Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

A Letter from Little Dorrit

Dear Mr Clennam,

As I said in my last that it was best for nobody to write to me,
and as my sending you another little letter can therefore give you
no other trouble than the trouble of reading it (perhaps you may
not find leisure for even that, though I hope you will some day),
I am now going to devote an hour to writing to you again. This
time, I write from Rome.

We left Venice before Mr and Mrs Gowan did, but they were not so
long upon the road as we were, and did not travel by the same way,
and so when we arrived we found them in a lodging here, in a place
called the Via Gregoriana. I dare say you know it.

Now I am going to tell you all I can about them, because I know
that is what you most want to hear. Theirs is not a very
comfortable lodging, but perhaps I thought it less so when I first
saw it than you would have done, because you have been in many
different countries and have seen many different customs. Of
course it is a far, far better place--millions of times--than any
I have ever been used to until lately; and I fancy I don't look at
it with my own eyes, but with hers. For it would be easy to see
that she has always been brought up in a tender and happy home,
even if she had not told me so with great love for it.

Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a rather dark common
staircase, and it is nearly all a large dull room, where Mr Gowan
paints. The windows are blocked up where any one could look out,
and the walls have been all drawn over with chalk and charcoal by
others who have lived there before--oh,--I should think, for years!

There is a curtain more dust-coloured than red, which divides it,
and the part behind the curtain makes the private sitting-room.

When I first saw her there she was alone, and her work had fallen
out of her hand, and she was looking up at the sky shining through
the tops of the windows. Pray do not be uneasy when I tell you,
but it was not quite so airy, nor so bright, nor so cheerful, nor
so happy and youthful altogether as I should have liked it to be.

On account of Mr Gowan's painting Papa's picture (which I am not
quite convinced I should have known from the likeness if I had not
seen him doing it), I have had more opportunities of being with her
since then than I might have had without this fortunate chance.
She is very much alone. Very much alone indeed.

Shall I tell you about the second time I saw her? I went one day,
when it happened that I could run round by myself, at four or five
o'clock in the afternoon. She was then dining alone, and her
solitary dinner had been brought in from somewhere, over a kind of
brazier with a fire in it, and she had no