Another amusing bit of news is, that the other day Mrs. Pattison sent me an extract from the livret of the Paris Salon, describing a picture painted by a French artist from "The Lifted Veil," and representing the moment when the resuscitated woman, fixing her eyes on her mistress, accuses her of having poisoned her husband. I call this amusing—I ought rather to have said typical of the relation my books generally have with the French mind.
Thank you for sending me the list of orders. It does interest me to see the various country demands. I hope the movement will continue to cheer us all, and you are sure to let me know everything that is pleasant, so I do not need to ask for that kindness.
The weather is decidedly warmer, and Tuesday was a perfectly glorious day. But rain and storm have never let us rest long together. I am not very bright, and am ready to interpret everything in the saddest sense, but I have no definite ailment.
My best regards to the convalescent, who, I have no doubt, will write to me when he is able to do so. But I am only one of many who will be glad to hear from him.
Letter from Madame Bodichon to Miss Bonham-Carter, 12th June, 1879.
"I spent an hour with Marian (5th June). She was more delightful than I can say, and left me in good spirits for her—though she is wretchedly thin, and looks, in her long, loose, black dress, like the black shadow of herself. She said she had so much to do that she must keep well—'the world was so intensely interesting.' She said she would come next year to see me. We both agreed in the great love we had for life. In fact, I think she will do more for us than ever."
Letter to John Blackwood, 20th June, 1879.
I have been having my turn of illness of rather a sharp kind. Yesterday, when your letter came, I was in more acute pain than I have ever known in my life before, but before the morning was over I was sufficiently relieved to read your pleasant news. I am writing in bed, but am in that most keenly conscious ease which comes after unusual suffering. The way in which the public takes "Theophrastus" is really a comfort to me. I have had some letters, not of the complimentary, but of the grateful kind, which are an encouragement to believe in the use of writing. But you would be screamingly amused with one, twenty-three pages long (from an Edinburgh man, by-the-bye), who has not read the book, but has read of it, and thinks that his own case is still more worthy of presentation than Merman's.
I think a valuable series (or couple of volumes) might be made up from "Maga" of articles written hot by travellers and military men, and not otherwise republished—chronicles and descriptions by eye-witnesses—which might be material for historians.
What a comfort that the Afghan war is concluded! But on the back of it comes the black dog of Indian finance, which means, alas! a great deal of hardship to poor Hindûs. Let me hear more news of you before long.