Ah—your ‘failures in “Luria” and the “Tragedy”’—Proud, we should all be, to fail exactly so.
Dearest, are you better indeed? Walk ... talk to the Ba in the chair ... go on to be better, ever dearest. May God bless you! Ah ... the ‘I’s.’ You do not see that the ‘I’s’—as you make them, ... all turn to ‘yous’ by the time they get to me. The ‘I’s’ indeed! How dare you talk against my eyes? For me, I was going down-stairs to-day, but it was wet and windy and I was warned not to go. If I am in bad or good spirits, judge from this foolish letter—foolish and wise, both!—but not melancholy, anywise. When one drops into a pun, one might as well come to an end altogether—it can’t be worse with one.
Nor can it be better than being
Your own
‘No better’!!.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, March 26, 1846.]
Sometimes I have a disposition to dispute with dearest Ba, to wrench her simile-weapons out of the dexterous hand (that is, try and do so) and have the truth of things my way and its own way, not hers, if she be Ba—(observe, I say nothing about ever meeting with remarkable success in such undertakings, only, that they are entered on sometimes). But at other times I seem as if I must lie down, like Flush, with all manner of coral necklaces about my neck, and two sweet mysterious hands on my head, and so be forced to hear verses on me, Ba’s verses, in which I, that am but Flush of the lower nature, am called loving friend and praised for not preferring to go ‘coursing hares’—with ‘other dogs.’ So I will lie now, as you will have it, and say in Flush-like tones (the looks that are dog’s tones)—I don’t don’t know how it is, or why, or what it all will end in, but I am very happy and what I hear must mean right, by the music,—though the meaning is above me,—and here are the hands—which I may, and will, look up to, and kiss—determining not to insist any more this time that at Miss Mitford’s were sundry dogs, brighter than ‘brown’—See where, just where, Flush stops discreetly! ‘Eternity’ he would have added, ‘but stern death’ &c. &c.
I treat these things lightheartedly, as you see—instead of seriously, which would at first thought seem the wiser course—‘for after all, she will find out one day’ &c. No, dearest,—I do not fear that! Why make uneasy words of saying simply I shall continue to give you my best flowers, all I can find—if I bring violets, or grass, when you expected to get roses,—you will know there were none in my garden—that is all.