[144]
card of May 9th was written, and it finally reached me at Venice.
In that city of light, air, and heavenly noiselessness, my son and myself at last had settled ourselves in ideal rooms, overlooking the Grand Canal.
We had seclusion, the Molo, the Lagoon, and a good cafe, and pure and cheap Capri wine.
Our books and papers were unpacked for the first time, and I was ready to make an end of the big and burdensome book which I ought to have finished a year ago. Dis aliter visum! The next morning I was awakened to receive news, by wire, of a business loss which brought me home, through the new Gothard tunnel and by the first steamer.
Here I am, patching up other people's blunders, with the thermometer in the nineties.
I have lived through worse troubles, but am in no very good humor.
Let me renew the amenities of life, by way of improving my disposition: and I'll begin by thanking you for calling my attention to the error in re Palfrey — which, of course, I shall correct.
Another friend has written me to say that Lowell's father was a Unitarian — not a Congregationalist.
But Lowell himself told me, the other day, that his father never would call himself a Unitarian, and that he was old-fashioned in his home tenets and discipline.
Mr. L. [Lowell] was under pretty heavy pressure, as you know, when I saw him, but holding his own with some composure — for a poet.
Again thanking you, I am,
Always truly yrs., E. C. Stedman.
