To Mr Alexander Spencer.
“Spezzia, Sept. 7, 1859.
“It was only because I found myself in a maze of troubles at the moment of what is ordinarily a pleasant family event that I had not a moment to write to you. Chapman & Hall, in whom for years back all my confidence has been unbounded, have behaved to me in a way to make me uneasy as to my right in my works, and I feel the very gravest anxiety for the future. This case yet hangs over me, and how it is to [? terminate] I cannot foresee. This is but a sorry [excuse] for suffering you to incur all the inconvenience I have occasioned; but when have I ceased to be a burthen to you?
“I wrote by this post to Chapman to forward the money for the insurance, and will immediately see to the other. Brady cannot affect any difficulty in settling with you: his only payment to myself personally was £100, somewhere in the present year. Therefore the number of sheets of my contributions, multiplied by the sum per sheet (£30 or £35, I forget which), will give the exact amount due.
“I am about to begin a new serial, which will at least provide for the present.
“The ‘Party,’ after [?immense] pledges and compliments, went out without giving me anything beyond this very humble sinecure; but sinecure it is, and therefore for once ‘The right man in the right place.’
“Charley was well, and fighting up in Oude, when last I heard from him; but all the pleasure of killing sepoys does not, it would appear, so entirely engross him that he cannot spend money, and he draws a bill with the same nonchalance that he draws his sword. Pussy’s husband is a Captain Bowes-Watson,—only twenty-two years of age, but a Crimean and Indian hero. He is of the veritable English type—blond, stiff, silent, and upstanding, and what Colonel Haggerstoue would call ‘a perfect gentleman,’ being utterly incapable by any effort of his own to provide for his own support. They are for the present poorly off, but at the death of a very old grandmother will have a fair competence,—about £1500 a year. I am sorely sorry to part with her, but the malheur is that we lose in age the solace of those whose society we always hoped to console us. We go through the years of training and teaching and educating to give them up when they have grown companionable. Very selfish regrets these, but they are my latest wounds, and they smart the most.
“Julia is ‘contracted,’ but the event is, and must be, somewhat distant. In other respects it is what is called a great match. And so only Baby (as Sydney is called) remains,—a marvellously clever little damsel of ten, whose humour and wit exceed that of all the grown folk I know.
“I hope to send you the first number of my new serial by the end of next month. Its title is ‘One of Them.’”
To Mr Alexander Spencer.