Ever faithfully yours. P.S.--Please to observe the address at Boulogne: "Villa du Camp de Droite." [Sidenote: Mr. W. H. Wills.] VILLA DU CAMP DE DROITE, _Thursday, June 22nd, 1854._ MY DEAR WILLS, I have nothing to say, but having heard from you this morning, think I may as well report all well. We have a most charming place here. It beats the former residence all to nothing. We have a beautiful garden, with all its fruits and flowers, and a field of our own, and a road of our own away to the Column, and everything that is airy and fresh. The great Beaucourt hovers about us like a guardian genius, and I imagine that no English person in a carriage could by any possibility find the place. Of the wonderful inventions and contrivances with which a certain inimitable creature has made the most of it, I will say nothing, until you have an opportunity of inspecting the same. At present I will only observe that I have written exactly seventy-two words of "Hard Times," since I have been here. The children arrived on Tuesday night, by London boat, in every stage and aspect of sea-sickness. The camp is about a mile off, and huts are now building for (they say) sixty thousand soldiers. I don't imagine it to be near enough to bother us. If the weather ever should be fine, it might do you good sometimes to come over with the proofs on a Saturday, when the tide serves well, before you and Mrs. W. make your annual visit. Recollect there is always a bed, and no sudden appearance will put us out. Kind regards. Ever faithfully. [Sidenote: Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.] VILLA DU CAMP DE DROITE, BOULOGNE, _Wednesday Night, July 12th, 1854._ MY DEAR COLLINS, Bobbing up, corkwise, from a sea of "Hard Times" I beg to report this tenement--AMAZING!!! Range of view and air, most free and delightful; hill-side garden, delicious; field, stupendous; speculations in haycocks already effected by the undersigned, with the view to the keeping up of a "home" at rounders. I hope to finish and get to town by next Wednesday night, the 19th; what do you say to coming back with me on the following Tuesday? The interval I propose to pass in a career of amiable dissipation and unbounded license in the metropolis. If you will come and breakfast with me about midnight--anywhere--any day, and go to bed no more until we fly to these pastoral retreats, I shall be delighted to have so vicious an associate. Will you undertake to let Ward know that if he still wishes me to sit to him, he shall have me as long as he likes, at Tavistock House, on Monday, the 24th, from ten A.M.?