1884 SENT TO ITALY 87 



Clark's course of physic is lightening my abdominal troubles, 

 but I am preposterously weak with a kind of shabby broken- 

 down indifference to everything. — Ever yours, 



T. H. H. 



The " Indian summer " * to which he looked forward 

 was not to be reached without passing through a season 

 of more than equinoctial storms and tempests. His career 

 had reached its highest point only to be threatened with 

 a speedy close. He himself did not expect more than two 

 or three years' longer lease of life, and went by easy stages 

 to Venice, where he spent eight days. " No place," he 

 writes, " could be better fitted for a poor devil as sick in 

 body and mind as I was when I got there.'' 



Venice itself (he writes to Dr. Foster) just suited me. I 

 chartered a capital gondolier, and spent most of my time explor- 

 ing the Lagoons. Especially I paid a daily visit to the Lido, 

 and filled my lungs with the sea air, and rejoiced in the absence 

 of stinks. For Venice is like her population (at least the male 

 part of it), handsome but odorous. Did you notice how hand- 

 some the young men are and how little beauty there is among 

 the women? 



I stayed eight days in Venice and then returned by easy 

 stages first to Padua, where I wanted to see Giotto's work, then 

 to Verona, and then here (Lugano). Verona delighted me more 

 than anything I have seen, and we will spend two other days 

 there as we go back. 



As for myself, I really have no positive complaint now. I 

 eat well and I sleep well, and I should begin to think I was 

 malingering, if it were not for a sort of weariness and dead- 

 ness that hangs about me, accompanied by a curious nervous 

 irritability. 



I expect that this is the upshot of the terrible anxiety I have 

 had about my daughter M . 



I would give a great deal to be able to escape facing the 

 wedding, for my nervous system is in the condition of that of 

 a frog under opium. 



But my R. must not go off without the paternal benediction. 



For the first three weeks he was alone, his wife staying 

 to make preparations for the third daughter's wedding on 



* See page 74. 



