“I cannot make up my mind about the house till I go down and see in what state I receive it. There is, I suspect, very little furniture; but I mean to see, and decide soon, if I can. I assure you I look on £90 for a very poor quarter in a very poor place as a large rent, though you do persist in knocking my head off on account of my extravagance, which is a mere tradition, and you might as well bring up against me my idleness at school. The worst is, I used formerly to make money as easily as I spent it. I now find a great disinclination to work—that is, I am well aware, an expression for a disability.”
To Dr Burbidge.
“Casa Capponi, Florence, Thursday, May 1866.
“By a telegram from Sanders, received too late to reply to by post yesterday, I learned that our funds had amounted to sixty-five pounds, and I accordingly wrote to ‘My Lord’ to state as much, and also that the congregation, alike in grateful recognition of the gratuitously afforded services of Doctor Burbidge, as in the very fullest desire to secure his services, had appointed him to the chaplaincy,—a nomination which, in the event of any subsidy from the F. Office, they earnestly hoped his lordship would confirm.
“I believe I said it in rather choice phrase, but that was the substance, and I am very hopeful that he will do all that we ask.
“My wife had another attack of the rigor and fever yesterday, and Wilson apprehends some tertian character has inserted itself into the former illness. She is very ill indeed, so much so that although my married daughter is confined to bed and seriously ill at a hotel only a few hundred yards off, Julia cannot leave the house to see her. You see how impossible it would be for me to be away.
“I write very hurriedly, but I wished you to know that all, so far as we can do it, is now done, and if F. O. will only be as gracious as I hope, we shall have accomplished our great wish, and the Spezzia chaplaincy be a fact.”
To Mr John Blackwood.
“Florence, May 2, 1866.
“Herewith goes the next ‘Sir B.’ I was very glad indeed to get your last few lines, for I am low, low! I can’t pick up, somehow. But I don’t want to bore you with myself or mes maux.