I am very much obliged to you, I assure you, for your frank and full
reply to my note. Nothing could be more satisfactory, and I have to-day
seen Mr. Gibson and placed my two small representatives under his
charge. His manner is exactly what you describe him. I was greatly
pleased with his genuineness altogether.
We remain here until the tenth of next month, when I am going to desert
my wife and family and run about Italy until Christmas. If I can execute
any little commission for you or Mrs. Delane--in the Genoa street of
silversmiths, or anywhere else--I shall be delighted to do so. I have
been in the receipt of several letters from Macready lately, and
rejoice to find him quite himself again, though I have great misgivings
that he will lose his eldest boy before he can be got to India.
Mrs. Dickens and her sister are proud of your message, and beg their
kind regards to be forwarded in return; my other half being particularly
comforted and encouraged by your account of Mr. Gibson. In this charge I
am to include Mrs. Delane, who, I hope, will make an exchange of
remembrances, and give me hers for mine.
I never saw anything so ridiculous as this place at present. They
expected the Emperor ten or twelve days ago, and put up all manner of
triumphal arches made of evergreens, which look like tea-leaves now, and
will take a withered and weird appearance hardly to be foreseen, long
before the twenty-fifth, when the visit is vaguely expected to come off.
In addition to these faded garlands all over the leading streets, there
are painted eagles hoisted over gateways and sprawling across a hundred
ways, which have been washed out by the rain and are now being blistered
by the sun, until they look horribly ludicrous. And a number of our
benighted compatriots who came over to see a perfect blaze of _fetes_,
go wandering among these shrivelled preparations and staring at ten
thousand flag-poles without any flags upon them, with a kind of
indignant curiosity and personal injury quite irresistible. With many
thanks,
Very faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. H. Wills.]