Here is a gossip which Mr. Kenyon brought me on Sunday--disbelieving
it himself, he asseverated, though Lady Chantrey said it 'with
authority,'--that Mr. Harness had offered his hand heart and
ecclesiastical dignities to Miss Burdett Coutts. It is Lady Chantrey's
and Mr. Kenyon's _secret_, remember.
And ... will you tell me? How can a man spend four or five successive
months on the sea, most cheaply--at the least pecuniary expense, I
mean? Because Miss Mitford's friend Mr. Buckingham is ordered by his
medical adviser to complete his cure by these means; and he is not
rich. Could he go with sufficient comfort by a merchant's vessel to
the Mediterranean ... and might he drift about among the Greek
islands?
_R.B. to E.B.B._
Tuesday.
'Out of window' would be well, as I see the leap, if it ended (_so far
as I am concerned_) in the worst way imaginable--I would I 'run the
risk' (Ba's other word) rationally, deliberately,--knowing what the
ordinary law of chances in this world justifies in such a case; and if
the result after all _was_ unfortunate, it would be far easier to
undergo the extremest penalty with so little to reproach myself
for,--than to put aside the adventure,--waive the wondrous probability
of such best fortune, in a fear of the barest possibility of an
adverse event, and so go to my grave, Walter the Penniless, with an
eternal recollection that Miss Burdett Coutts once offered to wager
sundry millions with me that she could throw double-sixes a dozen
times running--which wager I wisely refused to accept because it was
not written in the stars that such a sequence might never be. I had
rather, rather a thousand-fold lose my paltry stake, and be the one
recorded victim to such an unexampled unluckiness that half a dozen
mad comets, suns gone wrong, and lunatic moons must have come
laboriously into conjunction for my special sake to bring it to pass,
which were no slight honour, properly considered!--And this is _my_
way of laughing, dearest Ba, when the excess of belief in you, and
happiness with you, runs over and froths if it don't
sparkle--underneath is a deep, a sea not to be moved. But chance,
chance! there is _no_ chance here! I _have_ gained enough for my life,
I can only put in peril the gaining more than enough. You shall change
altogether my dear, dearest love, and I will be happy to the last
minute on what I can remember of this past year--I _could_ do that.
_Now_, jump with me out, Ba! If you feared for yourself--all would be
different, sadly different--But saying what you do say, promising 'the
strength of arm'--do not wonder that I call it an assurance of all
being 'well'! All is _best_, as you promise--dear, darling Ba!--and I
say, in my degree, with all the energy of my nature, _as you say_,
promise as you promise--only meaning a worship of you that is solely
fit for me, fit by position--are not you my 'mistress?' Come, some
good out of those old conventions, in which you lost faith after the
Bower's disappearance, (it was carried by the singing angels, like the
house at Loretto, to the Siren's isle where we shall find it preserved
in a beauty 'very rare and absolute')--is it not right you should be
my Lady, my Queen? and you are, and ever must be, dear Ba. Because I
am suffered to kiss the lips, shall I ever refuse to embrace the feet?
and kiss lips, and embrace feet, love you _wholly_, my Ba! May God
bless you--
Ever your own,