From H. E. Litchfield to Emma Darwin 10 September [1873]

Dearest Mother.

I have sent you such shabby letters lately that I’ll begin another whilst I’m lying on my sofa digesting a solitary lunch. Every human in the house except me has gone an excursion, including our Madame & the sick swiss gents & the tremendously ugly vielle fille who constitute our co-pensionaires. So of course to the intense excitement of the old housekeeper who is left in charge, 4 English & a lady have turned up & engaged rooms. How they’ll manage I don’t kno for owing to the great emptyness of the season, they’ve discharged nearly all their household. The elegant french Chef departed some time ago. Our cuisine suffers a little, but not seriously. It is now only an ordinary affair eating yr dinner whilst before it was a work of hi art. I wish I thought there was the faintest ghost of a chance of my ever managing to have french potages. I think they are so good & so wholesome—& I'm sure they must be very cheap, there is so little any thing but hot water in them—but that I call really good cooking—to make hot water very delightful. There are a great many temptations to be avoided—one of the most severe is swiss strawberries, to which when there was no human eye to see me just now I succumbed. We seem to have got the most wonderful burst of fine weather. I am so far better today that I’ve appointed to meet R. on his road home a short hour from here riding. The air is so delightful today I think it cant but do me good to be out in it in moderation—& I’ve only been sitting out hitherto, & getting a little bunch of gentians & eyebright. The fields are now quite charming with autumn crocus, most of the grass is cut & even here they open there pretty pale eyes to the sun, like little stars all over the meadow. We have still gone on a little in a sloppy fashion with the mutual improvement society, but we find M^r Olliver awful dry, & I wish I had a book by which you c^d. make out flowers at the same time. Learning grammar for ever is so evidently the wrong way to learn, besides being so horridly tiresome. I can’t tell whether you’d stand Plato or not—but I rather think not— at least I thk I sh^d.n’t care to read it unseasoned with discussion. R. is reading it v. thoroughly—for he first reads it aloud to me & then to himself in Greek. R. is gone today to a sweet little Village—Panex down among the walnuts where we went before in a little char on a showery day, & then he is to cut right up the side of the hill & meet me in the sweet meadows called Ecovets meadows, where I’ve only been once! We agreed today that we hadn’t at all worked this place dry & should like to come again next year v.m. R. has had various schemes of a little 2 day tour—but always when it has come to the point of leaving me & beauties here only $\frac{1}{2}$ explored he has settled to put it off & now to give it up. I thk. our week at Glion will be a very nice wind up. The autumn colours will be just beginning to fleck the walnuts & chestnuts, & from Glion it is an easy day to Dijon, & then to Paris. If all goes well we shall come home via Rheims & Laon.