I take upon myself to answer your letter to Catherine, as I am referred
to in it.
The "Walk" is not my writing. It is very well done by a close imitator.
Why I found myself so "used up" after "Hard Times" I scarcely know,
perhaps because I intended to do nothing in that way for a year, when
the idea laid hold of me by the throat in a very violent manner, and
because the compression and close condensation necessary for that
disjointed form of publication gave me perpetual trouble. But I really
was tired, which is a result so very incomprehensible that I can't
forget it. I have passed an idle autumn in a beautiful situation, and am
dreadfully brown and big. For further particulars of Boulogne, see "Our
French Watering Place," in this present week of "Household Words," which
contains a faithful portrait of our landlord there.
If you carry out that bright Croydon idea, rely on our glad
co-operation, only let me know all about it a few days beforehand; and
if you feel equal to the contemplation of the moustache (which has been
cut lately) it will give us the heartiest pleasure to come and meet you.
This in spite of the terrific duffery of the Crystal Palace. It is a
very remarkable thing in itself; but to have so very large a building
continually crammed down one's throat, and to find it a new page in "The
Whole Duty of Man" to go there, is a little more than even I (and you
know how amiable I am) can endure.
You always like to know what I am going to do, so I beg to announce that
on the 19th of December I am going to read the "Carol" at Reading, where
I undertook the presidency of the Literary Institution on the death of
poor dear Talfourd. Then I am going on to Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, to
do the like for another institution, which is one of the few remaining
pleasures of Macready's life. Then I am coming home for Christmas Day.
Then I believe I must go to Bradford, in Yorkshire, to read once more to
a little fireside party of four thousand. Then I am coming home again
to get up a new little version of "The Children in the Wood" (yet to be
written, by-the-bye), for the children to act on Charley's birthday.
I am full of mixed feeling about the war--admiration of our valiant men,
burning desires to cut the Emperor of Russia's throat, and something
like despair to see how the old cannon-smoke and blood-mists obscure the
wrongs and sufferings of the people at home. When I consider the
Patriotic Fund on the one hand, and on the other the poverty and
wretchedness engendered by cholera, of which in London alone, an
infinitely larger number of English people than are likely to be slain
in the whole Russian war have miserably and needlessly died--I feel as
if the world had been pushed back five hundred years. If you are reading
new books just now, I think you will be interested with a controversy
between Whewell and Brewster, on the question of the shining orbs about
us being inhabited or no. Whewell's book is called, "On the Plurality of
Worlds;" Brewster's, "More Worlds than One." I shouldn't wonder if you
know all about them. They bring together a vast number of points of
great interest in natural philosophy, and some very curious reasoning on
both sides, and leave the matter pretty much where it was.
We had a fine absurdity in connection with our luggage, when we left
Boulogne. The barometer had within a few hours fallen about a foot, in
honour of the occasion, and it was a tremendous night, blowing a gale of
wind and raining a little deluge. The luggage (pretty heavy, as you may
suppose), in a cart drawn by two horses, stuck fast in a rut in our
field, and couldn't be moved. Our man, made a lunatic by the extremity
of the occasion, ran down to the town to get two more horses to help it
out, when he returned with those horses and carter B, the most beaming
of men; carter A, who had been soaking all the time by the disabled
vehicle, descried in carter B the acknowledged enemy of his existence,
took his own two horses out, and walked off with them! After which, the
whole set-out remained in the field all night, and we came to town,
thirteen individuals, with one comb and a pocket-handkerchief. I was
upside-down during the greater part of the passage.
Dr. Rae's account of Franklin's unfortunate party is deeply interesting;
but I think hasty in its acceptance of the details, particularly in the
statement that they had eaten the dead bodies of their companions, which
I don't believe. Franklin, on a former occasion, was almost starved to
death, had gone through all the pains of that sad end, and lain down to
die, and no such thought had presented itself to any of them. In famous
cases of shipwreck, it is very rare indeed that any person of any
humanising education or refinement resorts to this dreadful means of
prolonging life. In open boats, the coarsest and commonest men of the
shipwrecked party have done such things; but I don't remember more than
one instance in which an officer had overcome the loathing that the idea
had inspired. Dr. Rae talks about their _cooking_ these remains too. I
should like to know where the fuel came from.
Kindest love and best regards.
Ever, my dear Mrs. Watson, affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Clarkson Stanfield, R.A.]