We had intended to spend only two or three days with M. and Madame Raillard on our return, but our son-in-law being obliged to leave suddenly on account of his grandmother's illness, and unwilling to expose his wife to contagion, we offered to remain with her till he should come back.
We soon received the sad news of the deaths, at an interval of two days only, of the grandmother and an aunt; also of the dangerous illness of Madame Raillard senior, which happily did not prove fatal, the disease having apparently spent its virulence on the two first victims.
During our enforced stay in Paris Gilbert wrote an article for the "Photographic Quarterly" on Photogravure and Héliogravure, and for the "Portfolio" a review of Mr. Pennell's book on Pen-and-Ink Drawing. We went by boat to Suresnes, to see the banks of the Seine, for Mary was trying to draw us to live nearer to her. With her husband she had already visited several pretty places in the neighborhood of Paris, and had given us some very tempting descriptions. As for me, I should have desired nothing better than to live near to my daughter, but I never expected my husband to reconcile himself to town life.
There was a marked and decided improvement in his ability to travel, for he did not suffer at all on the way home; it is true that we strictly adhered to the rule of slow and night trains.
The pleasant exercise of riding had to be reluctantly given up because Cadette, who had betrayed from the beginning a slight weakness in the knees, now stumbled often and badly, especially out of harness. The veterinary surgeon who had examined her before we bought her, had said that it was of no consequence, only the result of poor feeding, and would disappear after a course of prolonged river-baths. Instead of disappearing, the tendency had so much increased that it was deemed safer not to trust Cadette even in the two-wheeled carriage, at least for a while. This mishap was the beginning of my husband's real appreciation of velocipedes. He had liked them well enough from the first, and used to hire one now and then, but it was only after he had become possessed of a good tricycle that the taste for the kind of exercise it affords developed itself apace. M. Raillard had made him a present of one for which he had little use in Paris, and this present having been made just after Mary's betrothal, her father playfully said that "he had sold his daughter for a velocipede."
As soon as he had adopted the machine as his ordinary steed, he began to consider how to make it carry his sketching apparatus. He invented various straps, boxes, holders, rings, etc., fitting in different places according to the bulk and nature of the things he wished to have with him: a sketching umbrella, a stool, and all that was needful for water-color, etching, or oil-painting. He also devised a zinc box, easily adapted to the tricycle, to take his letters, manuscripts, and parcels to the post, and found it very convenient.
At the end of January he was seized with an attack of gout which lasted a week, and took him quite by surprise, for he had not neglected physical exercise; the doctor, however, said that an attack of gout might be brought on by a mere change of locality—and we had just returned from Paris.
He strove to do some work in spite of pain and bad nights, and succeeded now and then, and as soon as he could manage—with help—to get into the carriage, he drove out for change of air.
In March he received from Mr. Watts the permission he had asked, to have his portrait of Lord Lawrence engraved.
I transcribe Mr. Watts's letters, with two others which had preceded it, to show in what esteem he held his correspondent's opinions.