But no—I shall not write on that subject to-night. Rather I will tell you what I have been doing to-day to be so very, very tired. To-day I paid my first visit—not to Mr. Kenyon but to an older friend than even he—to Miss Trepsack ... learn that name by heart ... whom we all of us have called ‘Treppy’ ever since we could speak. Moreover she has nursed ... tossed up ... held on her knee—Papa when he was an infant; the dearest friend of his mother and her equal, I believe, in age—so you may suppose that she is old now. Yet she can outwalk my sisters, and except for deafness, which, dear thing, she carefully explains as ‘a mere nervous affection,’—is as young as ever. But she calls us all ‘her children’ ... and I, you are to understand, am ‘her child,’ par excellence ... her acknowledged darling and favourite,—perhaps because tenderly she thinks it right to carry on the love of her beloved friend, whom she lived with to the last. Once she saw you in the drawing-room—and you perhaps saw her. She dines here every Sunday, and on the other days of course often, and has the privilege of scolding everybody in the house when she is out of humour, and of being ‘coaxed’ by slow degrees back into graciousness. So, she had full right to have me on my first visit—had she not? and the goodness and kindness and funniness of the reception were enough to laugh and cry over. First ... half way up-stairs, I found a chair, to sit and rest on. Then the windows were all shut up, because I liked it so in my room. And then, for occulter reasons, a feast was spread for Arabel and Flush and me, which made me groan in the spirit, and Flush wag his tail, to look upon ... ice cream and cakes, which I was to taste and taste in despite of all memories of dinner an hour before ... and cherrybrandy!!! which I had to taste too, ... just then saved alive by an oath, on Arabel’s part, that I was ‘better without it.’ Think of dear Treppy!—of all the kindness, and fondness! Almost she kissed me to pieces as the ‘darlingest of children.’ So I am glad I went—and so is Flush, who highly approves of that class of hospitable attentions, and wishes it were the way of the world every day. But I am tired! so tired! The visiting is a new thing.
It is an old one that I should write such long letters. If I am tired, you might retort with the Ed io anche!—Yet you will not, because you are supernaturally good; and as it was in the beginning, ever shall be, you say!
But will you explain to me some day why you are sorry for Italy having been mentioned between us, and why you would rather prefer Nova Zembla? So as to kill me the faster, is it?
Your Ælian says that the oldest painters used to write under a tree, when they painted one, ‘This is a tree.’ So I must do, I suddenly remember, under my jests ... I being, it would appear, as bad an artist in jesting, as they were in painting. Therefore ... see the last line of the last paragraph ... ‘This is a jest.’
And this is the earnest thing of all ... that I love you as I can love—and am for ever ... living and dying....
Your own—
Take care of the head, I entreat! and say how you are! and how your mother is! I am grieved to hear of that relapse!
R.B. to E.B.B.
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, June 3, 1846.]