Volume Ii Part 18 (1/2)
Yesterday I burnt, in the field at Gad's Hill, the acc.u.mulated letters and papers of twenty years. They sent up a smoke like the genie when he got out of the casket on the seash.o.r.e; and as it was an exquisite day when I began, and rained very heavily when I finished, I suspect my correspondence of having overcast the face of the heavens.
Ever faithfully.
P.S.--Kind regard to Mr. and Mrs. Novelli.[6]
I have just sent out for _The Globe_. No news.
Hullah's daughter (an artist) tells me that certain female students have addressed the Royal Academy, entreating them to find a place for their education. I think it a capital move, for which I can do something popular and telling in _The Register_. Adelaide Procter is active in the business, and has a copy of their letter. Will you write to her for that, and anything else she may have about it, telling her that I strongly approve, and want to help them myself?
[Sidenote: The Hon. Mrs. Watson.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Friday Night, Sept. 14th, 1860._
MY DEAR MRS. WATSON,
I lose no time in answering your letter; and first as to business, the school in the High Town at Boulogne was excellent. The boys all English, the two proprietors an old Eton master and one of the Protestant clergymen of the town. The teaching unusually sound and good. The manner and conduct developed in the boys quite admirable. But I have never seen a gentleman so perfectly acquainted with boy-nature as the Eton master. There was a perfect understanding between him and his charges; nothing pedantic on his part, nothing slavish on their parts. The result was, that either with him or away from him, the boys combined an ease and frankness with a modesty and sense of responsibility that was really above all praise. Alfred went from there to a great school at Wimbledon, where they train for India and the artillery and engineers. Sydney went from there to Mr. Barrow, at Southsea. In both instances the new masters wrote to me of their own accord, bearing quite unsolicited testimony to the merits of the old, and expressing their high recognition of what they had done. These things speak for themselves.
Sydney has just pa.s.sed his examination as a naval cadet and come home, all eyes and gold b.u.t.tons. He has twelve days' leave before going on board the training-s.h.i.+p. Katie and her husband are in France, and seem likely to remain there for an indefinite period. Mary is on a month's visit in Scotland; Georgina, Frank, and Plorn are at home here; and we all want Mary and her little dog back again. I have sold Tavistock House, am making this rather complete in its way, and am on the restless eve of beginning a new big book; but mean to have a furnished house in town (in some accessible quarter) from February or so to June. May we meet there.
Your handwriting is always so full of pleasant memories to me, that when I took it out of the post-office at Rochester this afternoon it quite stirred my heart. But we must not think of old times as sad times, or regard them as anything but the fathers and mothers of the present. We must all climb steadily up the mountain after the talking bird, the singing tree, and the yellow water, and must all bear in mind that the previous climbers who were scared into looking back got turned into black stone.
Mary Boyle was here a little while ago, as affectionate at heart as ever, as young, and as pleasant. Of course we talked often of you. So let me know when you are established in Halfmoon Street, and I shall be truly delighted to come and see you.
For my attachments are strong attachments and never weaken. In right of bygones, I feel as if ”all Northamptons.h.i.+re” belonged to me, as all Northumberland did to Lord Bateman in the ballad. In memory of your warming your feet at the fire in that waste of a waiting-room when I read at Brighton, I have ever since taken that watering-place to my bosom as I never did before. And you and Switzerland are always one to me, and always inseparable.
Charley was heard of yesterday, from Shanghai, going to j.a.pan, intending to meet his brother Walter at Calcutta, and having an idea of beguiling the time between whiles by asking to be taken as an amateur with the English Chinese forces. Everybody caressed him and asked him everywhere, and he seemed to go. With kind regards, my dear Mrs. Watson,
Ever affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Edmund Yates.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Sunday, Sept. 23rd, 1860._
ON THE DEATH OF HIS MOTHER.
MY DEAR E. Y.,
I did not write to you in your bereavement, because I knew that the girls had written to you, and because I instinctively shrunk from making a form of what was so real. _You_ knew what a loving and faithful remembrance I always had of your mother as a part of my youth--no more capable of restoration than my youth itself. All the womanly goodness, grace, and beauty of my drama went out with her. To the last I never could hear her voice without emotion. I think of her as of a beautiful part of my own youth, and this dream that we are all dreaming seems to darken.
But it is not to say this that I write now. It comes to the point of my pen in spite of me.
”Holding up the Mirror” is in next week's number. I have taken out all this funeral part of it. Not because I disliked it (for, indeed, I thought it the best part of the paper), but because it rather grated on me, going over the proof at that time, as a remembrance that would be better reserved a little while. Also because it made rather a mixture of yourself as an individual, with something that does not belong or attach to you as an individual. You can have the MS.; and as a part of a paper describing your own juvenile remembrances of a theatre, there it is, needing no change or adaption.
Ever faithfully.
[Sidenote: Miss d.i.c.kens.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT, _Sunday, Sept. 23rd, 1860._
MY DEAREST MAMIE,