Oh, do not sleep another night on that horrible error I have led you
into! The 'Dulwich Gallery'!--!!!--oh, no. Only some pictures to be
sold at the Greyhound Inn, Dulwich--'the genuine property of a
gentleman deceased.'
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Sunday Evening.
[Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]
One or two words, if no more, I must write to dearest Ba, the night
would go down in double blackness if I had neither written nor been
written to! So here is another piece of 'kindness' on my part, such as
I have received praise for of late! My own sweetest, there is just
this good in such praise, that by it one comes to something pleasantly
definite amid the hazy uncertainties of mere wishes and
possibilities--while my whole heart does, _does_ so yearn, love, to do
something to prove its devotion for you; and, now and then, amuses
itself with foolish imaginings of real substantial services to which
it should be found equal if fortune so granted; suddenly you interpose
with thanks, in such terms as would all too much reward the highest of
even those services which are never to be; and for what?--for a note,
a going to Town, a ----! Well, there are definite beginnings
certainly, if you will recognise them--I mean, that since you _do_
accept, far from 'despising this day of small things,' then I may
take heart, and be sure that even though none of the great
achievements should fall to my happy chance, still the barrenest,
flattest life will--_must_ of needs produce in its season better
fruits than these poor ones--I keep it, value it, now, that it may
produce such.
Also I determine never again to 'analyse,' nor let you analyse if the
sweet mouth can be anyway stopped: the love shall be one and
indivisible--and the Loves we used to know from
One another huddled lie ...
Close beside Her tenderly--
(which is surely the next line). Now am I not anxious to know what
your father said? And if anybody else said or wondered ... how should
I know? Of all fighting--the warfare with shadows--what a work is
_there_. But tell me,--and, with you for me--