you are out of town in this fearful heat, which the air
of London, as thick as the wit of some of its inhabitants, must now
render peculiarly damnable. I rejoice, too, that you have, like
myself, an old house in a pretty old town and an old garden with
pleasant old flowers. Further, I jubilate that you are within decent
distance of dear old George Meredith, whom I tenderly love and
venerate. But after that, I fear my jubilation ceases. I deeply regret
the turn your mother's health has taken has not been, as it so utterly
ought to be, the right one. But if it has determined the prospect of
the operation, which is to afford her relief, I hope with all my heart
that it will end by presenting itself to you as 'a blessing in
disguise.' No doubt she would have preferred a good deal less
disguise, but, after all, we have to take things as they come, and I
throw myself into the deep comfort of gratitude that her situation has
overtaken her in this country, where every perfect ministration will
surround her, rather than in your far-off insular abyss of mere--so to
speak--picturesqueness. I should have been, in that case, at the
present writing, in a fidget too fierce for endurance, whereas I now
can prattle to you quite balmily; for which you are all, no doubt,
deeply grateful. Give her, please, my tender love, and say to her that
if London were actually at all accessible to me, I should dash down to
her thence without delay, and thrust myself as far as would be good
for any of you into your innermost concerns. This would be more
possible to me later on if you should still be remaining awhile at
Dorking--and, at any rate, please be sure that I shall manage to see
you the first moment I am able to break with the complications that,
for the time, forbid me even a day's absence from this place. I repeat
that it eases my spirit immensely that you have exchanged the planet
Saturn--or whichever it is that's the furthest--for this terrestrial
globe. In short, between this and October, many things may happen, and
among them my finding the right moment to drop on you. I hope all the
rest of you thrive and rusticate, and I feel awfully set up with your
being, after your tropic isle, at all tolerant of the hollyhocks and
other garden produce of my adopted home. I am extremely busy trying to
get on with a belated serial--an effort in which each hour has its
hideous value. That is really all my present history--but to you all
it will mean muc