From Emma Darwin to Fanny Allen [1868]

My dearest Aunt Fanny.

Eliz. is so bent upon Tromer Lodge that I am sure she will get it, & I think she will be very comfortable there. The drawing room is upstairs but really a remarkably pretty room & the bedrooms very nice. The garden is sheltered from N. & E. & she will enjoy her hothouse & green house. & I hope she will be quite extravagant in that matter. She will have a little too much noise from the blacksmith's forge & the schoolchildren at play; but they are not uncheerful noises. She must make an outlet from the nearest corner of her garden to get to us which is much shorter than the road; but I mean to try to persuade her to set up a bedroom & appurtenances here so that when she spends the ev^g here she shall sleep here & not have any conveyance of things. Then she has a cottage in her yard where she may put Caroline & babies if they come.

I enjoy the thoughts very much of her settling there it is always interesting to see how to make things comfortable. Then you must come & see her here & I shall see all the more of you. She will regret leaving Hensleigh chiefly, but I have long thought that her life there was too bustling.

How grieved I am at y^r account of poor John. It is a comfort to think how he is supported by his religion & his wife too.

Parslow was telling me