conversation, which is worse, whenever London is mentioned. But I do grow stronger; and if it become possible I shall go—will go! That sounds better, doesn't it? Putting it off to another summer is like a 'never.'"
In her next letter, early in June, she informs Horne that she is
Revived just now—pleased, anxious, excited altogether, in the hope of touching at last upon my last days at this place. I have been up, and bore it excellently—up an hour at a time, without fainting, and on several days without injury; and now am looking forward to the journey. My physician has been open with me, and is of opinion that there is a good deal of risk to be run in attempting it. But my mind is made up to go; and if the power remains to me I will go. To be at home, and relieved from the sense of doing evil where I would soonest bring a blessing—of breaking up poor papa's domestic peace into fragments by keeping my sisters here (and he won't let them leave me)—would urge me into any possible "risk"—to say nothing of the continual repulsion, night and day, of the sights and sounds of this dreary place. There will be no opposition. So papa promised me at the beginning of last winter that I should go when it became "possible." Then Dr. Scully did not talk of "risk," but of certain consequences. He said I should die on the road. I know how to understand the change of phrase. There is only a "risk" now—and the journey is "possible." So I go.
We are to have one of the patent carriages, with a thousand springs, from London, and I am afraid of nothing. I shall set out, I hope, in a fortnight. Ah! but not directly for London. There is to be some intermediate place where we all must meet, papa says, and stay for a month or two before the final settlement in Wimpole Street—and he names "Clifton," and I pray for the neighbourhood of London, because I look far (too far, perhaps, for me), and fear being left an exile again at those Hot Wells during the winter. I don't know what "the finality measure" may be. The only thing fixed is a journey from hence.
Considering the condition Miss Barrett was in, and that she had even to recline on her back whilst writing, it is marvellous that she was enabled to write the quantity, apart from the quality, of matter that she did at this time. Besides her lengthy communications to
