It would be easy for Mr. Buckingham to find a Merchant-ship bound for
some Mediterranean port, after a week or two in harbour, to another
and perhaps a third--Naples, Palermo, Syra, Constantinople, and so on.
The expense would be very trifling, but the want of comfort _enormous_
for an invalid--the one advantage is the solitariness of the _one_
passenger among all those rough new creatures. _I_ like it much, and
soon get deep into their friendship, but another has other ways of
viewing matters. No one article provided by the ship in the way of
provisions can anybody touch. Mr. B. must lay in his own stock, and
the horrors of dirt and men's ministry are portentous, yet by a little
arrangement beforehand much might be done. Still, I only know my own
powers of endurance, and counsel nobody to gain my experience. On the
other hand, were all to do again, I had rather have seen Venice _so_,
with the five or six weeks' absolute rest of the mind's eyes, than any
other imaginable way,--except Balloon-travelling.
Do you think they meant Landor's 'Count Julian'--the 'subject of his
tragedy' sure enough,--and that _he_ was the friend of Southey? So it
struck me--
_E.B.B. to R.B._
Tuesday Evening.
[Post-mark, March 18, 1846.]
Ah well--we shall see. Only remember that it is not my fault if I
throw the double sixes, and if you, on [_some sun-shiny_ day, (a day
too late to help yourself) stand face to face with a milkwhite
unicorn.][1] Ah--do not be angry. It is ungrateful of me to write
so--I put a line through it to prove I have a conscience after all. I
know that you love me, and I know it so well that I was reproaching
myself severely not long ago, for seeming to love your love more than
you. Let me tell you how I proved _that_, or seemed. For ever so long,
you remember, I have been talking finely about giving you up for your
good and so on. Which was sincere as far as the words went--but oh,
the hypocrisy of our souls!--of mine, for instance! 'I would give you
up for your good'--_but_ when I pressed upon myself the question
whether (if I had the power) I would consent to make you willing to be
given up, by throwing away your love into the river, in a ring like
Charlemagne's, ... why I found directly that I would throw myself
there sooner. I could not do it in fact--I shrank from the test. A
very pitiful virtue of generosity, is your Ba's! Still, it is not
possible, I think, that she should '_love your love more than you_.'
There must be a mistake in the calculation somewhere--a figure dropt.
It would be too bad for her!
Your account of your merchantmen, though with Venice in the distance,
will scarcely be attractive to a confirmed invalid, I fear--and yet
the steamers will be found expensive beyond his means. The
sugar-vessels, which I hear most about, give out an insufferable smell
and steam--let us talk of it a little on Thursday. On Monday I forgot.
For Landor's 'Julian,' oh no, I cannot fancy it to be probable that
those Parisians should know anything of Landor, even by a mistake. Do
you not suppose that the play is founded (confounded) on Shelley's
poem, as the French use materials ... by distraction, into confusion?
The 'urn by the Adriatic' (which all the French know how to turn
upside down) fixes the reference to Shelley--does it not?
Not a word of the head--what does _that_ mean, I wonder. I have not
been down-stairs to-day--the wind is too cold--but you have walked?
... there was no excuse for you. God bless you, ever dearest. It is my
last word till Thursday's first. A fine queen you have, by the way!--a
queen Log, whom you had better leave in the bushes! Witness our
hand....