Say particularly how you are--now do not omit it. And will you have
Miss Martineau's books when I can lend them to you? Just at this
moment I _dare_ not, because they are reading them here.
Let Mr. Mackay have his full proprietary in his 'Dead Pan'--which is
quite a different conception of the subject, and executed in blank
verse too. I have no claims against him, I am sure!
But for the _man_!--To call him a poet! A prince and potentate of
Commonplaces, such as he is!--I have seen his name in the _Athenæum_
attached to a lyric or two ... poems, correctly called fugitive,--more
than usually fugitive--but I never heard before that his hand was in
the prose department.
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Wednesday.
[Post-mark, January 14, 1846.]
Was I in the wrong, dearest, to go away with Mr. Kenyon? I _well knew
and felt_ the price I was about to pay--but the thought _did_ occur
that he might have been informed my probable time of departure was
that of his own arrival--and that he would not know how very soon,
alas, I should be _obliged_ to go--so ... to save you any least
embarrassment in the world, I got--just that shake of the hand, just
that look--and no more! And was it all for nothing, all needless after
all? So I said to myself all the way home.
When I am away from you--a crowd of things press on me for
utterance--'I will say them, not write them,' I think:--when I see
you--all to be said seems insignificant, irrelevant,--'they can be
written, at all events'--I think _that_ too. So, feeling so much, I
say so little!
I have just returned from Town and write for the Post--but _you_ mean
to write, I trust.
_That_ was not obtained, that promise, to be happy with, as last time!
How are you?--tell me, dearest; a long week is to be waited now!
Bless you, my own, sweetest Ba.