My dear Mrs. Cowden Clarke,—Ah, those were days indeed, when we were so fatigued at dinner that we couldn’t speak, and so revived at supper that we couldn’t go to bed: when wild in inns the noble savage ran,—and all the world was a stage gas-lighted in a double sense,—by the Young Gas and the old one! When Emmeline Montague (now Compton, and the mother of two children) came to rehearse in our new comedy the other night, I nearly fainted. The gush of recollection was so overpowering that I couldn’t bear it.
I use the portfolio6 for managerial papers still. That’s something.
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6 The Blotting-book previously mentioned. |
| CHARLES DICKENS AND HIS LETTERS. | 329 |
But all this does not thank you for your book. I have not got it yet (being here with Mrs. Dickens, who has been very unwell) but I shall be in town early in the week, and shall bring it down to read quietly on these hills, where the wind blows as freshly as if there were no Popes and no Cardinals whatsoever—nothing the matter anywhere. I thank you a thousand times, beforehand, for the pleasure you are going to give me. I am full of faith. Your sister Emma,—she is doing work of some sort on the P.S. side of the boxes, in some dark theatre, I know,—but where I wonder? W.7 has not proposed to her yet, has he? I understood he was going to offer his hand and heart, and lay his leg8 at her feet.
