I have thought that it might be more convenient to the reader to have the letters contained in the foregoing chapter all together, and have not interrupted them therefore to speak of any of the events which were meantime happening in my own life.

But during the period which the letters cover the two greatest sorrows of my life had fallen upon me I had lost first my mother, then my wife.

The bereavement, however, was very different in the two cases. If my mother had died a dozen years earlier I should have felt the loss as the end of all things to me as leaving me desolate and causing a void which nothing could ever fill. But when she died at eighty-three she had lived her life, upon the whole a very happy one, to the happiness of which I had (and have) the satisfaction of believing I largely contributed.

It is very common for a mother and daughter to live during many years of life together in as close companionship as I lived with my mother, but it is not common for a son to do so. During many years, and many, many journeyings, and more tete-a-tete walks, and yet more of tete-a-tete home hours, we were inseparable companions and friends. I can truly say that, from the time when we put our horses together on my return from Birmingham to the time of my marriage, she was all in all to me! During some four or five days in the early time of our residence at Florence I thought I was going to lose her, and I can never forget the blank wretchedness of the prospect that seemed to be before me.

She had a very serious illness, and was, as I had subsequently reason to believe, very mistakenly treated. She was attended by a practitioner of the old school, who had at that time the leading practice in Florence. He was a very good fellow, and an admirable whist player; and I do not think the members of our little colony drew a sufficiently sharp line of division between his social and his professional qualifications. He was, as I have said, essentially a man of the (even then) old school, and retained the old-fashioned general practitioners phraseology. I remember his once mortally disgusting an unhappy dyspeptic old lady by asking her, “Do we go to our dinner with glee?” As if the poor soul had ever done anything with glee!

This gentleman had bled my mother, and had appointed another bleeding for the evening. I believe she would assuredly have died if that had been done, and I attribute to Lord Holland the saving of her. Her doctor had very wrongly resisted the calling in of other English advice, professional jealousy, and indeed enmity, running high just then among us. Lord Holland came to the house just in the nick of time; and over-ruling authoritatively all the difficulties raised by the Esculapius in possession of the field, insisted on at once sending his own medical attendant. The result was the immediate administration of port wine instead of phlebotomy, and the patient’s rapid recovery.

My mother was at the time far past taking any part in the discussion of the medical measures to be adopted in her case. But I am not without a suspicion that she too, if she could have been consulted, would have sided with phlebotomy and whist, as against modern practice unrelieved by any such alleviation. For the phlebotomist had been a constant attendant at her Friday night whist-table; and as it was she lost him, for he naturally was offended at her recovery under rival hands.

What my mother was I have already said enough to show, as far as my imperfect words can show it, in divers passages of these reminiscences. She was the happiest natured person I ever knew happy in the intense power of enjoyment, happier still in the conscious exercise of the power of making others happy; and this continued to be the case till nearly the end. During the last few years the bright lamp began to grow dim and gradually sink into the socket. She suffered but little physically, but she lost her memory, and then gradually more and more the powers of her mind generally. I have often thought that this perishing of the mind before the exceptionally healthy and well-constituted physical frame, in which it was housed, may have been due to the tremendous strain to which she was subjected during those terrible months at Bruges, when she was watching the dying bed of a much-loved son during the day, and, dieted on green tea and laudanum, was writing fiction most part of the night. The cause, if such were the case, would have preceded the effect by some forty years; but whether it is on the cards to suppose that such an effect may have been produced after such a length of time, I have not physiological knowledge enough to tell.

She was, I think, to an exceptional degree surrounded by very many friends, mostly women, but including many men, at every period of her life. But the circumstances of it caused the world of her intimates during her youth, her middle life, and her old age, to be to a great degree peopled by different figures.

She was during all her life full of, and fond of, fun; had an exquisite sense of humour; and at all times valued her friends and acquaintances more exclusively, I think, than most people do, for their intrinsic qualities, mainly those of heart, and, not so much perhaps intellect, accurately speaking, as brightness. There is a passage in my brother’s Autobiography which grates upon my mind, and, I think, very signally fails to hit the mark.

