INTRODUCTION liii

But I fear it will not be cheerful enough. I’ll try and keep it as Katish as-the very truth can be.

“Clotilde is still living, (I believe)-Baronne Du Quesne,-a managing châtelaine in mid-France.”¹

(To R. C. LESLIE, June 1, 1886.)-“I am turning the first of mid-summer days to good account by sending to printer your memories of Turner, and notes on Téméraire, to be the first number of a new serial of mine-(purer piracy never was done in New York!) to be called (I believe), for I’ve only thought of the name this morning, Manentia.² It is to be a supplement to Præterita, giving friends’ letters, and collateral pieces of events or debate for which there is no room in the closely packed story, or which would make me jealous of their branching and often livelier interest. I shall be able thus to give pieces for reference out of diaries, and sometimes a bit of immediate Fors-fashion talk-which will be a relief from the please-your-worship and by-your-leave style of Præterita. The Téméraire sheets I shall send you to see right, for I’m muddled about that matter.”

(To KATE GREENAWAY, June 13, 1886.)-“I cannot say how thankful I am that you continue to like Præterita so much. I know you would not if it did not deserve to be liked-and it is very delicious to be liked by a Katie besides, and to feel more and more that sympathy and likeness between us-though you know there’s nothing in you of my grim side, and you never feel it is there! I fancy this vividness of description which you feel is merely caused by my analytic power of fastening on the points that separate that scene, whatever it be, from others; of course this is not unconscious nor without effort, and I have now a good command of English words also. But this vividness must be made also in the reader’s mind, and I don’t believe anybody but you and I know what an aspen is like. I didn’t ‘smile’ in that sense-at your saying this book would live. I do hope it will go to its mark better than the rest. But the difficult bits are all to come! However, my printer writes that the fifth³ is very nice too.”

(To MRS. ARTHUR SEVERN, January 19, 1887.)-“I only settled finally to-day the name of chap. i. of Vol. III.-Otterburn.’ It is to introduce Wallington and Connie at nine years old. The ninth chapter is to be ‘Joanna’s (Charge) Care’? unless I think of one not liable to make you like Joan of Arc at the head of her cavalry. That one number has to describe all relations between Auntie and

¹ Nos. 79, 81 of the letters in Kate Greenaway, pp. 151, 152.

² Ultimately called Dilecta.

³ Chapter v. of vol. ii.

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