We are intensely happy in our bit of country, as happy as the cloudy aspect of public affairs will allow any one who cares for them to be, with the daily reading of the _Times_.
A neighbor of ours was reciting to me yesterday some delicious bits of dialogue with a quaint Surrey woman; _e.g._, "O ma'am, what I have gone through with my husband! He is so uneddicated--he never had a tail-coat in his life!"
[Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 23d Nov. 1878, from the Priory.]
When Mr. Lewes sent you my MS.[34] the other morning he was in that state of exhilarated activity which often comes with the sense of ease after an attack of illness which had been very painful. In the afternoon he imprudently drove out, and undertook, with his usual eagerness, to get through numerous details of business, over-fatigued himself, and took cold. The effect has been a sad amount of suffering from feverishness and headache, and I have been in deep anxiety, am still very unhappy, and only comforted by Sir James Paget's assurances that the actual trouble will be soon allayed.
I have been telling the patient about your letter and suggestion that he should send a form of slip as advertisement for the Magazine. He says--and the answer seems to have been a matter of premeditation with him--that it will be better not to announce the book in this way at once--"the Americans and Germans will be down on us." I cannot question him further at present, but I have no doubt he has been thinking about the matter, and we must not cross his wish in any way.
I have thought that a good form of advertisement, to save people from disappointment in a book of mine not being a story, would be to print the list of contents, which, with the title, would give all but the very stupid a notion to what form of writing the work belongs. But this is a later consideration. I am glad you were pleased with the opening.
[Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday evening, 24th Nov. 1878.]
For the last week I have been in deep trouble. Mr. Lewes has been alarmingly ill. To-day Sir James Paget and Dr. Quain pronounce him in all respects better, and I am for the first time comforted. You will not wonder now at my silence. Thanks for your affectionate remembrances.