I am afraid you will think me an abandoned ruffian for not having
acknowledged your more than handsome warm-hearted letter before now.
But, as usual, I have been so occupied, and so glad to get up from my
desk and wallow in the mud (at present about six feet deep here), that
pleasure correspondence is just the last thing in the world I have had
leisure to take to. Business correspondence with all sorts and
conditions of men and women, O my Mary! is one of the dragons I am
perpetually fighting; and the more I throw it, the more it stands upon
its hind legs, rampant, and throws me.
Yes, on that bright cold morning when I left Peterboro', I felt that the
best thing I could do was to say that word that I would do anything in
an honest way to avoid saying, at one blow, and make off. I was so sorry
to leave you all! You can scarcely imagine what a chill and blank I felt
on that Monday evening at Rockingham. It was so sad to me, and
engendered a constraint so melancholy and peculiar, that I doubt if I
were ever much more out of sorts in my life. Next morning, when it was
light and sparkling out of doors, I felt more at home again. But when I
came in from seeing poor dear Watson's grave, Mrs. Watson asked me to go
up in the gallery, which I had last seen in the days of our merry play.
We went up, and walked into the very part he had made and was so fond
of, and she looked out of one window and I looked out of another, and
for the life of me I could not decide in my own heart whether I should
console or distress her by going and taking her hand, and saying
something of what was naturally in my mind. So I said nothing, and we
came out again, and on the whole perhaps it was best; for I have no
doubt we understood each other very well without speaking a word.
Sheffield was a tremendous success and an admirable audience. They made
me a present of table-cutlery after the reading was over; and I came
away by the mail-train within three-quarters of an hour, changing my
dress and getting on my wrappers partly in the fly, partly at the inn,
partly on the platform. When we got among the Lincolnshire fens it began
to snow. That changed to sleet, that changed to rain; the frost was all
gone as we neared London, and the mud has all come. At two or three
o'clock in the morning I stopped at Peterboro' again, and thought of you
all disconsolately. The lady in the refreshment-room was very hard upon
me, harder even than those fair enslavers usually are. She gave me a cup
of tea, as if I were a hyena and she my cruel keeper with a strong
dislike to me. I mingled my tears with it, and had a petrified bun of
enormous antiquity in miserable meekness.
It is clear to me that climates are gradually assimilating over a great
part of the world, and that in the most miserable part of our year there
is very little to choose between London and Paris, except that London is
not so muddy. I have never seen dirtier or worse weather than we have
had here since I returned. In desperation I went out to the Barrieres
last Sunday on a headlong walk, and came back with my very eyebrows
smeared with mud. Georgina is usually invisible during the walking time
of the day. A turned-up nose may be seen in the midst of splashes, but
nothing more.
I am settling to work again, and my horrible restlessness immediately
assails me. It belongs to such times. As I was writing the preceding
page, it suddenly came into my head that I would get up and go to
Calais. I don't know why; the moment I got there I should want to go
somewhere else. But, as my friend the Boots says (see Christmas number
"Household Words"): "When you come to think what a game you've been up
to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a chap
you were, and how it's always yesterday with you, or else to-morrow, and
never to-day, that's where it is."
My dear Mary, would you favour me with the name and address of the
professor that taught you writing, for I want to improve myself? Many a
hand have I seen with many characteristics of beauty in it--some loopy,
some dashy, some large, some small, some sloping to the right, some
sloping to the left, some not sloping at all; but what I like in _your_
hand, Mary, is its plainness, it is like print. Them as runs may read
just as well as if they stood still. I should have thought it was
copper-plate if I hadn't known you. They send all sorts of messages from
here, and so do I, with my best regards to Bedgy and pardner and the
blessed babbies. When shall we meet again, I wonder, and go somewhere!
Ah!
Believe me ever, my dear Mary,
Yours truly and affectionately,
Joe.
(That doesn't look plain.)
JOE.
[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]
"HOUSEHOLD WORDS," _Friday, Feb. 8th, 1856._