Coming here from a walk this afternoon, I found your letter of yesterday
awaiting me. I send this reply by my brother Alfred, who is here, and
who returns home to-morrow. You should get it at the office early on
Tuesday.
I will go to work to-morrow, and will send you, please God, an article
by Tuesday's post, which you will get on Wednesday forenoon. Look
carefully to the proof, as I shall not have time to receive it for
correction. When you arrange about sending your parcels, will you
ascertain, and communicate to me, the prices of telegraph messages? It
will save me trouble, having no foreign servant (though French is in
that respect a trump), and may be useful on an emergency.
I have two floors here--_entresol_ and first--in a doll's house, but
really pretty within, and the view without astounding, as you will say
when you come. The house is on the Exposition side, about half a quarter
of a mile above Franconi's, of course on the other side of the way, and
close to the Jardin d'Hiver. Each room has but one window in it, but we
have no fewer than six rooms (besides the back ones) looking on the
Champs Elysees, with the wonderful life perpetually flowing up and down.
We have no spare-room, but excellent stowage for the whole family,
including a capital dressing-room for me, and a really slap-up kitchen
near the stairs. Damage for the whole, seven hundred francs a month.
But, sir--but--when Georgina, the servants, and I were here for the
first night (Catherine and the rest being at Boulogne), I heard Georgy
restless--turned out--asked: "What's the matter?" "Oh, it's dreadfully
dirty. I can't sleep for the smell of my room." Imagine all my
stage-managerial energies multiplied at daybreak by a thousand. Imagine
the porter, the porter's wife, the porter's wife's sister, a feeble
upholsterer of enormous age from round the corner, and all his workmen
(four boys), summoned. Imagine the partners in the proprietorship of the
apartment, and martial little man with Francois-Prussian beard, also
summoned. Imagine your inimitable chief briefly explaining that dirt is
not in his way, and that he is driven to madness, and that he devotes
himself to no coat and a dirty face, until the apartment is thoroughly
purified. Imagine co-proprietors at first astounded, then urging that
"it's not the custom," then wavering, then affected, then confiding
their utmost private sorrows to the Inimitable, offering new carpets
(accepted), embraces (not accepted), and really responding like French
bricks. Sallow, unbrushed, unshorn, awful, stalks the Inimitable through
the apartment until last night. Then all the improvements were
concluded, and I do really believe the place to be now worth eight or
nine hundred francs per month. You must picture it as the smallest place
you ever saw, but as exquisitely cheerful and vivacious, clean as
anything human can be, and with a moving panorama always outside, which
is Paris in itself.
You mention a letter from Miss Coutts as to Mrs. Brown's illness, which
you say is "enclosed to Mrs. Charles Dickens."
It is not enclosed, and I am mad to know where she writes from that I
may write to her. Pray set this right, for her uneasiness will be
greatly intensified if she have no word from me.
I thought we were to give L1,700 for the house at Gad's Hill. Are we
bound to L1,800? Considering the improvements to be made, it is a little
too much, isn't it? I have a strong impression that at the utmost we
were only to divide the difference, and not to pass L1,750. You will set
me right if I am wrong. But I don't think I am.
I write very hastily, with the piano playing and Alfred looking for
this.
Ever, my dear Wills, faithfully.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. H. Wills.]
49, AVENUE DES CHAMPS ELYSEES,
_Wednesday, Oct. 24th, 1855._