeed,—but will certainly follow your advice should the pain return. And you—you have tried a new journey from your room, have you not?
Do recollect, at any turn, any chance so far in my favour,—that I am here and yours should you want any fetching and carrying in this outside London world. Your brothers may have their own business to mind, Mr. Kenyon is at New York, we will suppose; here am I—what else, what else makes me count my cleverness to you, as I know I have done more than once, by word and letter, but the real wish to be set at work? I should have, I hope, better taste than to tell any everyday acquaintance, who could not go out, one single morning even, on account of a headache, that the weather was delightful, much less that I had been walking five miles and meant to run ten—yet to you I boasted once of polking and waltzing and more—but then would it not be a very superfluous piece of respect in the four-footed bird to keep his wings to himself because his Master Oceanos could fly forsooth? Whereas he begins to wave a flap and show how ready they are to be off—for what else were the good of him? Think of this—and
Know me for yours
R.B.