He writes (vol. i. : “She loved society, affecting a somewhat Liberal rôle, and professing an emotional dislike to tyrants, which sprung from the wrongs of would-be régicides and the poverty of patriot exiles. An Italian marquis who had escaped with only a second shirt from the clutches of some archduke whom he had wished to exterminate, or a French prolétaire with distant ideas of sacrificing himself to the cause of liberty, were always welcome to the modest hospitality of her house. In after years, when marquises of another caste had been gracious to her, she became a strong Tory, and thought that archduchesses were sweet. But with her, politics were always an affair of the heart, as indeed were all her convictions. Of reasoning from causes I think that she knew nothing.”

Now there is hardly a word of this in which Anthony is not more or less mistaken; and that simply because he had not adequate opportunities for close observation. The affection which subsisted between my mother and my brother Anthony was from the beginning to the end of their lives as tender and as warm as ever existed between a mother and son. Indeed I remember that in the old days of our youth we used to consider Anthony the Benjamin. But from the time that he became a clerk in the Post Office to her death, he and my mother were never together but as visitors during the limited period of a visit. From the time that I resigned my position at Birmingham to the time of her death, I was uninterruptedly an inmate of her house, or she of mine. And I think that I knew her, as few sons know their mothers.

No regicide, would-be or other, ever darkened her doors. No French prolétaire, or other French political refugee was ever among her guests. She never was acquainted with any Italian marquis who had escaped in any degree of distress from poverty. With General Pepe she was intimate for years. But of him the world knows enough to perceive that my brother cannot have alluded to him. And I recollect no other marquis. It is very true that in the old Keppel Street and Harrow days several Italian exiles, and I think some Spaniards, used to be her occasional guests. This had come to pass by means of her intimacy with Lady Dyer, the wife and subsequently widow of Sir Thomas Dyer, whose years of foreign service had interested him and her in many such persons. The friends of her friend were her friends. They were not such by virtue of their political position and ideas. Though it is no doubt true, that caring little about politics, and in a jesting way (how jesting many a memorial of fun between her and Lady Dyer, and Miss Gabell, the daughter of Dr. Gabell of Winchester, is still extant in my hands to prove;) the general tone of the house was “Liberal.” But nothing can be farther from the truth than the idea that my mother was led to become a Tory by the “graciousness” of any “marquises” or great folks of any kind. I am inclined to think that there was one great personage, whose (not graciousness, but) intellectual influence did impel her mind in a Conservative direction. And this was Metternich. She had more talk with him than her book on Vienna would lead a reader to suppose; and very far more of his mind and influence reached her through the medium of the Princess.

To how great a degree this is likely to have been the case may be in some measure perceived from a letter which the Princess addressed to my mother shortly after she had left Vienna. She preserved it among a few others, which she specially valued, and I transcribe it from the original now before me.

“Vous ne pourriez croire, chère Madame Trollope, combien lé portrait que vous avez charge lé Baron Huegel de me remettre m’a fait de plaisir!

“Il y a longtemps que je cachais au fonds de mon coeur lé désir de posséder vôtre portrait, qui, interressant pour lé monde, est devenu precieux pour moi, puisque j’ai lé plaisir de vous connaître telle que vous étés, bonne, simple, bienveillante, et loin de tout ce qui effroie et éloigne des reputations literaires. Je remercie M. Hervieu de Tavoir fait aussi ressemblant. Et je vous assure, chère Madame Trollope, que rien ne pouvait me toucher aussi vivement et me faire autant de plaisir que ce souvenir venant de vous, qui me rappelera sans cesse les bons moments que j’ai eu la satisfaction de passer avec vous et qui resteront a jamais chères a ma memoire.

“MELANIE, PRINCESSE DE METTERNICH.”

I think that the hours passed by the Princess and my mother tete-a-tete, save for the presence of the artist occupied by his work during the painting of the Princess Melanie’s portrait for my mother, were mainly the cause of the real intimacy of mind and affection which grew up between them though, of course, the painting of the portrait shows that a considerable intimacy had previously arisen. And it had been arranged that the portrait of my mother, which was the occasion of the above letter, should be exchanged for that of the Princess. But there had been no time amid the whirl of the Vienna gaieties to get it executed. It was, therefore, sent from England by Baron Huegel when he called on my mother, on visiting this country shortly after her return from Austria.

