no answer, and followed up the silence rather briskly
by another letter to announce his marriage.... I am going to write to
him at Marseilles.

You cannot imagine to yourself the unsatisfactory and disheartening
turmoil in which we are at present. It's the mad bull and the china
shop, and, _nota bene_, we are the china shop. People want to see if
Italy has cut off our noses, or what! A very kind anxiety certainly, but
so horribly fatiguing that my heart sinks, and my brain goes round under
the process. O my Florence! how much better you are!

Have you heard that Wilson is married to a Florentine who lived once
with the Peytons, and is here now with us, a good, tender-hearted
man?[46]

I am tolerably well, though to breathe this heavy air always strikes me
as difficult; and my little Penini is very well, thank God. I want so
much to show him to you. We shall be here till the end of September, if
the weather admits of it, then go to Paris for the winter, then return
to London, and then--why, _that_ 'then' is too far off to see. Only we
talk of Italy in the distance.

My book is not ready for the press yet; and as to writing here, who
could produce an epic in the pauses of a summerset? Not that my poem is
an epic, I hurry on to say in consideration for dear Mr. Martin's
feelings. I flatter myself it's a _novel_, rather, a sort of novel in
verse. Arabel looks well.

What pens! What ink! Do write, and tell me of _you both_. I love you
cordially indeed.

Your ever affectionate
BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Jameson_

13 Dorset Street: Tuesday, [July-August 1855].

My dearest Mona Nina,--I write to you in the midst of so much fatigue
and unsatisfactory turmoil, that I feel I shall scarcely be articulate
in what I say. Still, it must be tried, for I can't have you think that
I have come to London to forget you, much less to be callous to the
influence of this dear affectionate letter of yours. May God bless you!
How sorry I am that you should have vexation on the top of more serious
hurts to depress you. Indeed, if it were not for the _other side of the
tapestry_, it would seem not at all worth while for us to stand putting
in more weary Gobelin stitches (till we turn into goblins) day after
day, year after year, in this sad world. For my part, I am ready at
melancholy with anybody. The air, mentally or physically considered, is
very heavy for me here, and I long for the quiet of my Flor