Cour de Vienne, Mantua.
My dear George,--I 've only five minutes to give you; for the horses are
at the door, and we 're to start at once. I have a great budget for you
when we meet; for we've been over the Tyrol and Styria, spent ten days
at Venice, and "done" Verona and the rest of them,--John Murray in hand.
We 're now bound for Milan, where I want you to meet us on our arrival,
with an invitation from my mother, asking Josephine to the villa. I 've
told her that the note is already there awaiting her, and for mercy'
sake let there be no disappointment.
This dispensation is a horrible tedious affair; but I hope we shall have
it now within the present month. The interval _she_ desires to spend
in perfect retirement, so that the villa is exactly the place, and the
attention will be well timed.
Of course they ought to receive her as well as possible. Mary Anne,
I know, requires no hint; but try and persuade the governor to
trim himself up a little, and if you could make away with that old
flea-bitten robe be calls his dressing-gown, you 'd do the State
some service. Look to the servants, too, and smarten them up; a cold
perspiration breaks over me when I think of Betty Cobb!
I rely on you to think of and provide for everything, and am ever your
attached friend,
James Dodd.
I changed my last five-hundred-pound note at Venice, so that I must
bring the campaign to a close immediately.