Some of your old friends at Birmingham are full of interest and enquiry. Kate and Georgina send their dearest loves to you, and to Miss Macready, and to all the children. I am ever, and no matter where I am—and quite as much in a crowd as alone—my dearest Macready,
Your affectionate and most attached Friend.
Mrs. Gaskell.
Tavistock House, May 3rd, 1853.
My dear Mrs. Gaskell,
The subject is certainly not too serious, so sensibly treated. I have no doubt that you may do a great deal of good by pursuing it in "Household Words." I thoroughly agree in all you say in your note, have similar reasons for giving it some anxious consideration, and shall be greatly interested in it. Pray decide to do it. Send the papers, as you write them, to me. Meanwhile I will think of a name for them, and bring it to bear upon yours, if I think yours improvable. I am sure you may rely on being widely understood and sympathised with.
Forget that I called those two women my dear friends! Why, if I told you a fiftieth part of what I have thought about them, you would write me the most suspicious of notes, refusing to receive the fiftieth part of that. So I don't write, particularly as you laid your injunctions on me concerning Ruth. In revenge, I will now mention one word that I wish you would take out whenever you reprint that book. She would never—I am ready to make affidavit before any authority in the land—have called her seducer "Sir," when they were living at that hotel in Wales. A girl pretending to be what she really was would have done it, but she—never!
Ever most faithfully yours.
Monsieur Regnier.
Tavistock House, Monday, May 9th, 1853.