and as the heart goes, ever yours.
I am glad for Tennyson, and glad for Keats. It is well to be able to
be glad about something--is is it not? about something out of
ourselves. And (_in_ myself) I shall be most glad, if I have a letter
to-night. Shall I?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
[Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]
Thanks, my dearest, for the good news--of the fever's abatement--it is
good, too, that you write cheerfully, on the whole: what is it to _me_
that you write is of _me_ ... I shall never say _that_! Mr. Kenyon is
all kindness, and one gets to take it as not so purely natural a
thing, the showing kindness to those it concerns, and belongs
to,--well! On Thursday, then,--to-morrow! Did you not get a note of
mine, a hurried note, which was meant for yesterday-afternoon's
delivery?
Mr. Forster came yesterday and was very profuse of graciosities: he
may have, or must have meant well, so we will go on again with the
friendship, as the snail repairs his battered shell.
My poems went duly to press on Monday night--there is not much
_correctable_ in them,--you make, or you spoil, one of these things;
that is, _I_ do. I have adopted all your emendations, and thrown in
lines and words, just a morning's business; but one does not write
plays so. You may like some of my smaller things, which stop
interstices, better than what you have seen; I shall wonder to know. I
am to receive a _proof_ at the end of the week--will you help me and
over-look it. ('Yes'--she says ... my thanks I do not say!--)
While writing this, the _Times_ catches my eye (it just came in) and
something from the _Lancet_ is extracted, a long article against
quackery--and, as I say, this is the first and only sentence I
read--'There is scarcely a peer of the realm who is not the patron of
some quack pill or potion: and the literati too, are deeply tainted.
We have heard of barbarians who threw quacks and their medicines into
the sea: but here in England we have Browning, a prince of poets,
touching the pitch which defiles and making Paracelsus the hero of a
poem. Sir E.L. Bulwer writes puffs for the water doctors in a style
worthy of imitation by the scribe that does the poetical for Moses and
Son. Miss Martineau makes a finessing servant girl her
physician-general: and Richard Howitt and the Lady aforesaid stand
God-father and mother to the contemptible mesmeric vagaries of Spencer
Hall.'--Even the sweet incense to me fails of its effect if Paracelsus
is to figure on a level with Priessnitz, and 'Jane'!
What weather, now at last! Think for yourself and for me--could you
not go out on such days?
I am quite well now--cold, over and gone. Did I tell you my Uncle
arrived from Paris on Monday, as they hoped he would--so my travel
would have been to great purpose!
Bless my dearest--my own!