I am glad we are going away for a few days; the change will be pleasant.
It was such a pleasure to me to have seen dear Lady Frances Baillie the other day, and she was looking well, though she is very thin.
You kindly gave me our dear Papa’s Farm-book for the Farmers’ Union here; the people are so touched and pleased. I send you the letter of thanks to read.
* * * We leave to-morrow afternoon for Frankfort, and the next day we go to Homburg on the way home. The Prince and Princess are most kind and civil; they have a fine Schloss, and are rich. The latter is clever and amiable, and the young people--their nephews and nieces--are very nice and very kind. It is a fine, rich country, and they seem very much beloved. The sister of the Princess, Princess Solms-Laubach, _née_ Büdingen, is here also. Her husband was in the Prussian service, and they lived at Bonn whilst dear Papa was there. He came to see them and to spend the evening there very often. She told me how handsome he then was, and how much praised and liked by all. She asked after Rath Florschütz,[29] and Eos,[30] and if dear Papa continued later on to be so sleepy of an evening, as he was even then.
Our visit at Lich went off very well. Everything is so _vornehm_ [in such good style] and so well arranged.
We are going to give Heinrich[31] a rendezvous somewhere, perhaps at Kreuznach, which is not very far. On August 1st, we are going to the north of the country,--a part which I do not know,--and on the way we stop at Giessen, where we have been invited to see an agricultural exhibition. On Monday we give a tea and a dance--between fifty and sixty people. The advantage of this place is its nearness to Darmstadt, and that there is room enough to receive people.
The Russian and French ambassadors, with their wives, and Mr. Corbett and Lord Robert S. Kerr, dine with us to-day.
I have no news to give. To-night we give our first large party--seventy people.
Yesterday we were all day at Rumpenheim: so kindly received! The Landgrave, his two brothers, Frederic and George, the Dowager Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, her daughter Duchess Caroline, Aunt Cambridge, Mary, Augusta, and Adolphus; Fritz and Anna of Hesse and good Princess Louise, kindness itself. Aunt Cambridge was very amiable, and spoke most tenderly of you. To-morrow morning Louis goes to Oberhessen, where I join him in two days. I go to see Uncle Alexander at Jugenheim; go on Monday to Friedberg, where there is an asylum for blind people, of which I am Protectorin [Patroness]. I go to see it, and sleep at the Castle. The next day I stop on my road to see Marburg, and shall be in the evening at Alsfeld, where I find Louis. The next day I go on to Herr von Riedesel at Altenburg, where I breakfast, and I dine and spend the night with another Riedesel family at Eisenbach. Louis joins me that evening. The next day we go on though the country, as the people are anxious to see us, and the country is very beautiful. On Thursday and Friday we shall be at Giessen, on Saturday at home.