I am so glad you felt you got so complete an idea of Wagner from my letter. I was a little afraid I hadn't done the whole thing justice, but I assure you there were many more people there than I thought of suggesting, and the operas, tho' long, are very delightful.
Here in Munich the chief thing is the picture gallery, as of course at this time of year all fashionable society is away and the theatres and opera either closed or giving second-rate performances. There are more musées than you really care to visit, and are full of masterpieces, many quite as atrocious as masterpieces so often are. The principal one—its name begins with a P—is the one we've been to.
I wish you could see the Rubens, or else it's the Van Dykes—I forget which, but they are beautiful; and when one thinks how long ago they were painted, it's wonderful, isn't it? One thing awfully interesting about a picture gallery is to see the absurd difference in women's dress now and in former times; don't you think so? And sometimes one gets ideas for one's self.
This particular gallery is altogether one of the most satisfactory I've ever been in. It wasn't crowded full of Baedeker people and that sort of thing. In the second room we went in we met Lord and Lady Jenks and the Countess of Towns. That was the room where we saw a portrait the living image of Janet Cowther. We all shrieked with laughter! You know how she has what my vulgar little brother calls an "ingrowing face"—it sinks in instead of coming out, so that the poor creature can't know what it seems like to have a real profile. It's extraordinary that there should have been two such faces in the world—don't you think so?—even with two or three hundred years between them. The portrait was painted by—dear me! I can't remember, but it was some one we all know. There's one thing I shouldn't mind, and that is knowing the lady's corset maker; I'd like to give his address to Janet, because, my dear, in spite of her face he had made the lady's figure beautiful. I think that's really the nicest part of a picture gallery—seeing comic likenesses to your friends.
Lady Jenks and I sat down on an uncomfortable bench without any back and talked away for nearly an hour. What an amusing creature she is! Has stories to tell about everybody under the sun. By the way, she vowed you and your husband got on awfully, and only lived together as a matter of form! I took up your cudgels, my dear, and told her it wasn't true in any particular; that Ned adored you and was an angel. Of course, he got drunk—that I knew, as all the world did, but you were used to that. It isn't true, is it? He never struck you? I'm sure he didn't! You'd have told a good friend like me; wouldn't you?
Well, just as Lady Jenks and I finished the others came back from going through all the other rooms. We were everyone of us dead tired, looking at pictures is so fatiguing. We decided to go back to the hotel and have tea in the garden. But I think it is a dear gallery, and to-morrow—we don't leave till the next day—if we've any time left after doing the shops, I intend to go back and see the pictures all over again.
Write to Eaton Sqr.; the servants will forward. Poor things, they must have had a dull summer! They say the heat in town has been fearful! But I don't think servants mind; do you? And then they have the run of the house. I am sure they use the drawing-room and sleep in my bed!
Good-bye,
Lovingly,
Fanny.