Volume I Part 37 (1/2)
I beg to send my kind regards to Mrs. Chappell, and I shall hope to see her and you at Teddington in the long bright days. It would disappoint me indeed if a lasting friends.h.i.+p did not come of our business relations.
In the spring I trust I shall be able to report to you that I am ready to take my Farewells in London. Of this I am pretty certain: that I never will take them at all, unless with you on your own conditions.
With an affectionate regard for you and your brother, believe me always,
Very faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Rusden.]
”ALL THE YEAR ROUND” OFFICE, _Tuesday, 18th May, 1869._
MY DEAR MR. RUSDEN,
As I daresay some exaggerated accounts of my having been very ill have reached you, I begin with the true version of the case.
I daresay I _should_ have been very ill if I had not suddenly stopped my Farewell Readings when there were yet five-and-twenty remaining to be given. I was quite exhausted, and was warned by the doctors to stop (for the time) instantly. Acting on the advice, and going home into Kent for rest, I immediately began to recover, and within a fortnight was in the brilliant condition in which I can now--thank G.o.d--report myself.
I cannot thank you enough for your care of Plorn. I was quite prepared for his not settling down without a lurch or two. I still hope that he may take to colonial life. . . . In his letter to me about his leaving the station to which he got through your kindness, he expresses his grat.i.tude to you quite as strongly as if he had made a wonderful success, and seems to have acquired no distaste for anything but the one individual of whom he wrote that betrayed letter. But knowing the boy, I want to try him fully.
You know all our public news, such as it is, at least as well as I do.
Many people here (of whom I am one) do not like the look of American matters.
What I most fear is that the perpetual bl.u.s.ter of a party in the States will at last set the patient British back up. And if our people begin to bl.u.s.ter too, and there should come into existence an exasperating war-party on both sides, there will be great danger of a daily-widening breach.
The first shriek of the first engine that traverses the San Francisco Railroad from end to end will be a death-warning to the disciples of Jo Smith. The moment the Mormon bubble gets touched by neighbours it will break. Similarly, the red man's course is very nearly run. A scalped stoker is the outward and visible sign of his utter extermination. Not Quakers enough to reach from here to Jerusalem will save him by the term of a single year.
I don't know how it may be with you, but it is the fas.h.i.+on here to be absolutely certain that the Emperor of the French is fastened by Providence and the fates on a throne of adamant expressly constructed for him since the foundations of the universe were laid.
He knows better, and so do the police of Paris, and both powers must be grimly entertained by the resolute British belief, knowing what they have known, and doing what they have done through the last ten years.
What Victor Hugo calls ”the drop-curtain, behind which is constructing the great last act of the French Revolution,” has been a little shaken at the bottom lately, however. One seems to see the feet of a rather large chorus getting ready.
I enclose a letter for Plorn to your care, not knowing how to address him. Forgive me for so doing (I write to Alfred direct), and believe me, my dear Mr. Rusden,
Yours faithfully and much obliged.
[Sidenote: Miss Emily Jolly.]
OFFICE OF ”ALL THE YEAR ROUND,”
_Thursday, 22nd July, 1869._
DEAR MISS JOLLY,
Mr. Wills has retired from here (for rest and to recover his health), and my son, who occupies his place, brought me this morning a story[104]
in MS., with a request that I would read it. I read it with extraordinary interest, and was greatly surprised by its uncommon merit.
On asking whence it came, I found that it came from you!