_Monte Catini,
September._
Oh how eagerly I read of your safe crossing and arrival in London,
dear! I am so glad you are at Easthope’s. I know every nook and corner
thereabouts, so I can think of you in familiar surroundings, passing
through the little hallway--isn’t it a sort of toy play-house? Have
you learned the postman’s rap yet? I can hear him now coming gradually
down the street from house to house, and finally knocking, bang, bang,
on the front door. And then when you go out, Easthope takes down his
whistle and gives a sharp toot, once for a growler, twice (two short
ones) for a two-wheeler, and from the rank on the other side of
Piccadilly, along the green park, there hurries a hansom and you get
in. Easthope closes the flap in front and then looks inquiringly to
know where he shall tell the cabby to go, or else the cabby himself
opens his little trap (on a rainy day letting in a rivulet) and waits
to be told--Eaton Square, Victoria Station, the stores, or the Gaiety
Theatre--and off you start, the little bells at the horse’s collar
ringing, down the street and into the stream of Piccadilly.
I can see you dining, or breakfasting with muffins and marmalade, the
table so spick and span, and Easthope so intelligent and thoughtful.
But then, he is one in a million, really. I wonder if there is the
same housemaid whom I used to hear before daylight beginning her work
sweeping and cleaning, in the way it was done a century ago. She was
so hard-working and so faithful!
It is not the same boy, I am pretty sure, that helps Easthope, for he
no sooner gets one trained up in the way he should go than some lodger
finds him so good that he takes him away, and Easthope patiently
begins to turn another lout into a footman,--a worm into a butterfly!
Go through Lansdowne Passage some day--it is a short and curious way
of getting to Bond and Dover Streets. Turn into Curzon Street to its
very end and walk through the passageway between Lansdowne House and
Devonshire House to Hay Hill. It is a mysterious little alley to be in
the heart of a great city, the scene of a murder, they say. In my
time it was kept and patrolled by a one-eyed, uncanny-looking old
sweeper who used to waylay me for pennies. When the sweep left, he
would leave his broom behind leaning against the wall to show he
intended to come back, and so maintained his right against any other
who might try to take his place. I send you a little silver broom, my
broom, dear. Take good care of it and don’t let anyone else carry it
away.
I have woven a gossamer web of thoughts, oh so beautiful and delicate
and fine, like threads of gold; and you are caught and tangled in it
and you struggle and struggle, and try to get away, but the meshes of
the web are too strong, and all in vain. Then I, like a ferocious
great spider, come quickly across the web and catch you, and there you
are to stay--in my arms! And so you try to escape and go to Paris and
the Prince, yet there you are in my arms--it is altogether puzzling
but true.
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