_E.B.B. to R.B._
[Post-mark, August 11, 1845.]
But if it 'hurts' you to read and write ever so little, why should I
be asked to write ... for instance ... 'before Tuesday?' And I did
mean to say before to-day, that I wish you never would write to me
when you are not _quite well_, as once or twice you have done if not
much oftener; because there is not a necessity, ... and I do not
choose that there should ever be, or _seem_ a necessity, ... do you
understand? And as a matter of personal preference, it is natural for
me to like the silence that does not hurt you, better than the speech
that does. And so, remember.
And talking of what may 'hurt' you and me, you would smile, as I have
often done in the midst of my vexation, if you knew the persecution I
have been subjected to by the people who call themselves (_lucus a non
lucendo_) 'the faculty,' and set themselves against the exercise of
other people's faculties, as a sure way to death and destruction. The
modesty and simplicity with which one's physicians tell one not to
think or feel, just as they would tell one not to walk out in the dew,
would be quite amusing, if it were not too tryingly stupid sometimes.
I had a doctor once who thought he had done everything because he had
carried the inkstand out of the room--'Now,' he said, 'you will have
such a pulse to-morrow.' He gravely thought poetry a sort of
disease--a sort of fungus of the brain--and held as a serious opinion,
that nobody could be properly well who exercised it as an art--which
was true (he maintained) even of men--he had studied the physiology of
poets, 'quotha'--but that for women, it was a mortal malady and
incompatible with any common show of health under any circumstances.
And then came the damnatory clause in his experience ... that he had
never known 'a system' approaching mine in 'excitability' ... except
Miss Garrow's ... a young lady who wrote verses for Lady Blessington's
annuals ... and who was the only other female rhymer he had had the
misfortune of attending. And she was to die in two years, though she
was dancing quadrilles then (and has lived to do the same by the
polka), and _I_, of course, much sooner, if I did not ponder these
things, and amend my ways, and take to reading 'a course of history'!!
Indeed I do not exaggerate. And just so, for a long while I was
persecuted and pestered ... vexed thoroughly sometimes ... my own
family, instructed to sing the burden out all day long--until the time
when the subject was suddenly changed by my heart being broken by that
great stone that fell out of Heaven. Afterwards I was let do anything
I could best ... which was very little, until last year--and the
working, last year, did much for me in giving me stronger roots down
into life, ... much. But think of that absurd reasoning that went
before!--the _niaiserie_ of it! For, granting all the premises all
round, it is not the _utterance_ of a thought that _can_ hurt anybody;
while only the utterance is dependent on the will; and so, what can
the taking away of an inkstand do? Those physicians are such
metaphysicians! It's curious to listen to them. And it's wise to leave
off listening: though I have met with excessive kindness among them,
... and do not refer to Dr. Chambers in any of this, of course.
I am very glad you went to Chelsea--and it seemed finer afterwards, on
purpose to make room for the divine philosophy. Which reminds me (the
going to Chelsea) that my brother Henry confessed to me yesterday,
with shame and confusion of face, to having mistaken and taken your
umbrella for another belonging to a cousin of ours then in the house.
He saw you ... without conjecturing, just at the moment, who you were.
Do _you_ conjecture sometimes that I live all alone here like Mariana
in the moated Grange? It is not quite so--: but where there are many,
as with us, every one is apt to follow his own devices--and my father
is out all day and my brothers and sisters are in and out, and with
too large a public of noisy friends for me to bear, ... and I see them
only at certain hours, ... except, of course, my sisters. And then as
you have 'a reputation' and are opined to talk generally in blank
verse, it is not likely that there should be much irreverent rushing
into this room when you are known to be in it.
The flowers are ... so beautiful! Indeed it was wrong, though, to send
me the last. It was not just to the lawful possessors and enjoyers of
them. That it was kind to _me_ I do not forget.
You are too teachable a pupil in the art of obliterating--and _omne
ignotum pro terrifico_ ... and therefore I won't frighten you by
walking to meet you for fear of being frightened myself.
So good-bye until Tuesday. I ought not to make you read all this, I
know, whether you like to read it or not: and I ought not to have
written it, having no better reason than because I like to write on
and on. _You_ have better reasons for thinking me very weak--and I,
too good ones for not being able to reproach you for that natural and
necessary opinion.
May God bless you my dearest friend.