A hundred letters I have, by this last, ... to set against Napoleon's
Hundred Days--did you know _that_?
So much better I am to-night: it was nothing but a little chill from
the damp--the fog, you see!
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Monday Morning.
[Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]
Love, if you knew but how vexed I was, so very few minutes after my
note left last night; how angry with the unnecessary harshness into
which some of the phrases might be construed--you would forgive me,
indeed. But, when all is confessed and forgiven, the fact
remains--that it would be the one trial I _know_ I should not be able
to bear; the repetition of these 'scenes'--intolerable--not to be
written of, even my mind _refuses_ to form a clear conception of them.
My own loved letter is come--and the news; of which the reassuring
postscript lets the interrupted joy flow on again. Well, and I am not
to be grateful for that; nor that you _do_ 'eat your dinner'? Indeed
you will be ingenious to prevent me! I fancy myself meeting you on
'the stairs'--stairs and passages generally, and galleries (ah, thou
indeed!) all, with their picturesque _accidents_, of landing-places,
and spiral heights and depths, and sudden turns and visions of half
open doors into what Quarles calls 'mollitious chambers'--and above
all, _landing-places_--they are my heart's delight--I would come upon
you unaware in a landing-place in my next dream! One day we may walk
on the galleries round and over the inner court of the Doges' Palace
at Venice; and read, on tablets against the wall, how such an one was
banished for an 'enormous dig (intacco) into the public
treasure'--another for ... what you are not to know because his
friends have got chisels and chipped away the record of it--underneath
the 'giants' on their stands, and in the midst of the _cortile_ the
bronze fountains whence the girls draw water.
So _you_ too wrote French verses?--Mine were of less lofty
argument--one couplet makes me laugh now for the reason of its false
quantity--I translated the Ode of Alcæus; and the last couplet ran
thus....
Harmodius, et toi, cher Aristogiton!
* * * * *
* * * * *
Comme l'astre du jour, brillera votre nom!
The fact was, I could not bear to hurt my French Master's
feelings--who inveterately maltreated 'ai's and oi's' and in this
instance, an 'ei.' But 'Pauline' is altogether of a different sort of
precocity--you shall see it when I can master resolution to transcribe
the explanation which I know is on the fly-leaf of a copy here. Of
that work, the _Athenæum_ said [several words erased] now, what
outrageous folly! I care, and you care, precisely nothing about its
sayings and doings--yet here I talk!
Now to you--Ba! When I go through sweetness to sweetness, at 'Ba' I
stop last of all, and lie and rest. That is the quintessence of them
all,--they all take colour and flavour from that. So, dear, dear Ba,
be glad as you can to see me to-morrow. God knows how I embalm every
such day,--I do not believe that one of the _forty_ is confounded with
another in my memory. So, _that_ is gained and sure for ever. And of
letters, this makes my 104th and, like Donne's Bride,
... I take,
My jewels from their boxes; call
My Diamonds, Pearls, and Emeralds, and make
Myself a constellation of them all!
Bless you, my own Beloved!
I am much better to-day--having been not so well yesterday--whence the
note to you, perhaps! I put that to your charity for construction. By
the way, let the foolish and needless story about my whilome friend be
of this use, that it records one of the traits in that same generous
love, of me, I once mentioned, I remember--one of the points in his
character which, I told you, _would_ account, if you heard them, for
my parting company with a good deal of warmth of attachment to myself.
What a day! But you do not so much care for rain, I think. My Mother
is no worse, but still suffering sadly.