Don’t fancy me worse than I am—­or that this bed-keeping is the result of a gradual sinking.  It is not so.  A feverish attack prostrated me on October 2—­and such will leave their effects—­and Dr. Scully is so afraid of leading me into danger by saying, ’You may get up and dress as usual’ that you should not be surprised if (in virtue of being the senior Torquay physician and correspondingly prudent) he left me in this durance vile for a great part of the winter.  I am decidedly better than I was a month ago, really and truly.

May God bless you, dearest Mrs. Martin!  My best and kindest regards to Mr. Martin.  Henrietta desires me to promise for her a letter to Colwall soon; but I think that one from Colwall should come first.  May God bless you!  Bro’s fancy just now is painting in water colours and he performs many sketches.  Do you ever in your dreams of universal benevolence dream of travelling into Devonshire?

Love your affectionate BA,

—­found guilty of egotism and stupidity ‘by this sign’ and at once!

To H.S.  Boyd 1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay:  Wednesday, November 27, 1839.

If you can forgive me, my ever dear friend, for a silence which has not been intended, there will be another reason for being thankful to you, in addition to the many.  To do myself justice, one of my earliest impulses on seeing my beloved Arabel, and recurring to the kindness with which you desired that happiness for me long before I possessed it, was to write and tell you how happy I felt.  But she had promised, she said, to write herself, and moreover she and only she was to send you the ballad—­in expectation of your dread judgment upon which I delayed my own writing.  It came in the first letter we received in our new house, on the first of last October.  An hour after reading it, I was upon my bed; was attacked by fever in the night, and from that bed have never even been lifted since—­to these last days of November—­except for one hour a day to the sofa at two yards’ distance.  I am very much better now, and have been so for some time; but my physician is so persuaded, he says, that it is easier to do me harm than good, that he will neither permit any present attempt at further exertion, nor hint at the time when it may be advisable for him to permit it.  Under the circumstances it has of course been more difficult than usual for me to write.  Pray believe, my dear and kind friend, in the face of all circumstances and appearances, that I never forget you, nor am reluctant (oh, how could that be?) to write to you; and that you shall often have to pay ‘a penny for my thoughts’ under the new Postage Act—­if it be in God’s wisdom and mercy to spare me through the winter.  Under the new act I shall not mind writing ten words and then stopping.  As it is, they would scarcely be worth eleven pennies.