Hotel Meurice, Paris

Saturday evening March 17^th

My Dear Constance

I stayed 3 days in Town – I crossed from Dover to Calais this morning. The weather was very wet and we had a rough passage. At Calais the weather cleared up and we had a pleasant drive of six hours to Paris arriving there ¼ past six o’clock – At Longueau we saw an immense lot of linen, the meadows thereabouts are striped white with it.

At Creil we saw a fine quarry of Bath Stone or something like it; it was evidently one of the sources from which modern Paris derives the immense supplies it requires for all its new buildings – Please to decide for me whether M^r Swan’s carbon prints ^<1> shall be hung up in Edinbro’ or Lacock – that depends chiefly on whether there is room for them, where they would look well.

Your aff^te

Henry

I shall stay here Sunday and Monday. Address Hotel Bellevue, Cannes (Alpes Maritimes) They are wonderfully methodical about luggage on this railway. You are kept 20 minutes or longer in a “Salle d’attente”. Then the doors are thrown open and all the luggage is found numbered upon rows of long tables, & you can’t get your own if you have lost your ticket.

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Notes:

1. Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828–1914), chemist & electrical inventor, known for his Carbon process (1864), photographic printing known as carbon or pigment printing resulting in permanent photographic prints. [See Doc. No: 00226].