It occurs to me here to mention a circumstance which was, I think, the first thing to begin not the acquaintance but the intimacy in question; and which may be related as possessing an interest not confined to either of the ladies in question.

The Archduchess Sophie had graciously intimated her desire that my mother should be presented to her, and an evening had been named for the purpose. But a few days before just three, if I remember rightly my mother caught a cold, which resulted in erysipelas, causing her head to become swollen to nearly double its usual size! Great was the dismay of the ladies who had arranged the meeting with the Archduchess, chief among whom had been the Princess Melanie. She came to my mother, and insisted upon sending to her an old homoeopathic physician, who was her own medical attendant, and had been Hahnemann’s favourite pupil. He came, saw his patient, and was told that what he had to do was to make her presentable by the following Friday! He shook his head, said the time was too short but he would do his best. And the desired object was fully attained.

I have no doubt that my mother returned from her Vienna visit a more strongly convinced Conservative in politics than she had hitherto been. And it does not seem to me that the modification of her opinions in that direction, which was doubtless largely operated by conversation with the great Conservative statesman and his alter ego, the Princess, needs to be in any degree attributed to the “graciousness” of people in high position either male or female. Is it not very intelligible and very likely that such opinions, so set forth, as she from day to day heard them, should have honestly and legitimately influenced her own?

But I think that I should be speaking, if perhaps presumptuously, yet truly, if I were to add that there was also one very far from great personage, whose influence in the same direction was greater than even that of Prince Metternich or of any other great folks whatever; and that was the son in daily and almost hourly communion and conversation with whom she lived. I also had begun life as a “Liberal,” and was such in the days when Mr. Gladstone was a high Tory. But my mind had long been travelling in an inverse direction to his. And far too large a number of my contemporaries distinguished and undistinguished have been moving in the same direction for it to be at all necessary to say that most assuredly my slowly maturing convictions were neither generated nor fostered by any “graciousness” or other influence of dukes or duchesses or great people of any sort.

That my mother’s political ideas were in no degree “an affair of the heart,” I will not say, and by no means regret not being able to say. But I cannot but assert that it is a great mistake to say that they were uninfluenced by “reasoning from causes,” or that the movement of her mind in this respect was in any degree whatever due to the caresses which my brother imagines to have caused it.

She was not a great or careful preserver of papers and letters, or I might have been able to print here very many communications from persons in whom the world feels an interest. Among her early and very dear friends was Mary Mitford.

I have a very vivid remembrance of the appearance of Mary Russell Mitford as I used to see her on the occasions of my visits to Reading, where my grandfather’s second wife and then widow was residing. She was not corpulent, but her figure gave one the idea of almost cubical solidity. She had a round and red full moon sort of face, from the ample forehead above which the hair was all dragged back and stowed away under a small and close-fitting cap, which surrounding her face increased the effect of full-blown rotundity. But the grey eye and even the little snub nose were full of drollery and humour, and the lines about the generally somewhat closely shut mouth indicated unmistakable intellectual power. There is a singular resemblance between her handwriting and that of my mother. Very numerous letters must have passed between them. But of all these I have been able to find but four.

On the 3rd of April, 1832, she writes from the “Three Mile Cross,” so familiar to many readers, as follows:

