If intentions were only acts, the quantity of letter paper covered with my scrawl which you should have had by this time should have been something wonderful. But I live at high pressure, with always a number of things crying out to be done, and those that are nearest and call loudest get done, while the others, too often, don't. However, this day shall not go by without my wishing you all happiness in the new year, and that wish you know necessarily includes all belonging to you, and my love to them.
I have been long wanting to send you the photographs of myself, wife, and boy, but one reason or other (Nettie's incessant ill-health being, I am sorry to say, the chief) has incessantly delayed the procuring of the last. However, at length, we have obtained a tolerably successful one, though you must not suppose that Noel has the rather washed out look of his portrait. That comes of his fair hair and blue gray eyes—for the monkey is like his mother and has not an atom of resemblance to me.
He was two years old yesterday, and is the apple of his father's eye and chief deity of his mother's pantheon, which at present contains only a god and goddess. Another is expected shortly, however, so that there is no fear of Olympus looking empty.
…Here is the 26th of January and no letter gone yet…Since I began this letter I have been very busy with lectures and other sorts of work, and besides, my whole household almost has been ill—chicks with whooping cough, mother with influenza, a servant ditto. I don't know whether you have such things in Tennessee.
Let me see what has happened to me that will interest you since I last wrote. Did I tell you that I have finally made up my mind to stop in London—the Government having made it worth my while to continue in Jermyn Street? They give me 600 pounds sterling a year now, with a gradual rise up to 800 pounds sterling, which I reckon as just enough to live on if one keeps very quiet. However, it is the greatest possible blessing to be paid at last, and to be free from all the abominable anxieties which attend a fluctuating income. I can tell you I have had a sufficiently hard fight of it.
When Nettie and I were young fools we agreed we would marry whenever we had 200 pounds sterling a year. Well, we have had more than twice that to begin upon, and how it is we have kept out of the Bench is a mystery to me. But we HAVE, and I am inclined to think that the Missus has got a private hoard (out of the puddings) for Noel.
I shall leave Nettie to finish this rambling letter. In the meanwhile, my best love to you and yours, and mind you are a better correspondent than your affectionate brother,
Tom.
[To Professor Leuckart.]
The Government School of Mines, Jermyn Street, London, January 30, 1859.