I date this from London, where I have come, as a good, profligate, graceless bachelor, for a day or two; leaving my wife and babbies at the seaside....  Heavens! if you were but here at this minute!  A piece of salmon and a steak are cooking in the kitchen; it’s a very wet day, and I have had a fire lighted; the wine sparkles on a side-table; the room looks the more snug from being the only undismantled one in the house; plates are warming for Forster and Maclise, whose knock I am momentarily expecting; that groom I told you of, who never comes into the house, except when we are all out of town, is walking about in his shirt-sleeves without the smallest consciousness of impropriety; a great mound of proofs are waiting to be read aloud, after dinner.  With what a shout I would clap you down into the easiest chair, my genial Felton, if you would but appear, and order you a pair of slippers instantly!

Since I have written this, the aforesaid groom—­a very small man (as the fashion is) with fiery-red hair (as the fashion is not)—­has looked very hard at me and fluttered about me at the same time, like a giant butterfly.  After a pause, he says, in a Sam Wellerish kind of way:  “I vent to the club this mornin’, sir.  There vorn’t no letters, sir.”  “Very good.  Topping.”  “How’s missis, sir?” “Pretty well, Topping.”  “Glad to hear it, sir.  My missis ain’t wery well, sir.”  “No!” “No, sir, she’s a goin’, sir, to have a hincrease wery soon, and it makes her rather nervous, sir; and ven a young voman gets at all down at sich a time, sir, she goes down wery deep, sir.”  To this sentiment I reply affirmatively, and then he adds, as he stirs the fire (as if he were thinking out loud), “Wot a mystery it is!  Wot a go is natur’!” With which scrap of philosophy, he gradually gets nearer to the door, and so fades out of the room.  This same man asked me one day, soon after I came home, what Sir John Wilson was.  This is a friend of mine, who took our house and servants, and everything as it stood, during our absence in America.  I told him an officer.  “A wot, sir?” “An officer.”  And then, for fear he should think I meant a police-officer, I added, “An officer in the army.”  “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, touching his hat, “but the club as I always drove him to wos the United Servants.”

    The real name of this club is the United Service, but I have no
    doubt he thought it was a high-life-below-stairs kind of resort, and
    that this gentleman was a retired butler or superannuated footman.

    There’s the knock, and the Great Western sails, or steams rather,
    to-morrow.  Write soon again, dear Felton, and ever believe me, ...

    Your affectionate friend,

    CHARLES DICKENS.

    P.S.  All good angels prosper Dr. Howe.  He, at least, will not like
    me the less, I hope, for what I shall say of Laura.

    London, 1 Devonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent’s Park, 31st
    December, 1842.