“My dear Mrs. Trollope, I thank you most sincerely for your very delightful book, as well as for its great kindness towards me; and I wish you joy from the bottom of my heart of the splendid success which has not merely attended but awaited its career a happy and I trust certain augury of your literary good fortune in every line which you may pursue. I assure you that my political prejudices are by no means shocked at your dislike of Republicanism. I was always a very aristocratic Whig, and since these reforming days am well-nigh become a staunch Tory, for pretty nearly the same reason that converted you a dislike to mobs in action.... Refinement follows wealth, but not often closely, as witness the parvenu people even in dear England.... I heard of your plunge into the Backwoods first from Mr. Owen himself, with whom I foregathered three years ago in London, and of whom you have given so very true and graphic a picture. What extraordinary mildness and plausibility that man possesses! I never before saw an instance of actual wildness madness of theory accompanied by such suavity and soberness of manner. Did you see my friend, Miss Sedgwick? Her letters show a large and amiable mind, and a little niece of nine years old, who generally writes in them, has a style very unusual in so young a girl, and yet most youthful and natural too.... Can you tell me if Mr. Flint be the author of George Mason, or the Young Backwoodsman? I think that he is; and whether the name of a young satirical writer be Sams or Sands? Your answering these questions will stead me much, and I am sure that you will answer them if you can.

“Now to your kind questions. I am getting ready a fifth and last volume of Our Village as fast as I can, though with pain and difficulty, having hurt my left hand so much by a fall from an open carriage that it affects the right, and makes writing very uncomfortable to me. And I am in a most perplexed state about my opera, not knowing whether it will be produced this season or not, in consequence of Captain Polhill and his singers having parted. This would not have happened had my coadjutor the composer kept to his time. And I have still hopes that when the opera be [shall, omitted probably] taken in (the music is even now not finished), a sense of interest will bring the parties together again. I hope that it may, for it will not only be a tremendous hit for all of us, but it will take me to London and give me the pleasure of a peep at you, a happiness to which I look forward very anxiously. I know Mr. Tom, and like him of all things, as everybody who knows him must, and I hear that his sisters are charming. God bless you, my dear friend. My father joins me in every good wish, and

“I am ever most affectionately yours,

“M.R. MITFORD.”

A few weeks later she writes a very long letter almost entirely filled with a discussion of the desirability or non-desirability of writing in this, that, and the other “annual” or magazine. Most of those she alludes to are dead, and there is no interest in preserving her mainly unfavourable remarks concerning them and their editors and publishers. One sentence, however, is so singularly and amusingly suggestive of change in men and women and things, that I must give it. After reviewing a great number of the leading monthlies she says “as for Fraser’s and Blackwood’s, they are hardly such as a lady likes to write for”!

After advising my mother to stick to writing novels, she says, “I have not a doubt that that is by far the most profitable branch of the literary profession. If ever I be bold enough to try that arduous path, I shall endeavour to come as near as I can to Miss Austen, my idol. You are very good about my opera. I am sorry to tell you, and you will be sorry to hear, that the composer has disappointed me, that the music is not even yet ready, and that the piece is therefore necessarily delayed till next season. I am very sorry for this on account of the money, and because I have many friends in and near town, yourself amongst the rest, whom I was desirous to see. But I suppose it will be for the good of the opera to wait till the beginning of a season. It is to be produced with extraordinary splendour, and will, I think, be a tremendous hit. I hope also to have a tragedy out at nearly the same time in the autumn, and then I trust we shall meet, and I shall see your dear girls.

“How glad I am to find that you partake of my great aversion to the sort of puffery belonging to literature. I hate it! and always did, and love you all the better for partaking of my feeling on the subject. I believe that with me it is pride that revolts at the trash. And then it is so false; the people are so clearly flattering to be flattered. Oh, I hate it!!!

“Make my kindest regards [sic] and accept my father’s.

“Ever most faithfully and affectionately yours,

“M.R. MITFORD.

“P.S. I suppose my book will be out in about a month. I shall desire Whittaker to send you a copy. It is the fifth and last volume.”

The following interesting letter, franked by her friend Talfourd, and shown only by the post-mark to have been posted on the 20th of June, 1836, is apparently only part of a letter, for it is written upon one page, and the two “turnovers” only; and begins abruptly:

