I then asked him down here to dinner, and he was again
staggered by finding me in sporting training; also much amused.
"Yesterday's and to-day's post bring me this unaccountable paragraph
from hosts of uneasy friends, with the enormous and wonderful
addition that 'eminent surgeons' are sending me to America for
'cessation from literary labor'!!! So I have written a quiet line to
the Times, certifying to my own state of health, and have also
begged Dixon to do the like in the Athenaeum. I mention the matter
to you, in order that you may contradict, from me, if the nonsense
should reach America unaccompanied by the truth. But I suppose that
the New York Herald will probably have got the latter from Mr. ----
aforesaid.....
"Charles Reade and Wilkie Collins are here; and the joke of the time
is to feel my pulse when I appear at table, and also to inveigle
innocent messengers to come over to the summer-house, where I write
(the place is quite changed since you were here, and a tunnel under
the high road connects this shrubbery with the front garden), to
ask, with their compliments, how I find myself _now_.
"If I come to America this next November, even you can hardly
imagine with what interest I shall try Copperfield on an American
audience, or, if they give me their heart, how freely and fully I
shall give them mine.
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