On the day of our departure, I thought we were going--backward--at a
most triumphant pace; but yesterday we rather recovered. The painters
still mislaid their brushes every five minutes, and chiefly whistled in
the intervals; and the carpenters (especially the Pantechnicon)
continued to look sideways with one eye down pieces of wood, as if they
were absorbed in the contemplation of the perspective of the Thames
Tunnel, and had entirely relinquished the vanities of this transitory
world; but still there was an improvement, and it is confirmed to-day.
White lime is to be seen in kitchens, the bath-room is gradually
resolving itself from an abstract idea into a fact--youthful, extremely
youthful, but a fact. The drawing-room encourages no hope whatever, nor
the study. Staircase painted. Irish labourers howling in the
school-room, but I don't know why. I see nothing. Gardener vigorously
lopping the trees, and really letting in the light and air. Foreman
sweet-tempered but uneasy. Inimitable hovering gloomily through the
premises all day, with an idea that a little more work is done when he
flits, bat-like, through the rooms, than when there is no one looking
on. Catherine all over paint. Mister McCann, encountering Inimitable in
doorways, fades obsequiously into areas, and there encounters him again,
and swoons with confusion. Several reams of blank paper constantly
spread on the drawing-room walls, and sliced off again, which looks like
insanity. Two men still clinking at the new stair-rails. I think they
must be learning a tune; I cannot make out any other object in their
proceedings.
Since writing the above, I have been up there again, and found the young
paper-hanger putting on his slippers, and looking hard at the walls of
the servants' room at the top of the house, as if he meant to paper it
one of these days. May Heaven prosper his intentions!
When do you come back? I hope soon.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Charles Dickens.]