E.B.B. to R.B.
Sunday.
[Post-mark, July 27, 1846.]
Why should you ask such a question of me yesterday, as to whether I loved you as much then as ever? Love you as much? Why should I not love you more? ... to give question for question. And it does seem to me, too, that my question is more reasonable than yours. ‘Is it afternoon at six o’clock,’ you might have asked in the same breath with yours, and touched, so, as questionable a matter.
Tell me how the evening passed at Mr. Kenyon’s. I have seen nobody yet—not him, not Mrs. Jameson.
Seen nobody? Except all the Hedleys, who have just left my room. Do you know, the pomp and circumstance, the noise and fuss and publicity of this marriage of theirs happen just in time to make me satisfied with ‘quite the other principle’ as you said. The system they are carrying out is detestable to its own extreme. Fifty or sixty people are to breakfast at Fenton’s Hotel, ... with processions to and fro! ... which altogether, though the bride will bear it very well, (for she has been used to be a Belle ex-officio, and this business has been arranged by her and for her—otherwise they would have all been in Paris) is likely, I think, to half kill the bride’s mother. My poor aunt wonders how she will get through it. To have to part with her daughter in that crowd! So barbarous a system it is, this system of public marriages, under whatever light considered. Both my sisters are invited; and so was I! (in vain) and Henrietta officiates as a bridesmaid. Did I tell you that Arabella Hedley is a glorious convert to Puseyism, as might have been expected, and talked here like a theologian a few days since, and ‘considered the dissenters in a most dangerous position,’ much to the amusement of my brothers.
What am I writing of all this time? Dearest, how did you get home yesterday through the ambush at Mr. Kenyon’s? Tell me everything. And know that I love you ‘as much,’ my own beloved!—you may know it.
When Flush came into the room and had spoken to me (in the Flush-language) and had examined your chair, he suddenly fell into a rapture and reminded me that the cakes you left, were on the table. So I explained thoroughly to him that you had brought them for him, and that he ought to be properly ashamed therefore for his past wickedness, and make up his mind to love you and not bite you for the future—and then he was allowed to profit from your goodness to him. How over-good of you! It is an encouragement to throw coffee-cups, ... such over-goodness!
Nobody knew of your being here yesterday—at least, not that I know! So Tuesday looks brightly, at a distance. At a distance! The day after to-morrow! Ah, it seems too near! Too near, in the sense of saying ‘Too good ... to be true.’