1852.
January 5.
Mr. Bennoch has just had the very great kindness, dear Mr. Fields,
to let me know of your safe arrival at Genoa, and of your enjoyment
of your journey. Thank God for it! We heard so much about commotions
in the South of France that I had become fidgety about you, the
rather that it is the best who go, and that I for one cannot afford
to lose you.
Now let me thank you for all your munificence,--that beautiful
Longfellow with the hundred illustrations, and that other book of
Professor Longfellow's, beautiful in another way, the "Golden
Legend." I hope I shall be only one among the multitude who think
this the greatest and best thing he has done yet, so racy, so full
of character, of what the French call local color, so, in its best
and highest sense, original. Moreover, I like the happy ending. Then
those charming volumes of De Quincey and Sprague and Grace
Greenwood. (Is that her real name?) And dear Mr. Hawthorne, and the
two new poets, who, if also young poets, will be fresh glories for
America. How can I thank you enough for all these enjoyments? And
you must come back to England, and add to my obligations by giving
me as much as you can of your company in the merry month of May. I
have fallen in with Mr. Kingsley, and a most charming person he is,
certainly the least like an Englishman of letters, and the most like
an accomplished, high-toned English gentleman, that I have ever met
with. You must know Mr. Kingsley. He is very young too, really
young, for it is characteristic of our "young poets" that they
generally turn out middle-aged and very often elderly. My book is
out at last, hurried through the press in a fortnight,--a process
which half killed me, and has left the volumes, no doubt, full of
errata,--and you, I mean your house, have not got it. I am keeping a
copy for you personally. People say that they like it. I think you
will, because it will remind you of this pretty country, and of an
old Englishwoman who loves you well. Mrs. Browning was delighted
with your visit. She is a Bonapartiste; so am I. I always adored the
Emperor, and I think his nephew is a great man, full of ability,
energy, and courage, who put an end to an untenable situation and
got quit of a set of unrepresenting representatives. The Times
newspaper, right as it seems to me about Kossuth, is dangerously
wrong about Louis Napoleon, since it is trying to stimulate the
nation to a war for which France is more than prepared, is ready,
and England is not. London might be taken with far less trouble and
fewer men than it took to accomplish the _coup d'état_. Ah! I
suspect very different politics will enclose this wee bit notie, if
dear Mr. Bennoch contrives to fold it up in a letter of his own; but
to agree to differ is part of the privileges of friendship; besides,
I think you and I generally agree.
Ever yours,