To Miss Mitford Bagni di Lucca, Toscana:  [about July 1849].

At last, you will say, dearest friend.  The truth is, I have not been forgetting you (how far from that!) but wandering in search of cool air and a cool bough among all the olive trees to build our summer nest on.  My husband has been suffering beyond what one could shut one’s eyes to in consequence of the great mental shock of last March—­loss of appetite, loss of sleep, looks quite worn and altered.  His spirits never rallied except with an effort, and every letter from New Cross threw him back into deep depressions.  I was very anxious, and feared much that the end of it all (the intense heat of Florence assisting) would be a nervous fever or something similar.  And I had the greatest difficulty in persuading him to leave Florence for a month or two—­he who generally delights so in travelling, had no mind for change or movement.  I had to say and swear that baby and I couldn’t bear the heat, and that we must and would go away. Ce que femme veut, if the latter is at all reasonable, or the former persevering.  At last I gained the victory.  It was agreed that we two should go on an exploring journey to find out where we could have most shadow at least expense; and we left our child with his nurse and Wilson while we were absent.  We went along the coast to Spezzia, saw Carrara with the white marble mountains, passed through the olive forests and the vineyards, avenues of acacia trees, chestnut woods, glorious surprises of most exquisite scenery.  I say olive forests advisedly; the olive grows like a forest tree in those regions, shading the ground with tents of silvery network.  The olive near Florence is but a shrub in comparison, and I have learnt to despise a little, too, the Florentine vine, which does not swing such portcullises of massive dewy green from one tree to another as along the whole road where we travelled.  Beautiful, indeed, it was.  Spezzia wheels the blue sea into the arms of the wooded mountains, and we had a glance at Shelley’s house at Lerici.  It was melancholy to me, of course.  I was not sorry that the lodgings we inquired about were far above our means.  We returned on our steps (after two days in the dirtiest of possible inns), saw Seravezza, a village in the mountains, where rock, river, and wood enticed us to stay, and the inhabitants drove us off by their unreasonable prices.  It is curious, but just in proportion to the want of civilisation the prices rise in Italy.  If you haven’t cups and saucers you are made to pay for plate.  Well, so finding no rest for the sole of our feet, I persuaded Robert to go to the Baths of Lucca, only to see them.  We were to proceed afterwards to San Marcello or some safer wilderness.  We had both of us, but he chiefly, the strongest prejudice against these Baths of Lucca, taking them for a sort of wasp’s nest of scandal and gaming, and expecting to find everything trodden flat by the Continental English; yet I wanted to see