...We have taken our passage for the 24th June, and shall arrive, if all go well, in time for the “glorious Fourth.” I hope we shall find you in Cambridge. I long to get back, and yet am just beginning to get wonted (as they say of babies and new cows) over here. The delightful little inn where I am lodged is almost like home to me, and the people are as nice as can be....
To George Putnam.
Paris, 19 May, 1874.
...For my own part, though I have had a great deal of homesickness, I come back to Cambridge rather sadly. I have not been over well of late. The doctor in Rome, however, gave my troubles a name—and that by robbing them of mystery has made them commonplace. He said it was suppressed gout. It has a fancy of gripping me in the stomach sometimes, holding on like a slow fire for seven hours at a time. It is wonderful how one gets used to things, however. But it seems to be growing lighter, and I hope to come home robust and red....
To Thomas Hughes,
Paris, 27 May, 1874.
To see your handwriting again was almost like taking you by the hand. I seem next door to you here, the distance is so short compared with the long ferry between me and Mabel.
I had no thought of reproaching you with not answering my note from Venice. I only wished you to know that I had written, for I should not have done it if Field had not told me you wished to know where I was. I never write if I can help it, and therefore am ready not only to forgive, but even to sympathize with those who have the same failing.
If I could get in at Mrs. Bennett’s again I should like it particularly, for I was perfectly satisfied there. She was not a bit the lodging-house landlady of tradition, but a really refined woman, and her household matched her. But I fear that paradise is closed against us, for when I was last in London somebody else had discovered her, and hired the whole house. If you would be good enough to ask and let me know I should be greatly obliged.... I should want the lodgings for a fortnight. The steamer’s day is put back to the 23d. On the whole I shall go back as young as I came except my eyes, which fail me more and more....
To the Same.