Our inspection of the house took us all the morning. The kitchen, offices, servants' hall and rooms are enormous, and in very bad order. I should think it would take weeks to get it clean and habitable, and need an army of servants to keep it so. I am thinking rather sadly of my little hotel in Paris, so clean and bright, with not a dark corner anywhere. We went out driving in the afternoon, and I had my first experience as Ambassadress, as the coachman drove down Constitution Hill--a right of way reserved for Royalties and the Corps Diplomatique. We went straight to Mrs. Brown, the famous milliner, in Bond Street, to get ourselves new hats, as ours were quite impossible after our very lively passage, and the housemaid at Albert Gate had a handsome present of two hats with drooping feathers and a strong smell of sea and salt. London was of course empty, but a few carriages were in the park, and it amused us to drive about and see all the shops, and the general look of the streets, so different from Paris. We spent our evening quietly at home looking over our installation with W., horses, carriages, servants, and in fact the complete organisation of a big London house, which is so unlike a French one. I shall bring over all my French servants and add as many English as are necessary. I don't quite see Hubert, our French coachman, driving about the London streets, and keeping to the left. I should think we should have daily discussions with all the drivers in London; however, we must try. I wonder if I shall like being an Ambassadress, and I also wonder how long we shall stay here. My brother-in-law R. says perhaps two years. We got back three days ago--started on a bright summer's day. The Ambassador and secretaries came down to the station to see us off, and W. promised to come over and spend Sunday. We had an ideal crossing--blue sky, bright sun, and few passengers, and, notwithstanding our hard experience in the first passage, we are glad to have been over and made acquaintance with the personnel of the Embassy, also to have seen the house and realized a little what I must bring over to give it a look of home. This morning we have the news of the Comte de Chambord's death, and I am wondering if it will make any political complication. However, for years past he has only been a name--a most honourable one certainly--but one wants more than that to deal with the present state of France. After all W. never came over. Although London was empty, he had always some business to attend to, and on Sunday usually went to see some friends in the country. Last Sunday he spent with Lord Granville at Walmer, which he said was delightful. The castle so close to the sea that the big ships passed almost under the windows; Granville himself a charming host. He knows France and the French well, having been a great deal in Paris as a boy when his father was British Ambassador to Louis Philippe (1830-4); Lord Palmerston was then British Foreign Secretary.