Here my chief discovery has been a cottage improvement society, so successful as to pay yearly dividends of 6 per cent. The working man is my doctor—Dr. Greenhill—who is secretary. Most of these societies have been quite failures as regards finance. The principles here are (1) Repairing, not building; (2) Rigorous collection of rents. There is a benevolent society attached to the cottage society, but it acts quite separately. Rent is rent, and charity, charity.
To the same.
January 26, 1860.
Your artist friend, Stillman, has presented his credentials; he called at Campden Hill, and of course I was out; but we hope to see him on Sunday, to dinner, in the ‘native American’ manner, at 2 P.M.
March 3.
Stillman has commenced operations on my face, and returns to the charge on Monday. He is making many friends. We dined with him at Robert Mackintosh’s a week ago, which much reminded me of Longfellow’s dinner-table. I have read your critique on Plutarch in the ‘Atlantic Monthly’ carefully since I wrote, and find it very satisfactory. The early lives are certainly faulty. I did not feel as if it was done rightly till I was doing Otho and Galba. The life which is most mine is that of Demetrius, which is really almost mine. Dion, however, is just about an average specimen.
When is Rowse coming over? Will you give him a letter to me? I continue to think his picture of Emerson the best portrait I know of anyone I know.
How unsatisfactory the world in general is just now! The French having made a ‘belle guerre’ for an idea, are now bent on realising their ideas. The Pope, after all, won’t be sent a begging. Austria will yet bully Hungary with the help of her big brother further east, and the big brother, with the help of the smaller one, will have his own bad way in Turkey, probably.
To the same.
21 Campden Hill Road: July 13, 1860.