I am deep in Froude's last volumes of "Carlyle's Life in London". Folks are grumbling that they have had enough & too much of Carlyle & _his_ grumblings and sarcasms. But he is an inexhaustibly interesting figure to me, & will remain so in the long run to the world, I am persuaded. It grieves me that he should have been so cruelly unjust to himself as a husband--that remorse, those bitter self-reproaches, were undeserved, were altogether morbid: he was not only an infinitely better husband than she was wife: he was wonderfully affectionate & tender & just--& as to his temper & irritable nerves, she knew what she was about when she married him. Herby was walking through the British Museum the other day with a friend when a group, a ready-made picture, struck him--it was a young student-sculptress, a graceful girl high on a pile of boxes modelling in clay a copy of an antique statue, & standing below, looking up at her, was a young sculptor in his blouse, criticising her work with much animation & gesture; the background of the group, a part of the Elgin Marbles. So this is what Herby is painting & I think he will make a very jolly little picture out of it. I have been much a prisoner to the house with bad colds ever since I returned from Wolverhampton, but am beginning to get out again--which puts new life into me. I have never envied anything in this world but a man's strong legs & powers of tramping, tramping, over hill & dale as long as he pleases--legs would content me and a sound breathing apparatus! I am in no hurry for wings. Giddy's voice, too, is just now eclipsed by cold.
I hope you have escaped this evil and are able to jaunt to & fro on the ferries as freely as ever. And I hope the pleasant Quaker friends are well--and Mr. & Mrs. Whitman and Hattie & Jessie--there is a fellow student of Giddy's at the Guild Hall music school who so reminds her of Hattie.
Love from us all, dear friend. Most from me.
_Keats Corner Hampstead, England Feb. 27, '85._
How has the winter passed with you I wonder? Me it has imprisoned very much with bronchial & asthmatic troubles--and the four walls of the house & the ceiling seem to close in upon one's spirit as well as one's body, all too much. I hope you have been able to wend to and fro daily on the great ferry boats & enjoy the beautiful broad river & the sky & the throngs of people as of old--you are in my thoughts as constantly as ever, though I have been so silent. Percy & his wife & the little son spent some weeks with us at Christmas & now they have taken a house quite near, into which they will be moving in a week or two. I can't tell you what a dear, affectionate, reasonable, companionable little fellow Archie is--now six years old. Perhaps you will have seen in the American papers that Sidney Thomas, the cousin with whom Percy was associated in the discovery of the Basic process, is dead--he spent his strength too freely--wore himself out at 35--he was much loved by all with whom he had to do. His mother & sister have been watching & hoping against hope & taking him to warm climates, he himself full of hope--the mind bright and active to the last--& now he is gone--& his eldest brother died only two months before him.--I cannot help grieving over public affairs too--never in my lifetime has old England been in such a bad way--no honest & capable man seemingly to take the helm--& what Carlyle was fond of describing as the attempt to guide the ship by the shouts of the bystanders on shore--the newspapers &c. prospering very ill. A government that tries perpetually how to do it and how not to do it at the same moment! The best comfort is that I do not think there is any, the smallest sign, of deterioration in the English race; so we shall pull through somehow, after tremendous disasters. How many things should I like to sit and chat with you about, dear Walt--above all to see you again! I could not get my article into any of the magazines I most wished. I believe it is coming out in _To-Day_. Giddy was so pleased at your sending her a paper--a very capital article too it is of Miss Kellogg. I was interested also in a little paragraph I found about Pullman town, near Chicago, which confirmed my suspicion that it was not a thing with healthy roots--but only a benevolent despotism. I am seeing a good deal of your socialists just now--& I confess that though they mean well, I think they have less sense in their heads than any people I ever saw.