I have just bought a charming Britzka here which was made at Vienna, and shall therefore jog down with all my traps, pictorial and piscatorial. I am sorry that you do not take your rod and line. How little room they will take! and quien sabe? Who knows what trout spring in Terni’s fall? I never was so agog for migration, and intend to go the whole Continental hog.
You will have the pleasure of seeing your old friend Sir Richard Ottley at Naples,—he who asked us to dine at 5 to meet the Miss Barings. We will not dine with him at Naples, be his macaroni royal. His daughter has turned Roman Catholic: so much for taking imaginative maidens into the glowing climes of Italian Abates.
We have been all gaieties here. The great squires have been giving déjeuners, with archery and pine-apples, under tents. We will eat polpette, drink Orvieto in the Eternal City, and grow young and forget years and care.
Ford returned from the Continent in July 1840. Of his travels no account exists, as he journeyed in company with Addington, who alone preserved his letters. But he writes, September 7th, 1840, to welcome his friend back to England from “the land of macaroni and sour crout.”
Did you (he asks) get a letter from me at Milan? It contained an account of my Sicilian trip and of our hurried flight home. We drove through France as hard as four horses could go, and crossed from Havre on the 14th of July—nine months to a day.
Meanwhile we are slowly recovering from the vast scarifications and bleedings of Italia cum Gallia. I am afraid to look at all the items; I should like to see your sum total. N’importe! It was a gallant trip, and shed a flood of new light and sources of future reading, writing, and drawing on one’s mind.
When you were in Rome I asked you to lend me your Minaño, diccionario de España. I am going to do a handbook for Spain for Murray, and we have not been able to get a Minaño in London. I will take the greatest care of it, and send you an early copy of the book when written and when published—when!!—for your fee. Will you pack
Antonio Chatelain Pinx Emery Walker Ph Sc.