And to-day I had a rose-tree sent to me by somebody who has laid close siege to me this long while, and whom I have escaped hitherto ... but who has encamped, she says, ‘till July’ in 16 Wimpole Street. She writes too on her card ... ‘When are you going to Italy?’
Ah! you, who blame me (half blame me) for ‘seeing women,’ do not know how difficult it is to help it sometimes, without being in appearance ungrateful and almost brutal. Just because I am unwell, they teaze me more, I believe. Now that Miss Heaton ... oh, I need not go back, but it was not of my choice, be sure. You being a man are different,—and perhaps you make people afraid and keep them off. They do not thrust their hands through the bars where the lion is, as they do with the giraffe. Once I had this proposition—‘If we mayn’t come in, will you stand up at the window that we may see?’ Now!—And there’s the essence of at least ten MS. sonnets!——so don’t complain any more.
As for Mr. Kenyon, he had his ‘collation,’ I understand—and he said that he was expecting Mrs. Jameson and sundries—but he referred to some ‘friends from the country who would not be so mad as to come,’ and whom I knew to be yourselves. You were quite, quite right not to come. To-day you are right too ... in thinking that I—was out. I was in the park nearly an hour, Arabel and Flush and I: and perhaps if to-morrow should be fine, I may walk in the street; so think of me and help me. This is my last letter before I see you again, dear dearest. Oh—but I heard yesterday ... and it was not a tradition of the elders this time ... it was ‘vivid in the pages of contemporary history’ ... in fact one of my brothers heard it at the Flower Show and brought it home as the newest news, ... that ‘Mr. Browning is to be married immediately to Miss Campbell.’ The tellers of the news were ‘intimate friends’ of yours, they said, and knew it from the highest authority—
Laugh!—Why should not they talk, being women? My brother did not tell me, but he told it down-stairs—and Arabel was amused, she said, at some of the faces round. At that turn of the road they lost the track of the hare. Not an observation was made by anybody.
May God bless you—Think of me. I am ever and ever
Your own
Ba.
E.B.B. to R.B.
Thursday.
This is not to be called a letter, please to understand, because to write a letter to you once a day is enough in all reason. But I want to send you the review you asked for at the same time with the drawings which I kept too long I thought months ago,—but I have looked over them again and again. Then there is the book on Junius—and lastly, the song which I want you to have ... the ‘Toll Slowly’—that is my gift to you, for as much as it is worth, and not to be sent back to me if you please. As for the Notes on Naples, I shall keep them for the present, having need to study about Amalfi.