Bagni di Lucca: October 5, [1853].

My dearest Mrs. Martin, I am delighted to have your letter at last, and
should have come upon you like a storm in a day or two if you hadn't
written, for really I began to be low in patience. Also, after having
spent the summer here, we were about to turn our faces to Florence
again, and it was necessary to my own satisfaction to let you know of
our plans for the winter. To begin with those, then, we go to Florence,
as I said, from hence, and after a week or two, or three or four as it
may be, the briefer time if we let our house, we proceed to Rome for
some months. You see we _must_ visit Rome before we go northwards, and
northwards we _must_ go in the spring, so that the logic of events seems
to secure Rome to us this time; otherwise I should still doubt of our
going there, so often have we been on the verge and caught back....

So you think that he[26] is looking 'less young than formerly,' and that
'we should all learn to hear and make such remarks with equanimity.'
Now, once for all, let me tell you--confess to you--I never, if I live
to be a hundred, should learn that learning. Death has the luminous side
when we know how to look; but the rust of time, the touch of age, is
hideous and revolting to me, and I never see it, by even a line's
breadth, in the face of any I love, without pain and recoil of nature. I
have a worse than womanly weakness about that class of subjects. Death
is a face-to-face intimacy; age, a thickening of the mortal mask between
souls. So I hate it; put it far from me. Why talk of age, when it's just
an appearance, an accident, when we are all young in soul and heart? We
don't say, one to another, 'You are freckled in the forehead to-day,' or
'There's a yellow shade in your complexion.' Leave those disagreeable
trifles. I, for my part, never felt younger. Did _you_, I wonder? To be
sure not. Also, I have a gift in my eyes, I think, for scarcely ever
does it strike me that anybody is altered, except my child, for
instance, who certainly is larger than when he was born. When I went to
England after five years' absence, everybody (save one) appeared to me
younger than I was used to conceive of them, and of course I took for
granted that I appeared to them in the same light. Be sure that it is
highly moral to be young as long as possible. Women who throw up the
game early (or even late) and wear dresses 'suitable to their years'
(that is, as hideous as possible), are a disgrace to their sex, aren't
they now? And women and men with statistical memories, who are always
quoting centuries and the years thereof ('Do you remember in '20?' _As
if anybody could_), are the pests of society. And, in short, and for my
part, whatever honours of authorship may ever befall me, I hope I may be
safe from the epithet which distinguishes the Venerable Bede.

Now, if I had written this from Paris, you would have cried out upon the
frivolity I had picked up. Who would imagine that I had just finished a
summer of mountain solitude, succeeding a winter's meditation on
Swedenborg's philosophy, and that such fruit was of it all? By the way,
tell me how it was that Paris did harm to Moore? Mentally, was it, and
morally, or in the matter of the body? I have not seen the biography
yet. Italy keeps us behind in new books. But the extracts given in
newspapers displease me through the ignoble tone of 'doing honour to the
lord,' which is anything but religious. Also, the letters seem somewhat
less brilliant than I expected from Moore; but it must be, after all, a
most entertaining book. Tell me if you have read Mrs. Gaskell's 'Ruth.'
That's a novel which I much admire. It is strong and healthy at once,
teaching a moral frightfully wanted in English society. Such an
interesting letter I had from Mrs. Gaskell a few days ago simple, worthy
of 'Ruth.' By the way, 'Ruth' is a great advance on 'Mary Barton,'
don't you think so? 'Villette,' too (Jane Eyre's), is very powerful.

Since we have been here we have had for a visitor (drawing the advantage
from our spare room) Mr. Lytton, Sir Edward's only son, who is attache
at the Florence Legation at this time. He lost nothing from the test of
house-intimacy with either of us--gained, in fact, much. Full of all
sorts of good and nobleness he really is, and gifted with high faculties
and given to the highest aspirations--not vulgar ambitions,
understand--he will never be a great diplomatist, nor fancy himself an
inch taller for being master of Knebworth.[27] Then he is somewhat
dreamy and unpractical, we must confess; he won't do for drawing carts
under any sort of discipline. Such a summer we have enjoyed here, free
from burning heats and mosquitos--the two drawbacks of Italy--and in the
heart of the most enchanting scenery. Mountains not too grand for
exquisite verdure, and just kept from touching by the silver finger of a
stream. I have been donkey-riding, and so has Wiedeman. I even went (to
prove to you how well I am) the great excursion to Prato Fiorito, six
miles there and six miles back, perpendicularly up and down. Oh, it
almost slew me of course! I could not stir for days after. But who
wouldn't see heaven and die? Such a vision of divine scenery, such as,
in England, the best dreamers do not dream of! As we came near home I
said to Mr. Lytton, who was on horseback, 'I am dying. How are you?' To
which he answered, 'I thought a quarter of an hour ago I could not keep
up to the end, but now I feel better.' This from a young man just
one-and-twenty! He is delicate, to be sure, but still you may imagine
that the day's work was not commonly fatiguing. The guides had to lead
the horses and donkeys. It was like going up and down a wall, without
the smoothness. No road except in the beds of torrents. Robert
pretended to be not tired, but, of course (as sensible people say of the
turning tables), nobody believed a word of it. It was altogether a
supernatural pretension, and very impertinent in these enlightened days.

Mr. and Mrs. Story were of our party. He is the son of Judge Story and
full of all sorts of various talent. And she is one of those cultivated
and graceful American women who take away the reproach of the national
want of refinement. We have seen much of them throughout the summer.
There has been a close communion of tea-drinking between the houses, and
as we are all going to Rome together, this pleasure is not a past
one....

We still point to Paris. Ah! you disapprove of Paris, I see, but we must
try the experiment. What I am afraid of is simply the climate. I doubt
whether I shall stand two winters running as far north as Paris, but if
I _can't_, we must come south again. Then I love Italy. Oh! if it were
not for the distance between Italy and England, we should definitively
settle here at once. We shall be in England, by the way, next summer for
pleasure and business, having, or about to have, two books to see
through the press. Not _prose_, Mr. Martin. I'm lost--devoted to the
infernal gods of rhyming. 'It's my fate,' as a popular poet said when
going to be married....

(We go on Monday. Write to Florence for the next month.)