Robert has ventured to send to your house, my dearest friend, two copies of ‘Shelley’ besides yours—­one for Mr. Procter, and one for Mrs. Jameson, with kindest love, both.  There is no hurry about either, you know.  We wanted another for dear Miss Bayley, but we have only six copies, and don’t keep one for ourselves, and she won’t care, I dare say.

Your ever most affectionate and grateful
BA.

Will you let your servant put this letter into the post for Miss Mitford?  She upset me by her book, but had the most affectionate intentions, and I am obliged to her for what she meant.  Then I am morbid, I know.

Tell dearest Miss Bayley, with my love, I shall write to her soon.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Jameson

[Paris], 138 Avenue des Champs-Elysees:  February 26, [1852].

Never believe of me so bad a thing as that I could have received from you, my ever dear and very dear friend, such a letter as you describe, and rung hollow in return.  I did not get your letter, so how could I send an answer?  Your letter’s lost, like some other happy things.  But I thank you for it fervently, guessing from what you say the sympathy and affection of it.  I thank you for it most gratefully.

As for poor dear Miss Mitford’s book, I was entirely upset by the biography she thought it necessary or expedient to give of me.  Oh, if our friends would but put off anatomising one till after one was safely dead, and call to mind that, previously, we have nerves to be agonised and morbid brains to be driven mad!  I am morbid, I know.  I can’t bear some words even from Robert.  Like the lady who lay in the grave, and was ever after of the colour of a shroud, so I am white-souled, the past has left its mark with me for ever.  And now (this is the worst) every newspaper critic who talks of my poems may refer to other things.  I shall not feel myself safe a moment from references which stab like a knife.

But poor dear Miss Mitford, if we don’t forgive what’s meant as kindness, how are we to forgive what’s meant as injury?  In my first agitation I felt it as a real vexation that I couldn’t be angry with her.  How could I, poor thing?  She has always loved me, and been so anxious to please me, and this time she seriously thought that Robert and I would be delighted.  Extraordinary defect of comprehension!

Still, I did not, I could not, conceal from her that she had given me great pain, and she replied in a tone which really made me almost feel ungrateful for being pained, she said ’rather that her whole book had perished than have given me a moment’s pain.’  How are you to feel after that?

For the rest, it appears that she had merely come forward to the rescue of my reputation, no more than so.  Sundry romantic tales had been in circulation about me.  I was ‘in widow’s weeds’ in my habitual costume—­and, in fact, before I was married I had grievously scandalised the English public (the imaginative part of the public), and it was expedient to ‘tirer de l’autre cote.’