“My being in London this year seems very uncertain, although if Mr. Sergeant Talfourd’s Ion be played, as I believe it will, for Mr. Macready’s benefit, I shall hardly be able to resist the temptation of going up for a very few days to be present upon that occasion. But I scarcely ever stir. I am not strong, and am subject to a painful complaint, which renders the service of a maid indispensable not only to my comfort but to my health; and that, besides the expense, has an appearance of fuss and finery, to which I have a great objection, and to which indeed I have from station no claim. My father, too, hates to be left even for a day. And splendid old man as he is in his healthful and vigorous age, I cannot but recollect that he is seventy-five, and that he is my only tie upon earth the only relation (except, indeed, a few very distant cousins, Russells, Greys, Ogles, and Deans, whom I am too proud and too poor to hook on upon), my only relation in the wide world. This is a desolate view of things; but it explains a degree of clinging to that one most precious parent which people can hardly comprehend. You can scarcely imagine how fine an old man he is; how clear of head and warm of heart. He almost wept over your letter to-day, and reads your book with singular delight and satisfaction, in spite of the difference in politics. He feels strongly, and so, I assure you, do I, your kind mention of me and my poor writings a sort of testimony always gratifying, but doubly so when the distinguished writer is a dear friend. Even in this desolation, your success that of your last work [Paris and the Parisians] especially must be satisfactory to you. I have no doubt that two volumes on Italy will prove equally delightful to your readers, whilst the journey will be the best possible remedy for all that you have suffered in spirits and health.

“I am attempting a novel, for which Messieurs Saunders and Ottley have agreed to give 700_l_. It is to be ready some time in September I mean the MS. and I am most anxious upon every account to make it as good as possible, one very great reason being the fair, candid, and liberal conduct of the intended publishers. I shall do my very best. Shall I, do you think, succeed? I take for granted that our loss is your gain, and that you see Mr. Milman and his charming wife, who will, I am sure, sympathise most sincerely in your present affliction.

“Adieu, my dear friend. I am tying myself up from letter-writing until I have finished my novel. While I cannot but hope for one line from you to say that you are recovering. Letters to me may always be inclosed to Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M.P., 2, Elm Court, Temple. Even if he be on circuit, they will reach me after a short delay. God bless you all. My father joins heartily in this prayer, with

“Your faithful and affectionate,

“M.R. MITFORD.”

The next, and last which I have found, is entirely undated, but post-marked 20th April, 1837.

“MY DEAR FRIEND, I don’t know when a trifle has pleased me so much as the coincidence which set us a-writing to each other just at the same time. I have all the north-country superstition flowing through my veins, and do really believe in the exploded doctrine of sympathies. That is to say, I believe in all genial superstitions, and don’t like this steam-packet railway world of ours, which puts aside with so much scorn that which for certain Shakespeare and Ben Jonson held for true. I am charmed at your own account of yourself and your doings. Mr. Edward Kenyon (whose brother, John Kenyon, of Harley Place, the most delightful man in London of course you know him is my especial friend) Mr. Edward Kenyon, who lives chiefly at Vienna, although, I believe, in great retirement, spending 200_l_. upon himself, and giving away 2,000_l_. Mr. Edward Kenyon spoke of you to me as having such opportunities of knowing both the city and the country as rarely befell even a resident, and what you say of the peasantry gives me a strong desire to see your book.

“A happy subject is in my mind, a great thing, especially for you whose descriptions are so graphic. The thing that would interest me in Austria, and for the maintenance of which one almost pardons (not quite) their retaining that other old-fashioned thing, the State prisons, is their having kept up in their splendour those grand old monasteries, which are swept away now in Spain and Portugal. I have a passion for Gothic architecture, and a leaning towards the magnificence of the old religion, the foster-mother of all that is finest and highest in art, and if I have such a thing as a literary project, it is to write a romance, of which Reading Abbey in its primal magnificence should form a part, not the least about forms of faith, understand, but as an element of the picturesque, and as embodying a very grand and influential part of bygone days. At present I have just finished (since writing Country Stories, which people seem so good as to like) writing all the prose (except one story about the fashionable subject of Egyptian magicians, furnished to me by your admirer, Henry Chorley; I wish you had seen him taking off his hat to the walls as I showed him your father’s old residence at Heckfield), all the prose of the most splendid of the annuals, Finden’s Tableaux, of which my longest and best story a Young Pretender story I have been obliged to omit in consequence of not calculating on the length of my poetical contributors. But my poetry, especially that by that wonderful young creature Miss Barrett, Mr. Kenyon, and Mr. Procter, is certainly such as has seldom before been seen in an annual, and joined with Finden’s magnificent engravings ought to make an attractive work.

