_R.B. to E.B.B._
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]
But you, too, will surely want, if you think me a rational creature,
_my_ explanation--without which all that I have said and done would be
pure madness, I think. It _is_ just 'what I see' that I _do_ see,--or
rather it has proved, since I first visited you, that the reality was
infinitely worse than I know it to be ... for at, and after the
writing of _that first letter_, on my first visit, I believed--through
some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too--that
your complaint was of quite another nature--a spinal injury
irremediable in the nature of it. Had it been _so_--now speak for
_me_, for what you hope I am, and say how _that_ should affect or
neutralize what you _were_, what I wished to associate with myself in
you? But _as you now are_:--then if I had married you seven years ago,
and this visitation came now first, I should be 'fulfilling a pious
duty,' I suppose, in enduring what could not be amended--a pattern to
good people in not running away ... for where were _now_ the use and
the good and the profit and--
I desire in this life (with very little fluctuation for a man and too
weak a one) to live and just write out certain things which are in me,
and so save my soul. I would endeavour to do this if I were forced to
'live among lions' as you once said--but I should best do this if I
lived quietly with myself and with you. That you cannot dance like
Cerito does not materially disarrange this plan--nor that I might
(beside the perpetual incentive and sustainment and consolation) get,
over and above the main reward, the incidental, particular and
unexpected happiness of being allowed when not working to rather
occupy myself with watching you, than with certain other pursuits I
might be otherwise addicted to--_this_, also, does not constitute an
obstacle, as I see obstacles.
But _you_ see them--and I see _you_, and know my first duty and do it
resolutely if not cheerfully.