I wish you to watch these closely, judging them as a whole,
and treating them as I have asked you, and favour me with
your damnatory advice. I look up at your portrait, and it
frowns upon me. You seem to view me with reproach. The
expression is excellent; Fanny wept when she saw it, and you
know she is not given to the melting mood. She seems really
better; I have a touch of fever again, I fancy overwork, and
to-day, when I have overtaken my letters, I shall blow on my
pipe. Tell Mrs. S. I have been playing LE CHANT D'AMOUR
lately, and have arranged it, after awful trouble, rather
prettily for two pipes; and it brought her before me with an
effect scarce short of hallucination. I could hear her voice
in every note; yet I had forgot the air entirely, and began
to pipe it from notes as something new, when I was brought up
with a round turn by this reminiscence. We are now very much
installed; the dining-room is done, and looks lovely. Soon
we shall begin to photograph and send you our circumstances.
My room is still a howling wilderness. I sleep on a platform
in a window, and strike my mosquito bar and roll up my
bedclothes every morning, so that the bed becomes by day a
divan. A great part of the floor is knee-deep in books, yet
nearly all the shelves are filled, alas! It is a place to
make a pig recoil, yet here are my interminable labours begun
daily by lamp-light, and sometimes not yet done when the lamp
has once more to be lighted. The effect of pictures in this
place is surprising. They give great pleasure.


JUNE 21ST.