“I am now going to my novel, if it please God to grant me health. For the last two months I have only once crossed the outer threshold, and, indeed, I have never been a day well since the united effects of the tragedy and the influenza ... [word destroyed by the seal]. What will become of that poor play is in the womb of time. But its being by universal admission a far more striking drama than Rienzi, and by very far the best thing I ever wrote, it follows almost of course, that it will share the fate of its predecessor, and be tossed about the theatres for three or four years to come. Of course I should be only too happy that it should be brought out at Covent Garden under the united auspices of Mr. Macready and Mr. Bartley. But I am in constitution and in feeling a much older person than you, my dear friend, as well as in look, however the acknowledgment of age (I am 48) may stand between us; and belonging to a most sanguine and confiding person, I am of course as prone to anticipate all probable evil as he is to forestall impossible good. He, my dear father, is, I thank Heaven, splendidly well. He speaks of you always with much delight, is charmed with your writings, and I do hope that you will come to Reading and give him as well as me the great pleasure of seeing you at our poor cottage by the roadside. You would like my flower-garden. It is really a flower-garden becoming a duchess. People are so good in ministering to this, my only amusement. And the effect is heightened by passing through a labourer’s cottage to get at it, for such our poor hut literally is.

“You have heard, I suppose, that Mr. Wordsworth’s eldest son, who married a daughter of Mr. Curwen, has lost nearly, if not quite, all of his wife’s portion by the sea flowing in upon the mine, and has now nothing left but a living of 200_l._ given him by his father-in-law. So are we all touched in turn.

“I have written to the Sedgwicks for the scarlet lilies mentioned by Miss Martineau in her American book. Did you happen to see them in their glory? of course they would flourish here; and having sent them primroses, cowslips, ivy, and many other English wild flowers, which took Theodore Sedgwick’s fancy, I have a right to the return. How glad I am to hear the good you tell me of my friend Tom. His fortune seems now assured. My father’s kindest regards.

“Ever my dear friend,

“Very faithfully yours,

“M.R. MITFORD.

“P.S. Mr. Carey, the translator of Dante, has just been here. He says that he visited Cowper’s residence at Olney lately, and that his garden room, which suggested mine, is incredibly small, and not near so pretty. Come and see. You know, of course, that the ’Modern Antiques’ in Our Village were Theodosia and Frances Hill, sisters of Joseph Hill, cousins and friends of poor Cowper.”

What the “good” was by which my “fortune was assured” I am unable to guess. But I am sure of the sincerity of the writer’s rejoicing thereat.

Mary Mitford was a genuinely warm-hearted woman, and much of her talk would probably be stigmatised by the young gentlemen of the present generation, who consider the moral temperature of a fish to be “good form,” as “gush.” How old Landor, who “gushed” from cradle to grave, would have massacred and rended in his wrath such talkers! Mary Mitford’s “gush” was sincere at all events. But there is a “hall-mark,” for those who can decipher it, “without which none is genuine.”

A considerable intimacy grew up between my mother and the author of Highways and Byeways during the latter part of his residence in England, and subsequently, when returning from Boston on leave, he visited Florence and Rome. Many letters passed between them after his establishment as British Consul at Boston, some characteristic selections from which will, I doubt not, be acceptable to many readers.

The following was written on the envelope enclosing a very long letter from Mrs. Grattan, and was written, I think, in 1840:

“I cannot avoid squeezing in a few words more just as the ship is on the point of sailing or steaming away for England ... ‘The President’ has been a fatal title this spring. Poor Harrison, a good and honest man, died in a month after he was elected, and this fine ship, about which we have been at this side of the Atlantic so painfully excited ever since March, is, I fear, gone down with its gallant captain (Roberts, with whom we crossed the Atlantic in the British Queen) and poor Power, whom the public cannot afford to lose.

“Since I wrote my letter three days ago pardon the boldly original topic the weather has mended considerably. Tell Tom that every tree is also striving to turn over a new leaf, and it is well for you that I have not another to turn too. God bless you.

