Some unaccountable delay in the transmission here of the parcel which
contained your letter, caused me to come into the receipt of it a whole
week after its date. I immediately wrote to Miss Coutts, who has written
to you, and I hope some good may come of it. I know it will not be her
fault if none does. I was very much concerned to read your account of
poor Mrs. Warner, and to read her own plain and unaffected account of
herself. Pray assure her of my cordial sympathy and remembrance, and of
my earnest desire to do anything in my power to help to put her mind at
ease.
We are living in a beautiful little country place here, where I have
been hard at work ever since I came, and am now (after an interval of a
week's rest) going to work again to finish "Bleak House." Kate and
Georgina send their kindest loves to you, and Miss Macready, and all the
rest. They look forward, I assure you, to their Sherborne visit, when
I--a mere forlorn wanderer--shall be roaming over the Alps into Italy. I
saw "The Midsummer Night's Dream" of the Opera Comique, done here (very
well) last night. The way in which a poet named Willyim Shay Kes Peer
gets drunk in company with Sir John Foll Stayffe, fights with a noble
'night, Lor Latimeer (who is in love with a maid-of-honour you may have
read of in history, called Mees Oleevia), and promises not to do so any
more on observing symptoms of love for him in the Queen of England, is
very remarkable. Queen Elizabeth, too, in the profound and impenetrable
disguise of a black velvet mask, two inches deep by three broad,
following him into taverns and worse places, and enquiring of persons of
doubtful reputation for "the sublime Williams," was inexpressibly
ridiculous. And yet the nonsense was done with a sense quite admirable.
I have been very much struck by the book you sent me. It is one of the
wisest, the manliest, and most serviceable I ever read. I am reading it
again with the greatest pleasure and admiration.
Ever most affectionately yours,
My dear Macready.
[Sidenote: The Hon. Mrs. Watson.]
VILLA DES MOULINEAUX, BOULOGNE,
_Saturday, Aug. 27th, 1853._