To Miss Leycester.
“Montbard, May 23, 1886.—I wonder if my date conveys anything to you? I had determined to evade this place if it were possible, yet here I am for two days at the place so connected with the agonising anxiety of our last journey, where Mother in her illness was laid flat upon the railway platform, to find, when the train was gone, that the little hotel was closed, and where she was carried through the lanes to an old farmhouse. There the people were most kind to us, and she almost enjoyed it, and dear Lea was very happy, and of its inmates both were often so anxious to hear during the after-summer of the German invasion. The old host and hostess are dead now, and the two boys, whom I saw when I went to luncheon with Mme. de Montgolfier, are married, and have twelve children between them!”
“Sens, May 28.—The weather has changed to bitter wind, but it has seemed appropriate to the wild country of Avallon and Vezelay. Auxerre is very interesting and beautiful, especially the great abbey of S. Germain and the marvellously simple and pure cathedral. Old affection for Thomas à Becket took me thence, through the sweet acacia forests, to Pontigny, since which I have been very comfortable for two nights at a charming inn close under the shadow of this old archiepiscopal cathedral.”
“Hotel Noël Peter, Paris, June 6.—I am very glad to have accomplished a long-wished-for visit to the historic sites of Clairvaux and the Paraclete, though there is nothing whatever to see in either of them! How I have worked since I have been here! My book is written, but I have to go through every part of it on the spot. I breakfast at seven and work till eleven, then luncheon and work again till four o’clock, when I come in dead-tired, only to go out again to have food at a restaurant, and to bed at eight.”
“June 16.—Two desperately hard days at Versailles and two at the Louvre, looking over and collating. Certainly no place of residence need be cheaper than Paris. Life seems to cost nothing at all, a week here being equivalent to a day in London, or even at Rome. It is an oddly lonely life, as, except for ten minutes, I have seen no one to speak to since May 11: however, there would certainly have been no time for it.”
In July I was in London, and then at Buckhurst, in glorious summer weather, to meet Lord and Lady Lathom.