LONDON,April 2[1847]
Here it is the day before the despatches leave and I have not written a single line to you....On Friday we dined at Lady Charlotte Lindsay's,where were Lord Brougham and Lady Mallet,Mr.
Rogers and the Bishop of Norwich and his wife.In the evening Miss Agnes Berry,who never goes out now,came on purpose to appoint an evening to go and see her sister,who is the one that Horace Walpole wished to marry,and to whom so many of his later letters are addressed.She is eighty-four,her sister a few years younger,and Lady Charlotte not much their junior.
These remnants of the BELLES-ESPRITS of the last age are charming to me.They have a vast and long experience of the best social circles,with native wit,and constant practice in the conversation of society....On Wednesday,we dined at Sir Robert Peel's,with whom I was more charmed than with anybody I have seen yet.I sat between him and the Speaker of the House of Commons.I was told that he was stiff and stately in his manners,but did not think him so,and am inclined to imagine that free from the burden of the Premiership,he unbends more.He talked constantly with me,and in speaking of a certain picture said,"When you come to Drayton Manor I shall show it to you."I should like to go there,but to see himself even more than his pictures.Lady Peel is still a very handsome woman.
The next morning we breakfasted with Mr.Rogers.He lives,as you probably know,in [a]beautiful house,though small,whose rooms look upon the Green Park,and filled with pictures and marbles.We stayed an hour or more after the other guests,listening to his stores of literary anecdote and pleasant talk.In the evening we went to the Miss Berrys',where we found Lord Morpeth,who is much attached to them.Miss Berry put her hand on his head,which is getting a little gray,and said:"Ah,George,and I remember the day you were born,your grandmother brought you and put you in my arms."Now this grandmother of Lord Morpeth's was the celebrated Duchess of Devonshire,who electioneered for Fox,and he led her to tell me all about her."Eothen"was also there,Lady Lewis and many of my friends....Aunty wishes to know who is "Eothen."She has probably read his book,"Eothen,or Traces of Travel,"which was very popular two or three years since.He is a young lawyer,Mr.
Kinglake,the most modest,unassuming person in his manners,very shy and altogether very unlike the dashing,spirited young Englishman I figured to myself,whom nothing could daunt from the Arab even to the plague,which he defied.
