_E.B.B. to R.B._
Saturday.
[Post-mark, May 17, 1845.]
I shall be ready on Tuesday I hope, but I hate and protest against
your horrible 'entomology.' Beginning to explain, would thrust me
lower and lower down the circles of some sort of an 'Inferno'; only
with my dying breath I would maintain that I never could, consciously
or unconsciously, mean to distrust you; or, the least in the world, to
Simpsonize you. What I said, ... it was _you_ that put it into my head
to say it--for certainly, in my usual disinclination to receive
visitors, such a feeling does not enter. There, now! There, I am a
whole 'giro' lower! Now, you will say perhaps that I distrust _you_,
and nobody else! So it is best to be silent, and bear all the 'cutting
things' with resignation! _that_ is certain.
Still I must really say, under this dreadful incubus-charge of
Simpsonism, ... that you, who know everything, or at least make awful
guesses at everything in one's feelings and motives, and profess to be
able to pin them down in a book of classified inscriptions, ... should
have been able to understand better, or misunderstand less, in a
matter like this--Yes! I think so. I think you should have made out
the case in some such way as it was in nature--viz. that you had
lashed yourself up to an exorbitant wishing to see me, ... (you who
could see, any day, people who are a hundredfold and to all social
purposes, my superiors!) because I was unfortunate enough to be shut
up in a room and silly enough to make a fuss about opening the door;
and that I grew suddenly abashed by the consciousness of this. How
different from a distrust of _you_! how different!
Ah--if, after this day, you ever see any interpretable sign of
distrustfulness in me, you may be 'cutting' again, and I will not cry
out. In the meantime here is a fact for your 'entomology.' I have not
so much _distrust_, as will make a _doubt_, as will make a _curiosity_
for next Tuesday. Not the simplest modification of _curiosity_ enters
into the state of feeling with which I wait for Tuesday:--and if you
are angry to hear me say so, ... why, you are more unjust than ever.
(Let it be three instead of two--if the hour be as convenient to
yourself.)
Before you come, try to forgive me for my 'infinite kindness' in the
manner of consenting to see you. Is it 'the cruellest cut of all' when
you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me?
Well! but we are friends till Tuesday--and after perhaps.
Ever yours,