I feel myself guilty that I have allowed the vicissitudes of travelling to hinder me from writing to you, for the chance that a letter from me might be welcome to you in what I have been imagining as the first weeks of your return to England and the house in Mecklenburgh Square. I am sure that I should not have been guilty in this way if I had been at any time able to say where you should send me an answer which I could call for at a Poste Restante. But we have been invariably uncertain as to the length of our stay in any one place and as to our subsequent route; and I confess that I shrink from writing a letter full of my own doings, without the prospect of getting some news in return. I am usually in a state of fear rather than of hope about my absent friends; and I dread lest a letter written in ignorance about them should be ill-timed. But at last all fears have become weaker than the uneasy sense that I have omitted to send you a sign of your loved presence in my thoughts, and that you may have lost a gleam of pleasure through my omission.
We left home on the 23d of June, with a sketch of a journey in our minds, which included Grenoble, the Grande Chartreuse, Aix-les-Bains, Chambéry, and Geneva. The last place I wished to get to, because my friend Mme. d'Albert is not likely to live much longer, and I thought that I should like to see her once more. But during a short stay at Fontainebleau I began to feel that lengthy railway journeys were too formidable for us old, weak creatures, and, moreover, that July and August were not the best months for those southern regions. We were both shattered, and needed quiet rather than the excitement of seeing friends and acquaintances—an excitement of which we had been having too much at home—so we turned aside by easy stages to the Vosges, and spent about three weeks at Plombières and Luxeuil. We shall carry home many pleasant memories of our journey—of Fontainebleau, for example, which I had never seen before. Then of the Vosges, where we count on going again. Erckmann-Chatrian's books had been an introduction to the lovely region; and several of them were our companions there. But what small experiences these are compared with yours; and how we long for the time when you will be seated with us at our country-house (Blackbrook, near Bromley, is the name of the house), and tell us as much as you can think of about this long year in which we have been deprived of you. If you receive this letter in time to write me a line, which would reach me by the 15th, I shall be most grateful if you will give me that undeserved indulgence.
Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Aug. 1873.
On our return yesterday from our nine-weeks' absence I found a letter from Mr. Main, in which he shows some anxiety that I should write you the "formal sanction" you justly require before admitting extracts from "Middlemarch" in the new edition of the "Sayings." I have no objection, if you see none, to such an enlargement of the volume, and I satisfy our good Mr. Main's promptitude by writing the needed consent at once.
We used our plan of travel as "a good thing to wander from," and went to no single place (except Fontainebleau) to which we had beforehand projected going.
Our most fortunate wandering was to the Vosges—to Plombières and Luxeuil—which have made us in love with the mode of life at the Eaux of France, as greatly preferable to the ways of the German Bad.
We happened to be at Nancy just as the Germans were beginning to quit it, and we saw good store of tricolores and paper lanterns ready in the shop windows for those who wished to buy the signs of national rejoicing. I can imagine that, as a Prussian lady told us, the Germans themselves were not at all rejoiced to leave that pretty town for "les bords de la Spree," where, in French dialogue, all Germans are supposed to live.
Journal, 1873.
Sept. 4.—Went to Blackbrook, near Bickley.
Letter to Mrs. Cross, 17th Sept. 1873.