and pathos, and made me shed a great many tears. How do you get on
with the reading society? Do you see much or anything of Lady Margaret
Cocks, from whom I never hear now? I promised to let her have 'Ion,'
if I could, before she left Brighton, but the person to whom it was
lent did not return it to me in time. Will you tell her this, if you
do see her, and give her my kind regards at the same time? Dear Bell
was so sorry not to have seen you. If she had, you would have thought
her looking _very_ well, notwithstanding the thinness--perhaps, in
some measure, on account of it--and in _eminent_ spirits. I have not
seen her in such spirits for very, very long. And there she is, down
at Torquay, with the Hedleys and Butlers, making quite a colony of it,
and everybody, in each several letter, grumbling in an undertone at
the dullness of the place. What would _I_ give to see the waves once
more! But perhaps if I were there, I should grumble too. It is a
happiness to them to be _together_, and that, I am sure, they all
feel....

Believe me, dearest Mrs. Martin, your affectionate
E.B.B.

Oh that you would call me Ba![29]


[Footnote 29: Elizabeth Barrett's 'pet name' (see her poem, _Poetical
Works_, ii. 249), given to her as a child by her brother Edward, and
used by her family and friends, and by herself in her letters to them,
throughout her life.]


_To H.S. Boyd_