I am concerned to hear that you are ill, that you sit down before fires
and shiver, and that you have stated times for doing so, like the demons
in the melodramas, and that you mean to take a week to get well in.
Make haste about it, like a dear fellow, and keep up your spirits,
because I have made a bargain with Stanny and Webster that they shall
come to Boulogne to-morrow week, Thursday the 10th, and stay a week. And
you know how much pleasure we shall all miss if you are not among us--at
least for some part of the time.
If you find any unusually light appearance in the air at Brighton, it is
a distant refraction (I have no doubt) of the gorgeous and shining
surface of Tavistock House, now transcendently painted. The theatre
partition is put up, and is a work of such terrific solidity, that I
suppose it will be dug up, ages hence, from the ruins of London, by
that Australian of Macaulay's who is to be impressed by its ashes. I
have wandered through the spectral halls of the Tavistock mansion two
nights, with feelings of the profoundest depression. I have breakfasted
there, like a criminal in Pentonville (only not so well). It is more
like Westminster Abbey by midnight than the lowest-spirited man--say you
at present for example--can well imagine.
There has been a wonderful robbery at Folkestone, by the new manager of
the Pavilion, who succeeded Giovannini. He had in keeping L16,000 of a
foreigner's, and bolted with it, as he supposed, but in reality with
only L1,400 of it. The Frenchman had previously bolted with the whole,
which was the property of his mother. With him to England the Frenchman
brought a "lady," who was, all the time and at the same time,
endeavouring to steal all the money from him and bolt with it herself.
The details are amazing, and all the money (a few pounds excepted) has
been got back.
They will be full of sympathy and talk about you when I get home, and I
shall tell them that I send their loves beforehand. They are all
enclosed. The moment you feel hearty, just write me that word by post. I
shall be so delighted to receive it.
Ever, my dear Boy, your affectionate Friend.
[Sidenote: Mr. Walter Savage Landor.]
VILLA DES MOULINEAUX, BOULOGNE,
_Saturday Evening, July 5th, 1856._