_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]
Mauvaise, mauvaise, mauvaise, you know as I know, just as much, that
your 'kindness and considerateness' consisted, not in putting off
Tuesday for another day, but in caring for my coming at all; for my
coming and being told at the door that you were engaged, and _I_ might
call another time! And you are NOT, NOT my 'other friend,' any more
than this head of mine is my _other_ head, seeing that I have got a
violin which has a head too! All which, beware lest you get fully told
in the letter I will write this evening, when I have done with my
Romans--who are, it so happens, here at this minute; that is, have
left the house for a few minutes with my sister--but are not 'with
me,' as you seem to understand it,--in the house to stay. They were
kind to me in Rome, (husband and wife), and I am bound to be of what
use I may during their short stay. Let me lose no time in begging and
praying you to cry 'hands off' to that dreadful Burgess; have not I
got a ... but I will tell you to-night--or on Friday which is my day,
please--Friday. Till when, pray believe me, with respect and esteem,
Your most obliged and disobliged at these blank endings--what have I
done? God bless you ever dearest friend.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday, 7 o'clock.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1845.]
I feel at home, this blue early morning, now that I sit down to write
(or, _speak_, as I try and fancy) to you, after a whole day with those
'other friends'--dear good souls, whom I should be so glad to serve,
and to whom service must go by way of last will and testament, if a
few more hours of 'social joy,' 'kindly intercourse,' &c., fall to my
portion. My friend the Countess began proceedings (when I first saw
her, not yesterday) by asking 'if I had got as much money as I
expected by any works published of late?'--to which I answered, of
course, 'exactly as much'--_è grazioso_! (All the same, if you were to
ask her, or the like of her, 'how much the stone-work of the Coliseum
would fetch, properly burned down to lime?'--she would shudder from
head to foot and call you 'barbaro' with good Trojan heart.) Now you
suppose--(watch my rhetorical figure here)--you suppose I am going to
congratulate myself on being so much for the better, _en pays de
connaissance_, with my 'other friend,' E.B.B., number 2--or 200, why
not?--whereas I mean to 'fulmine over Greece,' since thunder frightens
you, for all the laurels,--and to have reason for your taking my own
part and lot to yourself--I do, will, must, and _will_, again, wonder
at _you_ and admire _you_, and so on to the climax. It is a fixed,
immovable thing: so fixed that I can well forego talking about it. But
if to talk you once begin, 'the King shall enjoy (or receive quietly)
his own again'--I wear no bright weapon out of that Panoply ... or
Panoplite, as I think you call Nonnus, nor ever, like Leigh Hunt's
'Johnny, ever blythe and bonny, went singing Nonny, nonny' and see
to-morrow, what a vengeance I will take for your 'mere suspicion in
that kind'! But to the serious matter ... nay, I said yesterday, I
believe--keep off that Burgess--he is stark staring mad--mad, do you
know? The last time I met him he told me he had recovered I forget how
many of the lost books of Thucydides--found them imbedded in Suidas (I
think), and had disengaged them from _his_ Greek, without loss of a
letter, 'by an instinct he, Burgess, had'--(I spell his name wrongly
to help the proper _hiss_ at the end). Then, once on a time, he found
in the 'Christus Patiens,' an odd dozen of lines, clearly dropped out
of the 'Prometheus,' and proving that Æschylus was aware of the
invention of gunpowder. He wanted to help Dr. Leonhard Schmitz in his
'Museum'--and scared him, as Schmitz told me. What business has he,
Burges, with English verse--and what on earth, or under it, has Miss
Thomson to do with _him_. If she must displease one of two, why is Mr.
B. not to be thanked and 'sent to feed,' as the French say prettily?
At all events, do pray see what he has presumed to alter ... you can
alter at sufficient warrant, profit by suggestion, I should think! But
it is all Miss Thomson's shame and fault: because she is quite in her
propriety, saying to such intermeddlers, gently for the sake of their
poor weak heads, 'very good, I dare say, very desirable emendations,
only the work is not mine, you know, but my friend's, and you must no
more alter it without her leave, than alter this sketch, this
illustration, because you think you could mend Ariadne's face or
figure,--Fecit Tizianus, scripsit E.B.B.' Dear friend, you will tell
Miss Thomson to stop further proceedings, will you not? There! only,
do mind what I say?
And now--till to-morrow! It seems an age since I saw you. I want to
catch our first post ... (this phrase I ought to get stereotyped--I
need it so constantly). The day is fine ... you will profit by it, I
trust. 'Flush, wag your tail and grow restless and scratch at the
door!'