[315]
liament; here Poole takes his cheese and salad, and tells stories which would do well in ‘Paul Pry,’ and redeem the degenerate numbers of ‘Little Peddlington.’
I have also been nominated for another club.
All this is well, as it opens to me various ways of meeting society.
I must tell you more at large of London club-life.
The two nights that I have been at my club, I have been all unconscious of the progress of time, and midnight has been far advanced before I thought of retiring.
Such are London hours!
What was my disappointment on arriving at London, when I found no letter from you!
The Barings had sent all my letters, except one or two, to my brother at St. Petersburg.
Do thank Longfellow for his capital letter, which by good luck stayed behind; also Lawrence, for his hearty, friendly lines; and Greenleaf for his lamentation over the changing spirit of the times.
I shall write them all in due time; but at present my hands and time are so full that I cannot.
I find, as I get into the atmosphere of the wits of London, that I see many literary characters in different lights from those in which we view them at a distance.
In the short time that I have been here I have heard a flood of anecdote and gossip, but must reserve all these things for conversation in future years.
No, I will forget it; for you will have the Ticknors with you, to whom all things have been revealed: I can only hope to follow humbly in their wake.
I assure you, they have seen the prime of England; and I promise you a treat in the reminiscences which they can pour out: their autographs and little memorials of that kind alone would not be of slight consequence; but above all these is the living spring of knowledge and of actual experience of London life, and of all the wits that sparkle in its deep waters.
I have not time to write; and so I say, Good-by.
I am startled by the expenses here; but, prudence.
Nullum numen abest, &c.
Yours affectionately,
To Judge Story, Cambridge.
London, June 14, 1838.
my dear Judge,—Three places have I seen which you would like to see, and which I have longed to see,—the House of Commons, Doctors' Commons, <*> I can assure you,
my dear Hillard,—From Paris to London is but commons was on the globe, and yet what spaces separate them when we regard <*> eleven morals, character, and external appearances!
thought that five<*> study of one great city teeming with life, animation, and gayety would take off the edge of my wonder, and throw over all other places that I may visit a secondary character.
But here I am in ‘famous London town,’ and my wonder still attends me; but it is of an entirely different quality from that
1 Established in 1831, in King Street, Covent Garden, for literary men, and particularly for those who were by profession or tastes specially interested in the drama.
Its collection of pictures contain several painted by Sir Peter Lely, Gainsborough, and Reynolds.
The club was frequented by Theodore Hook and Albert Smith.
