Drawing flourishes, and I am now making a Spanish volume, and have begun with Toledo, glorious, rock-built, imperial Toledo!
I meditate coming up to town at Easter with my two girls, who are now assuming the toga muliebris, having discarded their governess. The next step is a husband, and, when once a grandpapa, I shall consider the 5th act of the comedia imbrogliata as fast approaching. I shall bring up the Spanish drawings, and, if any should revive in your Excellency recollections of pleasant days gone by, I shall be proud to make you any you may select for your private portfolio.
Borrow is a queer chap. I believe that an extra number of the Edinburgh is to come out next month, when my article will appear. I have just got an application to write the life of Velazquez for the Penny Cyclopædia. Murray will sigh for his Handbook as you do for the country; but I am so interrupted that I have never fairly gone to work, and, as it is, at least two-thirds of what I have got together must be exscinded, but they are a useful mass of work got up for any future object.
Heavitree, 27th Feb., /43.
The enclosed will amuse, if not convince you. I believe Borrow to be honest, albeit a Gitano. His biography will be passing strange if he tells the whole truth. He is now writing it by my advice.
Have you found time to run through my paper in the last Edinburgh Review, which the criticee lauds so much and pour cause? The value of a thing is, however, just what it will bring, and the thirty-two pages brought me £44, well and truly paid by the canny Scot, Napier, who does not throw away cash without “value received.” Verily the Whigs pay well, and will do Murray by seducing his light troops. Hayward (also a Quarterly reviewer like me) figures in the last blue and bluff; proh pudor! et nummos! his paper on “Advertising” is droll.
I have invested my £44 in Château Margaux.
Handbook is done—that is, I have done my own hobby, and have covered a haycock of reams with the past and present of Spain: antiquities, art, history, manners, scenery, battles, and what not. Now comes the rub, to cut out all that is good and simmer it down to a way-bill. I shy and “gib” like a Pegasus in a dung-cart.
Weymouth, July 30, 1843.
I am here with all my family, first and second,[49] great and small, having been dabbling in brick, mortar, and paint at home—wild vagaries you will