_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, June 9, 1845.]
Just after my note left, yours came--I will try so to answer it as to
please you; and I begin by promising cheerfully to do all you bid me
about naming days &c. I do believe we are friends now and for ever.
There can be no reason, therefore, that I should cling tenaciously to
any one or other time of meeting, as if, losing that, I lost
everything--and, for the future, I will provide against sudden
engagements, outrageous weather &c., to your heart's content. Nor am I
going to except against here and there a little wrong I could get up,
as when you _imply_ from my quick impulses and the like. No, my dear
friend--for I seem sure I shall have quite, quite time enough to do
myself justice in your eyes--Let time show!
Perhaps I feel none the less sorely, when you 'thank' me for such
company as mine, that I cannot avoid confessing to myself that it
would not be so absolutely out of my power, perhaps, to contrive
really and deserve thanks in a certain acceptation--I _might_ really
_try_, at all events, and amuse you a little better, when I do have
the opportunity,--and I _do not_--but there is the thing! It is all of
a piece--I _do not_ seek your friendship in order to do you good--any
good--only to do myself good. Though I _would_, God knows, do that
too.
Enough of this.
I am much better, indeed,--but will certainly follow your advice
should the pain return. And you--you have tried a new journey from
your room, have you not?
Do recollect, at any turn, any chance so far in my favour,--that I am
here and yours should you want any fetching and carrying in this
outside London world. Your brothers may have their own business to
mind, Mr. Kenyon is at New York, we will suppose; here am I--what
else, _what else_ makes me count my cleverness to you, as I know I
have done more than once, by word and letter, but the real wish to be
set at work? I should have, I hope, better taste than to tell any
everyday acquaintance, who could not go out, one single morning even,
on account of a headache, that the weather was delightful, much less
that I had been walking five miles and meant to run ten--yet to you I
boasted once of polking and waltzing and more--but then would it not
be a very superfluous piece of respect in the four-footed bird to keep
his wings to himself because his Master Oceanos could fly forsooth?
Whereas he begins to wave a flap and show how ready they are to be
off--for what else were the good of him? Think of this--and