Volume I Part 16 (1/2)

P.S.--Sometimes I think ----'s bill will be too long to be added up until Babbage's calculating machine shall be improved and finished.

Sometimes that there is not paper enough ready made, to carry it over and bring it forward upon.

I dream, also, of the workmen every night. They make faces at me, and won't do anything.

[Sidenote: Mr. Austen Henry Layard.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, _16th December, 1851._

MY DEAR LAYARD,[52]

I want to renew your recollection of ”the last time we parted”--not at Wapping Old Stairs, but at Miss Coutts's--when we vowed to be more intimate after all nations should have departed from Hyde Park, and I should be able to emerge from my cave on the sea-sh.o.r.e.

Can you, and will you, be in town on Wednesday, the last day of the present old year? If yes, will you dine with us at a quarter after six, and see the New Year in with such extemporaneous follies of an exploded sort (in genteel society) as may occur to us? Both Mrs. d.i.c.kens and I would be really delighted if this should find you free to give us the pleasure of your society.

Believe me always, very faithfully yours.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] ”Not So Bad As We Seem; or, Many Sides to a Character.”

[45] ”Not So Bad As We Seem.”

[46] An embroidered blotting-book given by Mrs. Cowden Clarke.

[47] One of the series in ”The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines,”

dedicated to Charles d.i.c.kens.

[48] Wilmot, the clever veteran prompter, who was engaged to accompany the acting-tours.

[49] A wooden one.

[50] Miss Eden had a cottage at Broadstairs, and was residing there at this time.

[51] Tavistock House.

[52] Now Sir Austen Henry Layard.

1852.

[Sidenote: Mr. James Bower Harrison.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, _5th January, 1852._

DEAR SIR,