In this last year of my Century, among my little and exceptional attempts to celebrate my coming birthday—I wish that you the most leal and loved of our English friends, may receive for once a word from me before its sun goes down. Probably you are in some Lodge of the lake of your Northern Night, or off for the Mountains of the Moon. Still, even your restless and untamed spirit must by this time have been satisfied of wandering; at any rate, I doubt not this will in the end find you somewhere, and then you will know that my heart began to go out to you as I neared another milestone ... it has suffered enough and lost enough to make it yearn fondly for the frank face and dear words of a kindred, though fresher heart like yours. I have a few devoted sons, and you are one of them....
My remembrances to Mrs. Sharp and to Fiona McL—— whether she be real or hypothetical. If I could have spared the means, and had had the strength, I would have completed my recovery by a voyage to you and England last summer....
Ever devotedly yours,
E. C. Stedman.
The “restless spirit” was by no means tired of wandering. Partly owing to the insistence of circumstance, partly from choice, we began that autumn a series of wanderings that brought us back to London and to Scotland for a few weeks only each summer. The climate of England proved too severe; my husband had been seriously ill in the New Year. Despite his appearance of great vitality, his extraordinary power of recuperation after every illness—which in a measure was due to his buoyant nature, to his deliberate turning of his mind away from suffering or from failure and “looking sunwise,” to his endeavour to get the best out of whatever conditions he had to meet—we realised that a home in England was no longer a possibility, that it would be wise to make various experiments abroad rather than attempt to settle anywhere permanently. Indeed, we were both glad to have no plans, but to wander again how and where inclination and possibilities dictated. Early in October he wrote to Mr. Murray Gilchrist from London:
My dear Robert,
A little ago, on sitting down in my club to answer some urgent notes (and whence I now write) my heart leapt with pleasure, and an undeserving stranger received Part I of a beaming welcome—for the waiter announced that “Mr. Gilchrist would like to see you, Sir.” Alas, it was no dear Peaklander, but only a confounded interviewer about the Stage Society!...
Elizabeth and I leave England on the morning of the 12th—and go first to the South of Provence, near Marseilles: after Yule-tide we’ll go on to Italy, perhaps first to Shelley’s Spezzia or to Pegli of the Orange Groves near Genoa: and there we await you, or at furthest a little later, say in Florence. We shall be away till the end of March.
Meanwhile ‘tis all unpleasantness and incertitude: much to do and little pleasure in the doing: a restlessness too great to be salved short of departure, and the longed for mental and nervous rest far away.
I have just returned from a flying visit to Dorset, and saw Thomas Hardy. He is well, and at work: the two happiest boons of fortune for all our kinship—and therein I hope you are at one with him. I wish you could run up and see our first Stage Society production this weekend (Sunday) when we bring out a short play by Hardy and R. L. Stevenson and Henley’s ‘Macaire.’ (I resigned my Chairmanship but was re-elected: and so am extra busy before I go.)