I have been wondering some time if you were gone abroad again or not. I
go to London toward the end of April: can't you manage to wait in
England? I suppose you will only be a day or two in London before you
put foot in rail, coach, or on steamer for the Continent; and I excuse my
own dastardly inactivity in not going up to meet you and shake hands with
you before you start, by my old excuse; that had you but let me know of
your coming to England, I should have seen you. This is no excuse; but
don't put me out of your books as a frog-hearted wretch. I believe that
I, as men usually do, grow more callous and indifferent daily: but I am
sure I would as soon travel to see your face, and my dear old Alfred's,
as any one's. But beside my inactivity, I have a sort of horror of
plunging into London; which, except for a shilling concert, and a peep at
the pictures, is desperate to me. This is my fault, not London's: I know
it is a lassitude and weakness of soul that no more loves the ceaseless
collision of Beaux Esprits, than my obese ill-jointed carcase loves
bundling about in coaches and steamers. And, as you say, the dirt, both
of earth and atmosphere, in London, is a real bore. But enough of that.
It is sufficient that it is more pleasant to me to sit in a clean room,
with a clear air outside, and hedges just coming into leaf, rather than
in the Tavistock or an upper floor of Charlotte Street. And how much
better one's books read in country stillness, than amid the noise of
wheels, crowds, etc., or after hearing them eternally discussed by no
less active tongues! In the mean time, we of Woodbridge are not without
our luxuries; I enclose you a play-bill just received; _I_ being one of
the distinguished Members who have bespoken the play. We sha'n't all sit
together in a Box, but go dispersed about the house with our wives and
daughters.
White {201} I remember very well. His Tragedy I have seen advertised. He
used to write good humorous things in Blackwood: among them, Hints to
Authors, which are worth looking at when you get hold of an odd volume of
Blackwood. I have got Thackeray's last book, {202} but have not yet been
able to read it. Has any one heard of old Morton, and of his arrival at
Stamboul, as he called it? . . .
Now it is a fact that as I lay in bed this morning, before I got your
letter, I thought to myself I would write to Alfred. For he sent me a
very kind letter two months ago; and I should have written to him before,
but that I have looked in vain for a paper I wanted to send him. But,
find it or not (and it is of no consequence) I will write to him very
shortly. You do not mention if he be with you at Cheltenham. He spoke
to me of being ill. . . . I think you should publish some of your poems.
They must be admired and liked; and you would gain a place to which you
are entitled, and which it offends no man to hold. I should like much to
see them again. The whole _subjective_ scheme (damn the word!) of the
poems I did not like; but that is quite a genuine mould of your soul; and
there are heaps of single lines, couplets, and stanzas, which would
consume all the ---, ---, and ---, like stubble. N.B. An acute man
would ask how I should like _you_, if I do not like your own genuine
reflex of _you_? But a less acute, and an acuter, man, will feel or see
the difference.
So here is a good sheet full; and at all events, if I am too lazy to
travel to you, I am not too lazy to write such a letter as few of one's
contemporaries will now take the pains to write to one. I beg you to
remember me to all your noble family, and believe me yours ever,