Yet one thing more. I did go to London on this last occasion purposely to see you at that particular time: for I had not expected Mrs. Edwards to be in London till a Fortnight afterward, until two or three days after I had arranged to go and meet you the very day you arrived, inasmuch as you had told me you were to be but a few days in Town.
There—there! Only believe me; my sincerity, Madam; and—Voilà ce qui est fait. Parlons, etc.
Well: Mrs. Edwards has opened an Exhibition of her husband’s works in Bond Street—contrary to my advice—and, it appears, rightly contrary: for over £300 of them were sold on the first private View day, [166] and Tom Taylor, the great Art Critic (who neither by Nature nor Education can be such, ‘cleverest man in London,’ as Tennyson once said he was), has promised a laudatory notice in the omnipotent Times, and then People will flock in like Sheep. And I am very glad to be proved a Fool in the matter, though I hold my own opinion still of the merit of the Picture part of the Show. Enough! as we Tragic Writers say: it is such a morning as I would not have sacrificed indoors or in letter-writing to any one but yourself, and on the subject named.
BELIEVE ME YOURS SINCERELY.
LXVII.
Woodbridge: Decr. 10, [1879.]
My dear Lady,
Pray let me know how you have fared thus far through Winter—which began so early, and promises to continue so long. Even in Jersey Fred. Tennyson writes me it is all Snow and N.E. wind: and he says the North of Italy is blocked up with Snow. You may imagine that we are no better off in the East of England. How is it in London, and with yourself in Queen Anne’s Mansions? I fancy that you walk up and down that ante-room of yours for a regular time, as I force myself to do on a Landing-place in this house when I cannot get out upon what I call my Quarter-deck: a walk along a hedge by the upper part of a field which ‘dominates’ (as the phrase now goes) over my House and Garden. But I have for the last Fortnight had Lumbago, which makes it much easier to sit down than to get up again. However, the time goes, and I am surprised to find Sunday come round again. (Here is my funny little Reader come—to give me ‘All the Year Round’ and Sam Slick.)
Friday.
I suppose I should have finished this Letter in the way it begins, but by this noon’s post comes a note from my Brother-in-law, De Soyres, telling me that