The letter was sent in due time, and acknowledged with grateful thanks.
Mr. Seeley was so kind as to send us news of Richard from time to time; he wrote in March: "Richard has shown me some of his drawings; I think he is making progress. One of his last drawings seemed to me excellent; very tender and subtle. He was down at Kinsgton with us the other day."
This opinion of Mr. Seeley's gave great pleasure to my husband, who had always entertained doubts about the range of his son's artistic talent.
In the same month he was asked to send a biographical note for "Men of the Time," a proof that his reputation was on the increase, and Mr. Haden, who had just come back from America, said that his works were held there in the highest esteem.
The book on Paris necessitated another journey, and my husband made the time of it to coincide with the opening of the Salon. This time we stopped at Auxerre, and visited the four churches, the museum, and the room in which are exhibited the relics of Marshal Davoust.
The diary says: "April 30. Began this morning another diary in English, to record the impressions which may serve for my literary work."
On May 1 we had a carriage accident which might have been serious. Our horse took fright at sight of a steam tram, and ran away on the footpath at a furious rate, dashing the carriage against the trees and lamp-posts until he slipped and fell at full length on the asphalt. My husband had been able to jump out, but a sudden jerk had prevented me from following him at the moment, and then there was danger of being hurt between the side of the carriage and the banging door. Gilbert had been running, hatless, after the carriage to hold the door and enable me to jump out, and he just succeeded as the horse slipped down and upset the carriage. I was out in time to escape being hurt, but of course we were both a good deal shaken, and went back to rest at our hotel.
We had hardly been a week in Paris when my husband began to suffer from nervousness. A tramway had been laid in front of the hotel, and the vibration prevented him from sleeping. Then spring was always trying to him; and above all, he wished himself in the country. Mr. Seeley wrote: "Nature evidently intended you for a savage; how in the world did you come to be a literary man? What must Frenchmen think of you, in Paris and miserable? Even Mrs. Hamerton must feel ashamed of you." He acknowledged that he was more happy in a primitive sort of existence than in one too perfectly civilized; still, he could not endure the privation of books, and he would have felt keenly the absence of works of art; but he was in deeper sympathy with the beauty of nature than with artistic beauty—to be denied the last would have been a great privation, but in the absence of the first he really could not live.
We had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Mr. Howard-Tripp, who had recently married Mr. Wyld's daughter, and who, being a picture-dealer, invited us to go and see his gallery in the Rue St. Georges. There were a great many fine works that my husband greatly admired, particularly those by Corot, Daubigny, and Troyon, and the scheme for the book on "Landscape" having been settled with Mr. Seeley, he begged Mr. Howard-Tripp to allow reproductions of some of the pictures to appear in his future work. It was readily granted.
This selection of pictures for the book on "Landscape" gave the author much additional labor; but it was better to do it now that he was in Paris than have to come again on purpose. Mr. Seeley had offered to run over and help with the arrangements, but was prevented by a slight accident. He then proposed that photographs of the pictures chosen should be sent to him, that he might have a vote.