Oh, poor Flush,—do you think I do not love and respect him for his jealous supervision,—his slowness to know another, having once known you? All my apprehension is that, in the imaginations down-stairs, he may very unconsciously play the part of the dog that is heard to ‘bark violently’ while something dreadful takes place: yet I do not sorrow over his slapped ears, as if they ever pained him very much—you dear Ba!
And to-morrow I shall see you. Are you, can you be, really ‘better’ after I have seen you? If it is not truth ... which I will not say ... such an assurance is the most consummate flattery I can imagine ... it may be recorded on my tombstone ‘R.B.—to whom this flattery was addressed, that, after the sight of him, Ba was better, she said.’ If it is truth ... may you say that, neither more nor less, day by day, year by year through our lives—and I shall have lived indeed!
How it rains—how it varies from hot to cold! a pretty vantage-ground whence we English can look and call other climates bad or indifferent! Now if to-morrow resembles to-day, will the Chiswick expedition hold good? I shall consider that I may go unless a letter comes to-morrow ... which would have to be written to-day. How pleasant it would be to make our days always Wednesday and Saturday ... could not that be contrived? So much for considerateness and contentedness!
I want, now, to refer as little as possible to the sad subject ... but I am glad you have written,—glad too that you are not severe on me for some hasty speeches—which did, indeed, mean as you say ... vexation at your having been vexed. And, I will just add, you remark excellently on the wound to self-love making itself that remedy, rather than the wound to the affections ... yet there are instances ... Romilly loses his wife ... so does poor Laman Blanchard.
So I go on writing, writing about all but what my heart is full of! Let me kiss you, ever dearest—to-morrow will soon arrive—meanwhile, and forever I am your own.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, July 12, 1846.]
When I made you promise to refer no more to that subject in your letter (which I must wait a day and a night for, alas!), I did not engage myself to the like silence ... perhaps because I was not bidden—or, no! there is a better reason; I want to beg your pardon, dearest, for all that petulancy,—for the manner of what I said rather than the matter,—there is a rationality in it all, if I could express trulier what I feel—but the manner was foolish and wrong and unnecessary to you—so do forgive and forget it. You would understand and sympathize if you knew—not me, whom you do know in some degree,—but so much of my early life as would account for the actual horror and hatred I have of those particular doctrines of the world—and the especially foolish word about the ‘travelling’ meant something like the not unnatural thought that if in this main, sole event for all good and all evil in my life,—if here the world plucked you from me by any of the innumerable lines it casts, with that indirectness, too,—then, I should simply go and live the rest of my days as far out of it as I could.
The simple thing to say is, that I who know you to be above me in all great or good feelings and therefore worship you, must be without excuse to talk inconsiderately as if I, sitting by you and speaking of the same subject, must needs feel more acutely, more strongly in one respect where, indeed, it wants very little pre-eminence in heart or brain to feel entirely the truth—a simplest of truths. It would have been laughable if I had broken out on Mrs. Proctor’s bitterness of speech, for instance ... just as though you were the slower of us two to see the nature of it! So I do again ask your pardon, dearest Ba! You said you loved me no less yesterday than ever—how must I love you and press closer to you more and more, and desire to see nothing of the world behind you, when I hear how the world thinks, and how you think! You only, only adorable woman, only imaginable love for me! And all the hastiness and petulancy comes from that ... someone seems to come close (in every such maxim of the world’s) and say ‘What is she—to so much a year? Could you be happy with her except in Mayfair—and there whom could you not be happy with!’