Yesterday I was not in a mood to go quietly home—‘for my soul kept up too much light under my eyelids for the night, and thus I went disquieted’ till at Charing Cross it struck me that going home by water (to Greenwich, at least) would be a calmative—so I went on board a steamer. Close by me sate three elderly respectable men,—I could not help hearing them talk rationally about the prospects of the planters, the ‘compensation there is to be in the article of Rum,’—how we ‘get labour,’ which is the main thing, and may defy, with that, Cuba, the Brazils &c. One who talked thus was a fat genial fellow, ending every sentence in a laugh from pure good-nature—his companions somehow got to ‘the Church,’ then Puseyism, then Dissent—on all which this personage had his little opinion,—when one friend happened to ask ‘you think so?’—‘I do,’ said the other ‘and indeed I know it.’ ‘How so?’—‘Because it was revealed to me in a vision.’ ‘A ... vision?’—‘Yes, a vision’—and so he began to describe it, quite in earnest, but with the selfsame precision and assurance, with which he had been a little before describing the effect of the lightning on an iron steamboat at Woolwich as he witnessed it. In this vision he had seen the devil cast out of himself—which he took for an earnest of God’s purposes for good to the world at large—I thought, ‘we mad poets,—and this very unpoetical person!’ who had also previously been entering on the momentous question ‘why I grow fatter than of old, seeing that I eat no more—’
Come, Ba, say, is not this too bad, too far from the line?—I may talk this by you,—but write this away from you,—oh, no! Be with me then, dearest, for one moment, for many moments, in spite of the miles, while I kiss your sweetest lips, as now—Beloved!
I am ever your very own
Oh,—I determine not to go yet to Mrs. J’s ‘for reasons’—a phrase which ought to be ready stereotyped.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Wednesday Night.
[Post-mark, August 6, 1846.]
Dearest, you did not have my letter, I think—the letter I wrote on Tuesday, yesterday. These iniquitous postpeople—who are not likely to see in a vision (like your fat prophet) the devil cast out of them for the good of the world! Indeed it is too bad.
To answer first the question—(You are wise beyond me in all things ... let me say that in a parenthesis!) I will tell you what I know. Stormie told me the other day that I had eight thousand pounds in the funds; of which the interest comes to me quarterly, the money being in two different per cents ... (do you understand better than I do?) and from forty to forty-five pounds Papa gives me every three months, the income tax being first deducted. It may be eight thousand pounds, or more or less, ... it is difficult to ask about it ... but what comes to me every three months, I know certainly. Then there is the ship money ... a little under two hundred a year on an average ... which I have not used at all (but must for the future use), and the annual amount of which therefore, has been added to the Fund-money until this year, when I was directed to sign a paper which invested it (i.e. the annual return) in the Eastern Railroad. That investment is to yield a large percentage, I heard, and Stormie tried to persuade me to ask Papa to place everything I had, on the same railroad. Papa had said down-stairs the other day that it would be best so—and I ought to remind him to do it, repeated Stormie, as it would very much increase ... increase by doubling almost ... the available income; and without the slightest risk of any kind. But I could not take the advice under the circumstances—I could not mention such a word as money to him, giving the appearance even of trouble about my affairs, now. And he would wonder how I should take a fancy suddenly to touch such matters with the end of my finger. Then there are the ten shares in Drury Lane Theatre—out of which comes nothing.
You wonder how I can spend, perhaps, the quarterly forty pounds and upward that come to me? I do spend them. Yet let me hold you from being frightened, and teach you to consider how easy it is to spend money, and not upon oneself. Never in any one year of my life, even when I was well, have my expenses in dress (as I told Mr. Kenyon the other day) exceeded twenty pounds. My greatest personal expense lately has been the morphine. Still the money flows out of window and door—you will understand how it flows like a stream. I have not the gift (if it is a gift) of making dresses ... in my situation, here. Elsewhere, all changes, you know. You shall not call me extravagant—you will see. If I was ‘surprised’ at what you told me of Mrs. Norton, it was only because I had had other ideas of her—for my own gown cost five shillings ... the one I had on when you spoke. So she was better than I by a mere sixpence. Ah—it came into my head afterwards that my being ‘surprised’ about Mrs. Norton, might argue my own extravagance. See!—