“T.C.G.”

I beg to observe that the exhortation addressed to me had no moral significance, but was the writer’s characteristic mode of exciting me to new scribblements.

The following, also written on the envelope enclosing a letter from Mrs. Grattan, is dated the 30th of July, 1840:

“I cannot let the envelope go quite a blank, though I cannot quite make it a prize ... In literature I have done nothing but write a preface and notes for two new editions of the old Highways and Byeways, and a short sketchy article in this month’s number of the North American Review on the present state of Ireland. I am going to follow it up in the next number in reference to the state of the Irish in America, and I hope I shall thus do some good to a subject I have much at heart. I have had various applications to deliver lectures at Lyceums, &c, and to preside at public meetings for various objects. All this I have declined. I have been very much before the public at dinners for various purposes, and have refused many invitations to several neighbouring cities. I must now draw back a little. I think I have hitherto done good to the cause of peace and friendship between the countries. But I know these continued public appearances will expose me to envy, hatred, and malice. I hope to do something historical by and by, and perhaps an occasional article in the North American Review. But anything like light writing I never can again turn to.”

From a very long letter written on the 13th of May, 1841, I will give a, few extracts:

“MY DEAR AND VALUED FRIEND, Your letter from Penryth [sic] without date, but bearing the ominous post-mark, ‘April 1st,’ has completely made a fool of me, in that sense which implies that nothing else can excuse a grey head and a seared heart for thinking and feeling that there are such things in the world as affection and sincerity. Being fond of flying in the face of reason, and despising experience, whenever they lay down general rules, I am resolved to believe in exceptions, to delight in instances, and to be quite satisfied that I have ’troops of friends’ you being one of the troopers no matter how few others there may be, or where they are to be found.

“You really must imagine how glad we were to see your handwriting again, and I may say also, how surprised; for it passeth our understanding to discover how you make time for any correspondence at all. We have followed all your literary doings step by step since we left Europe, and we never cease wondering at your fertility and rejoicing at your success. But I am grieved to think that all this is at the cost of your comfort. Or is it that you wrote in a querulous mood, when you said those sharp things about your grey goose quill. Surely composition must be pleasant to you. No one who writes so fast and so well can find it actually irksome. I am aware that people sometimes think they find it so. But we may deceive ourselves on the dark as well as on the bright side of our road, and more easily, because it is the dark. That is to say, we may not only cheat ourselves with false hopes of good, but with false notions of evil, which proves, if it proves anything just now, that you are considerably mistaken when you fancy writing to be a bore, and that I know infinitely better than you do what you like or dislike.”

It is rather singular to find a literary workman talking in this style. Grattan was not a fertile writer, and, I must suppose, was never a very industrious one. But he surely must have known that talk about the pleasures of “composition” was wholly beside the mark. That may be, often is, pleasant enough, and if the thoughts could be telephoned from the brain to the types it would all be mighty agreeable; and the world would be very considerably more overwhelmed with authorship than it is. It is the “grey goose quill” work, the necessity for incarnating the creatures of the brain in black and white, that is the world’s protection from this avalanche. And I for one do not understand how anybody who, eschewing the sunshine and the fields and the song of birds, or the enjoyment of other people’s brain-work, has glued himself to his desk for long hours, can say or imagine that his task is, or has been, aught else than hard and distasteful work, demanding unrelaxing self-denial and industry. And however fine the frenzy in which the poet’s eye may roll while he builds the lofty line, the work of putting some thousands of them on the paper when built must be as irksome to him as the penny-a-liner’s task is to him more so, in that the mind of the latter does not need to be forcibly and painfully restrained from rushing on to the new pastures which invite it, and curbed to the pack-horse pace of the quill-driving process.

“You must not,” he continues, “allow yourself to be, or even to fancy that you are tired or tormented, or worn out. Work the mine to the last. Pump up every drop out of the well. Put money i’ thy purse; and add story after story to that structure of fame, which will enable you to do as much to that house by the lake side, where I will hope to see you yet.”

