London has emptied itself, as you may suppose, by this time.  Mrs. Ormus Biddulph was so kind as to wish us to dine with them on Monday (to-day), but we found it absolutely impossible.  The few engagements we make we don’t keep, and I shall try for the future to avoid perjury.  As it is, I have no doubt that various people have set me down as ’full of arrogance and assumption,’ at which the gods must laugh, for really, if truths could be known, I feel even morbidly humble just now, and could show my sackcloth with anybody’s sackcloth.  But it is difficult to keep to the conventions rigidly, and return visits to the hour, and hold engagements to the minute, when one has neither carriage, nor legs, nor time at one’s disposal, which is my case.  If I don’t at once answer (for instance) such a letter as you sent me, I must be a beggar....

May God bless you both, my very dear friends!  My husband bids me remember him to you in cordial regard.  I long to see you, and to hear (first) that you are well.

Dearest Mrs. Martin’s ever attached
BA.

* * * * *

To Mrs. Martin

13 Dorset Street:  Tuesday, [October 1855].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,—­I can’t go without writing to you, but I am ground down with last things to do on last days, and it must be a word only.  Dearest friend, I have waited morning after morning for a clear half-hour, because I didn’t like to do your bidding and write briefly, though now, after all, I am reduced to it.  We leave England to-morrow, and shall sleep (D.V.) at 102 Rue de Grenelle, Faubourg St. Germain, Paris,—­I am afraid in a scarcely convenient apartment, which a zealous friend, in spite of our own expressed opinion, secured for us for the term of six months, because of certain yellow satin furniture which only she could consider ‘worthy of us.’  We shall probably have to dress on the staircase, but what matter?  There’s the yellow satin to fall back upon.

If the rooms are not tenable, we must underlet them, or try....

One of the pleasantest things which has happened to us here is the coming down on us of the Laureate, who, being in London for three or four days from the Isle of Wight, spent two of them with us, dined with us, smoked with us, opened his heart to us (and the second bottle of port), and ended by reading ‘Maud’ through from end to end, and going away at half-past two in the morning.  If I had had a heart to spare, certainly he would have won mine.  He is captivating with his frankness, confidingness, and unexampled naivete!  Think of his stopping in ‘Maud’ every now and then—­’There’s a wonderful touch!  That’s very tender.  How beautiful that is!’ Yes, and it was wonderful, tender, beautiful, and he read exquisitely in a voice like an organ, rather music than speech.

War, war!  It is terrible certainly.  But there are worse plagues, deeper griefs, dreader wounds than the physical.  What of the forty thousand wretched women in this city?  The silent writhing of them is to me more appalling than the roar of the cannons.  Then this war is necessary on our sides.  Is that wrong necessary?  It is not so clear to me.