| 20 March 1866.
5, Lansell’s Place, Margate.
My dear
Cacadou,
Very good news, indeed! I prefer Mrs. Grach to the mother of
all the Grac
c
hi.
I am right glad that I have taken my lodgings in a private
House, and not in an Inn or Hotel,
where one could hardly escape being pestered with local politics, vestry scandals, and
neighbourly gossip. But still
​
I cannot sing with the miller of the Dee, that I care for
nobody, and nobody cares for me.
For there is my landlady, who is deaf like a post, and her daughter, who is afflicted with
chronic hoarseness, but they are very nice people, attentive, and not intruding. As to
myself, I have turned into a perambulating stick, running about the greatest part of the
day, airing myself, going to bed at 10 o’clock, reading nothing, writing less, and
altogether working up my mind to that state of nothingness which Buddhaism considers the
climax of human bliss.
​
However, with all that, I shall not turn that out on
Thursday,
that paragon of beauty which worthy
By Bye,
in his phantastic mood, seems to expect.
​
The toothache on
my 
//
the right side of the face has not yet altogether
disappeared, and the same side is afflicted with an inflammation of the eye. Not that
there is much to be seen of it, but that eye has taken to
be 
//
the vicious habit of shedding tears on its own account, without the least
regard to the feelings of his master.
​
But for this state of things,
I should have my photogramme
already taken
​
, since you get here
12 cartes de visite for 3 s. 6 d. and 48 cartes for 10 sh.
Mümmelchen
will oblige me by pacing her steps to
Mr. Hall
and ordering him to prepare a solution
of zink (he will know the composition of the drug) for my eye,
the
which I
expect to find ready on my arrival at London. This bad eye interferes with my nightrest.
Otherwise, I am turning a new leaf.
​
Withdrawing
somewhat from the seaside, and roaming over the adjacent rustic district, you are
painfully reminded of
“civilization”
by large boards, staring
at
you everywhere, headed
“Cattle
Diseases
Disease
”
, and placarded over with a government proclamation, the
result of the wild rush which the horned cattle gentry, lords and commoners, made at
the government, on the opening of Parliament.
Oh, oh King
Wiswamitra
,
What fool
of an oxen art thou,
That thou so much wrangle’st and suffer’st,
And all
that for a cow.
But if honest
Wiswamitra
, like a true Indian, tormented himself for the salvation of
the cow
Sabala
, those English gentry, in the
true style of modern martyrs, bleed the people to compensate themselves for their
cows’ ailings.
The horn plague upon them! The horn, the horn, as discreet
By Bye
rings it
so
(?)
lustily.
​
On
Sunday,
I made up my mind to walk per pedes to Canterbury. Unhappily, I
only formed this grand resolution, after having already measured for two hours the length
and breadth of the piers and so forth. So I had already expended too much physical power,
when I set out for the archbishop’s seat or see, as you like. And from here to Canterbury
are fully 16 miles. From Canterbury I returned to Margate by rail, but I had overworked
myself, and could not sleep during the whole night. Limbs and loins were not tired, but
the plants of my feet turned out tenderhearted rogues. As to Canterbury,
kn 
//
you know, of course, all about it, and more than I can boast,
the trusted source of knowledge for all English Eves. (One cannot help, in your company,
bad punning. But mark.
Thackeray
did
worse, by playing upon Eves and Ewes.) Happily, I was too tired, and it was too late, to
look out for the celebrated cathedral. Canterbury is an old, ugly, medieval sort of town,
not mended by large modern English barracks at the one, and a dismal dry Railway Station
at the other end of the
town
//
oldish
thing. There is no trace of that poetry about it, which you find in continental towns of
the same age.
| The swaggering of the private soldiers and the officers in the streets, reminded me
somewhat of “Vaterland”. In the inn, where I was scantily purveyed with some slices of
cold beef, I caught the newest scandal. Captain
Le
Merchant
, it seems, had been taken up by the police on Saturday night, for
systematically knocking at the doors of all the most respectable citizens. And a summons
will be taken out against the Captain because of this innocent pastime. And the
redoubtable Captain will have to bend down his diminished head before aldermanic majesty.
This is my whole packet of
“Canterbury Tales”.
And now, Cacadou, pay my compliments to
Elly
to whom I shall write one of those days, and
whose little letter
was very welcome. As to
Möhmchen,
she will hear of me by the by.
That damned boy
Lafargue
pesters me
with his Proudhonism, and will not rest, it seems, untill I have administered to him a
sound cudgelling of his Creole pate.
My
xxxx xxx 
//
good wishes to all.
Your master.
Has
Orsini
still
received the letter I sent him?