"Dear Tom,—
"The next best thing to seeing you, you witty dog, is reading one of your letters; but accept a little advice from one who has had experience, and don't throw away so many good things on one individual; economise your bon-mots, my dear fellow, spread them over your private correspondence as sparingly as they do butter on bread at boarding-schools. Ah! you will grow wiser by and by, when you find out how very rare is an original idea. Why—we literary people, if by chance we improvise one in conversation, always stop short after it, and turning to our friends say, 'Now remember, that's mine, don't you use it, for I intend putting it in my next book.'
"What am I doing, hey? Living by my wits, though not in the way of literature, which I find does not pay; for there has been such a surfeit of poor books that even a good one is now eyed with suspicion.
"At present, however, I am, thanks to Mrs. John Howe, in a comfortable state of wardrobe and purse. You should see this Venus! Who can set bounds to the vanity of woman? (This is in Proverbs, I believe; if it is not it ought to be.) At any rate, woman's vanity is the wire I am now pulling, to keep me in bread and butter.
"Mrs. John Howe is old, ugly, and shrewish; how she would rave, if she saw this! All her married life, she has led her husband by the nose. John is a good-natured, easy fellow, with no brains or education to speak of. Latterly, something has turned up between them, deuce knows what, I don't; but Richard is himself again, smokes when and where he likes, and goes round like the rest of us.
"You will see that he is improving when I tell you that he has bought his wife off to mind her own business, and let him mind his, by an allowance of so much a year; and here's where the interest of my story comes in, my dear boy, for just so long as I can make Mrs. John believe that she is as young as she ever was, (and as beautiful, as by Jove! she never was), and that I can not exist one minute out of her presence, why so much the more hope there is for my tailor and landlady, confound them! En passant: I dare say you might wince a little at the idea of being supported by a woman; that only shows that you have not yet learned to recognize 'the sovereignty of the individual.' But the best thing is yet to come. Mrs. John imagines herself a blue-stocking! though she can not spell straight to save her life, and has not the remotest idea whether Paris is in Prussia or Ireland. You should hear her mangle Italian, which she has just begun. It makes my very hair stand on end; I see where it is all tending. She asked me the other day about the divorce law; as if I would marry the old vixen! Never mind, so long as the money holds out I shall hoodwink her even in this.
"Write soon. I saw little Kate last week, fresh as a Hebe, and beautiful as nobody else ever was, or can be. Pity she is such a little Puritan! She would be irresistible were it not for that humbug. I live in hope that contact with the world, and intercourse with me, will eradicate this, her only weakness. Bless her sweet mouth, and witching eyes.
"Yours, as usual,
Finels."
