Mrs. Jameson came late to-day, ... at five—and was hurried and could not stay ten minutes, ... but showed me her etchings and very kindly left a ‘Dead St. Cecilia’ which I admired most, for its beautiful lifelessness. She is not to be in town again, she said, till a month has gone—a month, at least. Oh—and ‘quite uneasy’ she was, about my ‘cold hands’—yesterday—she thought she had put me to death with over-talking!—which made me smile a little ... ‘subridens.’ But she is very kind and affectionate; and you were right to teach me to like her—and now, do you know, I look in vain for the ‘steely eyes’ I fancied I saw once, and see nothing but two good and true ones.
Well—here is an end till Saturday. It is too late ... or I could go on writing ... which I do not hate indeed. Talking of hating, ... ‘what you love entirely’ means that you love entirely ... and no more and no less. If it did not mean so, I should be unhappy about the mistake ... but to ‘love entirely’ is not a mistake and cannot pass for one either on earth or in Heaven. May God bless you, ever dearest. Such haste I write in—as if the angels were running up Jacob’s ladder!—or down it, rather, at this close!
Your own
Ba.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Friday.
[Post-mark, March 27, 1846.]
‘Qui laborat, orat’; so they used to say, and in that case I have been devotional to a high degree this morning. Seven holes did I dig (to keep up inversions of style)—seven rose-trees did I plant—(‘Brennus’—and ‘Madame Lafarge’! are two names I remember; very characteristic of old Gaul and young France—) and, for my pains, the first fruits, first blossoms some two or three months hence, will come, and will go to dearest Ba who first taught me what a rose really was, how sweet it might become with superadded memories of the room and the chair and the vase, and the cutting stalks and pouring fresh water ... ah, my own Ba!—And did you think to warn me out of the Flush-simile by the hint of Aminè’s privilege which it would warrant? If the ‘ever so much whipping’ should please you!... And beside it was, if I recollect, for the creature’s good, those poor imprisoned sisters, all the time. Moreover, I was ‘born’ all this and more, that you will know, at least—and only walked glorious and erect on two legs till dear Siren, an old friend of, and deep in the secrets of Circe, sprinkled the waters ... perhaps on those roses—No, before that!—
Well, to-morrow comes fast now—and I shall trust to be with you my beloved—and, first, you are to show me the portrait, remember.
I am glad you like Mrs. Jameson—do not I like her all the better, much the better! But it is fortunate I shall not see her by any chance just now—she would be sure to begin and tell me about you—and if my hands did not turn cold, my ear-tips would assuredly turn red. I daresay that St. Cecilia is the beautiful statue above her tomb at Rome; covered with a veil—affectingly beautiful; I well remember how she lies.
Now good-bye; and to-morrow! Bless you, ever dear, dearest Ba—