E.B.B.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, August 20, 1845.]

Mauvaise, mauvaise, mauvaise, you know as I know, just as much, that your ‘kindness and considerateness’ consisted, not in putting off Tuesday for another day, but in caring for my coming at all; for my coming and being told at the door that you were engaged, and I might call another time!  And you are NOT, NOT my ‘other friend,’ any more than this head of mine is my other head, seeing that I have got a violin which has a head too!  All which, beware lest you get fully told in the letter I will write this evening, when I have done with my Romans—­who are, it so happens, here at this minute; that is, have left the house for a few minutes with my sister—­but are not ’with me,’ as you seem to understand it,—­in the house to stay.  They were kind to me in Rome, (husband and wife), and I am bound to be of what use I may during their short stay.  Let me lose no time in begging and praying you to cry ‘hands off’ to that dreadful Burgess; have not I got a ... but I will tell you to-night—­or on Friday which is my day, please—­Friday.  Till when, pray believe me, with respect and esteem,

Your most obliged and disobliged at these blank endings—­what have I done?  God bless you ever dearest friend.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Thursday, 7 o’clock.
[Post-mark, August 21, 1845.]

I feel at home, this blue early morning, now that I sit down to write (or, speak, as I try and fancy) to you, after a whole day with those ’other friends’—­dear good souls, whom I should be so glad to serve, and to whom service must go by way of last will and testament, if a few more hours of ‘social joy,’ ‘kindly intercourse,’ &c., fall to my portion.  My friend the Countess began proceedings (when I first saw her, not yesterday) by asking ’if I had got as much money as I expected by any works published of late?’—­to which I answered, of course, ’exactly as much’—­e grazioso! (All the same, if you were to ask her, or the like of her, ’how much the stone-work of the Coliseum would fetch, properly burned down to lime?’—­she would shudder from head to foot and call you ‘barbaro’ with good Trojan heart.) Now you suppose—­(watch my rhetorical figure here)—­you suppose I am going to congratulate myself on being so much for the better, en pays de connaissance, with my ‘other friend,’ E.B.B., number 2—­or 200, why not?—­whereas I mean to ‘fulmine over Greece,’ since thunder frightens you, for all the laurels,—­and to have reason for your taking my own part and lot to yourself—­I do, will, must, and will, again, wonder at you and admire you, and so on to the climax.  It is a fixed, immovable thing:  so fixed that I can well forego talking about it.  But if to talk you once begin, ’the King shall enjoy (or receive quietly) his own again’—­I wear no bright weapon out of that Panoply ... or Panoplite,