To Mr John Blackwood.
“Trieste, April 11,1872.
“It was only yesterday I sent off a short O’D. on the English demand for a ‘Political Programme,’ and I hope it has reached you, and more, that it is readable, for my hand and my head are degenerating pari passu.
“To-day I have got your welcome note, for which I thank you heartily. It will do me more good to see you than all my tinctures, and pray tell Mrs Blackwood she is quite right to bring her little girl with her. The journey, the new scenes and new faces, will be the healthiest excitement to a young mind, and, whether as correcting old ideas or storing up new ones, is a form of education not to be had of books or to be satisfied by governesses.
“You are really a good fellow to come and see me in a cabin. I can only say if it were a palace you would be equally welcome, and more welcome you could not be.
“I’ll not promise to go to England. I have scarcely wind for a ‘three-mile heat,’ but I’ll take a short run with you somewhere, and we’ll concert it when we meet. Rob. Lytton wrote to me a few days ago, and said how he hoped to see you. His wife has just had a boy, which I am heartily glad of, as they lately lost their only son. Mrs L. is the most charming, natural, and nice creature it is possible to imagine, and the crowning good fortune of Robert’s life is to have met her.
“From Vienna here—you can do it in one day—fourteen and a half hours; but if you prefer to halve it, there is a nice halting-place, Gratz, Styria, where you arrive about three o’clock and leave the following day about the same: the Hôtel Elephant is excellent.
“Sydney and her man are at the Burlington, and well too—also their mother,—and can get you every detail of the journey via whichever route you take. I think you are right to come by Germany and go back by Italy, though it be against the precepts of climate, but that Germany after Italy is like following a strawberry ice with sauerkraut. I think ‘Just like Rye’ will be the best title for the ‘O’Dowd,’ and ‘taking’ as well as appropriate. Rose is still at Constantinople, I believe, trying to get the tobacco monopoly from the Government,—a huge affair of some millions sterling.
“The weather up to this was splendid here; now it has become ‘more Irish and less nice,’ and I fancy is one of the reasons of my maladies. One loves to lean on such subtleties, like the alderman who ascribed his health to his always having a strawberry in his wine-glass.”