We shall probably not be in town again till the beginning of November. Our address then will be 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where we shall have an outlook on the river and meadows beyond. Just now we have the prospect of going on family visits to married sisters, which prevents us from feeling quite settled.
Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 12th Aug. 1880.
I expected your letter, and expected, too, just the sort of letter I have received, telling me everything delightfully. I can follow you everywhere in your journeying except to Ober Wesel. I hope you will have enjoyed St. Blasien and some of the walks there consecrated by the beloved Pater's footsteps. We reversed your drive and went to Freiburg, so that I can enter into your enjoyment of the Höllenthal. I am glad that your weather has been temperate. Here we have now had four sunny and really hot days, and this morning promises to be the fifth. That is consolatory as to the harvest, and is very agreeable as to our private life. The last two evenings we have walked in the garden after eight o'clock—the first time by starlight, the second under a vapory sky, with the red moon setting. The air was perfectly still and warm, and I felt no need of extra clothing.
Our life has had no more important events than calls from neighbors and our calls in return. To-morrow we pay our visit to the Druces at Sevenoaks, where, you may remember, Mr. Druce has built a beautiful house. At the beginning of September we are to visit Mr. and Mrs. Otter at Ranby, and after that we shall go to Six-Mile Bottom for a day or two. Then our wanderings will be over.
I went to the Priory the other day, and found a treatise on Blood Pressure, by Dr. Roy, which he had sent me there, and which he has published as the "George Henry Lewes Student." I imagine that he has come to pursue his studies in England, as he intended to do. Delbeuf's article on the last volume of the "Problems" (in the Belgian Athenæum) is very nicely done. He has read the book.
I am pretty well, but find myself more languid than I was when abroad. I think the cause is perhaps the moisture of the climate. There is something languorous in this climate, or, rather, in its effects. J. gets a little better every day, and so each day is more enjoyable.
Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 9th Sept. 1880.
We have just come home after paying family visits in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, else I should have answered your letter earlier. The former one reached me in Venice, when I was in great trouble on account of Mr. Cross's illness. I had had reason to believe that my letters, ordered to be posted on the 5th of May, had not been delivered; so I asked Charles to inquire about the letter I wrote to you—not because it demanded an answer, but because I wished you to know that I had written.
I am so glad to know that you have been enjoying our brief English summer. The good harvest makes the country everywhere cheerful, and we have been in great, even districts where the fields, full of sheaves or studded with ricks, stretch wide as a prairie. Now, we hope not to leave this place again till November, when we intend to go to Chelsea for the winter and earliest spring.
I almost envy you the opportunity of seeing Wombwell's Menagerie. I suppose I got more delight out of that itinerant institution when I was nine or ten years old than I have ever got out of the Zoological Gardens. The smells and the sawdust mingled themselves with my rapture. Everything was good.