I am perplexed how else to give you my company: your mother, I know,

could not yet truly welcome me; and I wish to be as patient as possible,

and not push for favors that are not offered. So I cannot come and ask

to take you out in her carriage, nor come and carry you away in mine.

We must try how fast we can hold hands at a distance.

I have kept up to where you have been reading in "Richard Feverel,"

though it has been a scramble: for I have less opportunity of reading, I

with my feet, than you without yours. In your book I have just got to

the smuggling away of General Monk in the perforated coffin, and my

sense of history capitulates in an abandonment of laughter. I yield! The

Gaul's invasion of Britain always becomes broad farce when he attempts

it. This in clever ludicrousness beats the unintentional comedy of

Victor Hugo's "John-Jim-Jack" as a name typical of Anglo-Saxon

christenings. But Dumas, through a dozen absurdities, knows apparently

how to stalk his quarry: so large a genius may play the fool and remain

wise.

You see I have given your author a warm welcome at last: and what about

you and mine? Tell me you love his women and I will not be jealous.

Indeed, outside him I don't know where to find a written English woman

of modern times whom I would care to meet, or could feel honestly bound

to look up to:--nowhere will I have her shaking her ringlets at me in

Dickens or Thackeray. Scott is simply not modern; and Hardy's women, if

they have nobility in them, get so cruelly broken on the wheel that you

get but the wrecks of them at last. It is only his charming baggages who

come to a good ending.

I like an author who has the courage and self-restraint to leave his noble

creations alive: too many try to ennoble them by death. For my part, if I

have to go out of life before you, I would gladly trust you to the hands

of Clara, or Rose, or Janet, or most of all Vittoria; though, to be

accurate, I fear they have all grown too old for you by now.

And you? have you any men to offer me in turn out of your literary

admirations, supposing you should die of a snapped ankle? Would you give

me to d'Artagnan for instance? Hardly, I suspect! But either choose me

some proxy hero, or get well and come to me! You will be very welcome

when you do. Sleep is making sandy eyes at me: good-night, dearest.




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