STOCK HOUSE, _January 9th, 1857._

MY DEAR TENNENT,

I must thank you for your earnest and affectionate letter. It has given
me the greatest pleasure, mixing the play in my mind confusedly and
delightfully with Pisa, the Valetta, Naples, Herculanaeum--God knows what
not.

As to the play itself; when it is made as good as my care can make it, I
derive a strange feeling out of it, like writing a book in company; a
satisfaction of a most singular kind, which has no exact parallel in my
life; a something that I suppose to belong to the life of a labourer in
art alone, and which has to me a conviction of its being actual truth
without its pain, that I never could adequately state if I were to try
never so hard.

You touch so kindly and feelingly on the pleasure such little pains
give, that I feel quite sorry you have never seen this drama in progress
during the last ten weeks here. Every Monday and Friday evening during
that time we have been at work upon it. I assure you it has been a
remarkable lesson to my young people in patience, perseverance,
punctuality, and order; and, best of all, in that kind of humility which
is got from the earned knowledge that whatever the right hand finds to
do must be done with the heart in it, and in a desperate earnest.

When I changed my dress last night (though I did it very quickly), I was
vexed to find you gone. I wanted to have secured you for our green-room
supper, which was very pleasant. If by any accident you should be free
next Wednesday night (our last), pray come to that green-room supper. It
would give me cordial pleasure to have you there.

Ever, my dear Tennent, very heartily yours.

[Sidenote: M. de Cerjat.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Monday Night, Jan, 17th, 1857._

MY DEAR CERJAT,

So wonderfully do good (epistolary) intentions become confounded with
bad execution, that I assure you I laboured under a perfect and most
comfortable conviction that I had answered your Christmas Eve letter of
1855. More than that, in spite of your assertions to the contrary, I
still strenuously believe that I did so! I have more than half a mind
("Little Dorrit" and my other occupations notwithstanding) to charge you
with having forgotten my reply!! I have even a wild idea that Townshend
reproached me, when the last old year was new, with writing to you
instead of to him!!! We will argue it out, as well as we can argue
anything without po