Either you wrote me word yourself, or some one told me, that you meant to
winter at Florence. So I shall direct to the Poste Restante there. You
see I am not settled at the Florence of Suffolk, called Ipswich, yet: but
I am perhaps as badly off; being in this most dull country house quite
alone; a grey mist, that seems teeming with half formed snow, all over
the landscape before my windows. It is also Sunday morning: ten of the
clock by the chime now sounding from the stables. I have fed on bread
and milk (a dreadfully opaque diet) and I await the morning Church in
humble hope. It will begin in half an hour. We keep early hours in the
country. So you will be able exactly to measure my aptitude and fullness
for letter writing by the quantity written now, before I bolt off for
hat, gloves, and prayerbook. I always put on my thickest great coat to
go to our Church in: as fungi grow in great numbers about the communion
table. And now, to turn away from Boulge, I must tell you that I went up
to London a month ago to see old Thackeray, who had come there to have
his eyes doctored. I stayed with him ten days and we were as usual
together. Alfred came up 'in transitu' from Boxley to Cheltenham; he
looked, and said he was, ill: I have never seen him so hopeless: and I am
really anxious to know how he is. . . . I remember the days of the
summer when you and I were together, quarrelling and laughing--these I
remember with pleasure. Our trip to Gravesend has left a perfume with
me. I can get up with you on that everlastingly stopping coach on which
we tried to travel from Gravesend to Maidstone that Sunday morning: worn
out with it, we got down at an inn, and then got up on another coach--and
an old smiling fellow passed us holding out his hat--and you said, 'That
old fellow must go about as Homer did'--and numberless other turns of
road and humour, which sometimes pass before me as I lie in bed. . . .
Now before I turn over, I will go and see about Church, as I hear no
bell, pack myself up as warmly as I can, and be off. So good-bye till
twelve o'clock.--'Tis five minutes past twelve by the stable clock: so I
saw as I returned from Church through the garden. Parson and Clerk got
through the service see saw like two men in a sawpit. In the garden I
see the heads of the snowdrops and crocuses just out of the earth.
Another year with its same flowers and topics to open upon us. Shenstone
somewhere sings, {146a}
Tedious again to mark the drizzling day,
Again to trace the same sad tracts of snow:
Or, lull'd by vernal airs, again survey
The selfsame hawthorn bud, and cowslips blow.
I rely on you and all your family sympathizing in this. So do I
sometimes: anyhow, people complimenting each other on the approach of
Spring and such like felicitations are very tiresome. Our very year is
of a paltry diameter. But this is not proper language for Mark Tapley,
whose greatest bore just now is having a bad pen; but the letter is
ended. So he is jolly and yours as ever.
_To S. Laurence_.
BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE,
_Decr_. 21/43.