He then goes on to speak at considerable length of the society of Boston, praising it much, yet saying that it is made more charming to a visitor than to a permanent resident. “In this it differs,” he says, “from almost all the countries I have lived in in Europe, except Holland.”

Speaking of a visit to Washington during the inauguration of General Harrison, which seems to have delighted him much, he says he travelled back with a family, “at least with the master and mistress of it, of whom I must tell you something. Mr. Paige is a merchant, and brother-in-law of Mr. Webster; Mrs. Paige a niece of Judge Story. From this double connection with two of the first men in the country their family associations are particularly agreeable. Mrs. Paige is one of three sisters, all very handsome, spirited, and full of talent. One is married to Mr. Webster’s eldest son. Another, Mrs. Joy, has for her husband an idle gentleman, a rare thing in this place. Mrs. Paige was in Europe two years ago with Mr. and Mrs. Webster senior (the latter by the bye is a most charming person) and had the advantage of seeing society in England and France in its best aspect, and is one who can compare as well as see ... Among the men [of the Boston society] are Dr. Chinning, a prophet in our country, a pamphleteer in his own; Bancroft, the historian of America, a man of superior talents and great agreeability, but a black sheep in society, on account of his Van Buren politics, against whom the white sheep of the Whig party will not rub themselves; Prescott, the author of Ferdinand and Isabella, a handsome, half blind shunner of the vanities of the world, with some others, who read and write a good deal, and no one the wiser for it. Edward Everett is in Italy, where you will surely meet him [we saw a good deal of him]. He is rather formal than cold, if all I hear whispered of him be true; of elegant taste in literature, though not of easy manners, and altogether an admirable specimen of an American orator and scholar. At Cambridge, three miles off, we have Judge Story, of the Supreme Court, eloquent, deeply learned, garrulous, lively, amiable, excellent in all and every way that a mortal can be. He is decidedly the gem of this western world. Mr. Webster is now settled at Washington, though here at this moment on a visit to Mrs. Paige. Among our neighbouring notabilities is John Quincy Adams, an ex-President of the United States, ex-Minister at half the courts in Europe, and now at seventy-five, a simple Member of Congress, hard as a piece of granite, and cold as a lump of ice.”

Speaking of his having very frequently appeared at public meetings during the first year of his Consulship, and of his having since that refrained from such appearances, he continues: “I was doubtful as to the way my being so much en evidence might be relished at home. Of late public matters have been on so ticklish a footing, that all the less a British functionary was seen the better.

“In literature I have done nothing barring a couple of articles on Ireland and the Irish in America, a subject I have much at heart. But much as I feel for them and with them, I refused dining with my countrymen on St. Patrick’s Day because they had the gaucherie (of which I had previous notice), to turn the festive meeting into a political one, by giving ‘O’Connell and success to repeal’ as one of their ‘regular’ toasts, and by leaving out the Queen’s health, which they gave when I dined with them last year.”

Then after detailed notices of the movements of his sons, he goes on:

“We have many plans in perspective, Niagara, Canada, Halifax, the mountains, the springs, the sea; the result of which you shall know as soon as we receive a true and faithful account of your adventures in just as many pages as you can afford; but Tom must in the meantime send me a long letter ... Tell Tom I have half resolved to give up punning and take to repartee. A young fellow said to me the other day, ’Ah! Mr. Consul (as I am always called), I wish I could discover a new pleasure.’ ‘Try virtue!’ was my reply. A pompous ex-Governor said swaggeringly to me at the last dinner party at which I assisted, ’Well, Mr. Consul, I suppose you Europeans think us semi-civilised here in America?’ ‘Almost!’ said I. Now ask Tom if that was not pretty considerable smart. But assure him at the same time, it is nothing at all to what I could do in the way of impertinence! Need I say how truly and affectionately we all love you?

“T.C. GRATTAN.”

I wrote back that I would enter the lists with him in the matter of impertinence; and as a sample told him that I thought he had better return to the punning.

I could, I doubt not, find among my mother’s papers some further letters that might be worth printing or quoting. But my waning space warns me that I must not indulge myself with doing so.