"I am still in a very extempore condition as to house,books,&c.One which I have hired for three years will be given up to me in the middle of August;and then I may hope to have something like a house,--so far as that is possible for any one to whom Time itself is often but a worse or a better kind of cave in the desert.We have had rainy and cheerless weather almost since the day of our arrival.But the sun now shines more lovingly,and the skies seem less disdainful of man and his perplexities.The earth is green,abundant and beautiful.But human life,so far as I can learn,is mean and meagre enough in its purposes,however striking to the speculative or sentimental bystander.Pray be assured that whatever you may say of the 'landlord at Clifton,'[21]the more I know of him,the less I shall like him.Well with me if I can put up with him for the present,and make use of him,till at last I can joyfully turn him off forever!
"Love to you Wife and self.My little Charlotte desires me to tell you that she has new shoes for her Doll,which she will show you when you come.
"Yours,"JOHN STERLING."
The visit to Clifton never took effect;nor to any of Sterling's subsequent homes;which now is matter of regret to me.Concerning the "Review of _Teufelsdrockh_"there will be more to say anon.As to "little Charlotte and her Doll,"I remember well enough and was more than once reminded,this bright little creature,on one of my first visits to Bayswater,had earnestly applied to me to put her Doll's shoes on for her;which feat was performed.--The next fragment indicates a household settled,fallen into wholesome routine again;and may close the series here:--
_To his Mother_.
"_July 22d_,1839.--A few evenings ago we went to Mr.Griffin's,and met there Dr.Prichard,the author of a well-known Book on the _Races of Mankind_,to which it stands in the same relation among English books as the Racing Calendar does to those of Horsekind.He is a very intelligent,accomplished person.We had also there the Dean;a certain Dr.----of Corpus College,Cambridge (a booby);and a clever fellow,a Mr.Fisher,one of the Tutors of Trinity in my days.We had a very pleasant evening."--At London we were in the habit of expecting Sterling pretty often;his presence,in this house as in others,was looked for,once in the month or two,and came always as sunshine in the gray weather to me and mine.My daily walks with him had long since been cut short without renewal;that walk to Eltham and Edgeworth's perhaps the last of the kind he and I had:but our intimacy,deepening and widening year after year,knew no interruption or abatement of increase;an honest,frank and truly human mutual relation,valuable or even invaluable to both parties,and a lasting loss,hardly to be replaced in this world,to the survivor of the two.
His visits,which were usually of two or three days,were always full of business,rapid in movement as all his life was.To me,if possible,he would come in the evening;a whole cornucopia of talk and speculation was to be discharged.If the evening would not do,and my affairs otherwise permitted,I had to mount into cabs with him;fly far and wide,shuttling athwart the big Babel,wherever his calls and pauses had to be.This was his way to husband time!Our talk,in such straitened circumstances,was loud or low as the circumambient groaning rage of wheels and sound prescribed,--very loud it had to be in such thoroughfares as London Bridge and Cheapside;but except while he was absent,off for minutes into some banker's office,lawyer's,stationer's,haberdasher's or what office there might be,it never paused.In this way extensive strange dialogues were carried on:to me also very strange,--private friendly colloquies,on all manner of rich subjects,held thus amid the chaotic roar of things.Sterling was full of speculations,observations and bright sallies;vividly awake to what was passing in the world;glanced pertinently with victorious clearness,without spleen,though often enough with a dash of mockery,into its Puseyisms,Liberalisms,literary Lionisms,or what else the mad hour might be producing,--always prompt to recognize what grain of sanity might be in the same.He was opulent in talk,and the rapid movement and vicissitude on such occasions seemed to give him new excitement.
Once,I still remember,--it was some years before,probably in May,on his return from Madeira,--he undertook a day's riding with me;once and never again.We coursed extensively,over the Hampstead and Highgate regions,and the country beyond,sauntering or galloping through many leafy lanes and pleasant places,in ever-flowing,ever-changing talk;and returned down Regent Street at nightfall:one of the cheerfulest days I ever had;--not to be repeated,said the Fates.Sterling was charming on such occasions:at once a child and a gifted man.A serious fund of thought he always had,a serious drift you never missed in him:nor indeed had he much depth of real laughter or sense of the ludicrous,as I have elsewhere said;but what he had was genuine,free and continual:his sparkling sallies bubbled up as from aerated natural fountains;a mild dash of gayety was native to the man,and had moulded his physiognomy in a very graceful way.
We got once into a cab,about Charing Cross;I know not now whence or well whitherward,nor that our haste was at all special;however,the cabman,sensible that his pace was slowish,took to whipping,with a steady,passionless,businesslike assiduity which,though the horse seemed lazy rather than weak,became afflictive;and I urged remonstrance with the savage fellow:"Let him alone,"answered Sterling;"he is kindling the enthusiasm of his horse,you perceive;that is the first thing,then we shall do very well!"--as accordingly we did.
