"We have been ailing constantly without being ill, but our work gets on somehow or other. Polly is miserable over a new novel, and I am happy over the very hard work of a new edition of my History of Philosophy, which will almost be a new book, so great are the changes and additions. Polly sends her love to you and Bice.
"Yours very faithfully,
"G.H. LEWES."
* * * * *
Then after a long break, and after a new phase of my life had commenced, Lewes writes on the 14th of January, 1869, from "21, North Bank":—
* * * * *
"DEAR T.T.,—We did not meet in Germany because our plans were altogether changed. We passed all the time in the Black Forest, and came home through the Oberland. I did write to Salzburg however, and perhaps the letter is still there; but there was nothing in it.
"You know how fond we are of you, and the pleasure it always gives us to get a glimpse of you. (Not that we have not also very pleasant associations with your wife,[1] but she is as yet stranger to us of course.) But we went away in search of complete repose. And in the Black Forest there was not a soul to speak to, and we liked it so much as to stay on there.
[Footnote 1: I had married my second wife on the 29th of October, 1866.]
"We contemplate moving southwards in the spring, and if we go to Italy and come near Florence, we shall assuredly make a détour and come and see you. Polly wants to see Arezzo and Perugia. And I suppose we can still get a vetturino to take us that way to Rome? Don't want railways, if to be avoided. I don't think we can get away before March, for my researches are so absorbing, that, if health holds out, I must go on, if not, we shall pack up earlier. The worst of Lent is that one gets no theatres, and precisely because we never go to the theatre in London, we hugely enjoy it abroad. Yesterday we took the child of a friend of ours to a morning performance of the pantomime, and are utterly knocked up in consequence. Somehow or other abroad the theatre agrees with us. Polly sends the kindest remembrances to you and your wife. Whenever you want anything done in London, consider me an idle man.