The children arrived on Tuesday night, by London boat, in every stage and aspect of sea-sickness.
The camp is about a mile off, and huts are now building for (they say) sixty thousand soldiers. I don't imagine it to be near enough to bother us.
If the weather ever should be fine, it might do you good sometimes to come over with the proofs on a Saturday, when the tide serves well, before you and Mrs. W. make your annual visit. Recollect there is always a bed, and no sudden appearance will put us out.
Kind regards.
Ever faithfully.
Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.
Villa du Camp de Droite, Boulogne,
Wednesday Night, July 12th, 1854.
My dear Collins,
Bobbing up, corkwise, from a sea of "Hard Times" I beg to report this tenement—amazing!!! Range of view and air, most free and delightful; hill-side garden, delicious; field, stupendous; speculations in haycocks already effected by the undersigned, with the view to the keeping up of a "home" at rounders.
I hope to finish and get to town by next Wednesday night, the 19th; what do you say to coming back with me on the following Tuesday? The interval I propose to pass in a career of amiable dissipation and unbounded license in the metropolis. If you will come and breakfast with me about midnight—anywhere—any day, and go to bed no more until we fly to these pastoral retreats, I shall be delighted to have so vicious an associate.