_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 11, 1845.]
Here are your beautiful, and I am sure _true_ sonnets; they look
true--I remember the light hair, I find. And who paints, and dares
exhibit, E.B.B.'s self? And surely 'Alfred's' pencil has not foregone
its best privilege, not left _the_ face unsketched? Italians call such
an 'effect defective'--'l'andar a Roma senza vedere il Papa.' He must
have begun by seeing his Holiness, I know, and ... _he_ will not trust
me with the result, that my sister may copy it for me, because we are
strangers, he and I, and I could give him nothing, nothing like the
proper price for it--but _you_ would lend it to me, I think, nor need
I do more than thank you in my usual effective and very eloquent
way--for I have already been allowed to visit you seventeen times, do
you know; and this last letter of yours, fiftieth is the same! So all
my pride is gone, pride in that sense--and I mean to take of you for
ever, and reconcile myself with my lot in this life. Could, and would,
you give me such a sketch? It has been on my mind to ask you ever
since I knew you if nothing in the way of _good_ portrait existed--and
this occasion bids me speak out, I dare believe: the more, that you
have also quieted--have you not?--another old obstinate and very
likely impertinent questioning of mine--as to the little name which
was neither Orinda, nor Sacharissa (for which thank providence) and is
never to appear in books, though you write them. Now I know it and
write it--'Ba'--and thank you, and your brother George, and only
burned his kind letter because you bade me who know best. So, wish by
wish, one gets one's wishes--at least I do--for one instance, you will
go to Italy
[Illustration: Music followed by ?]