_April 1820._
I was much surprised at finding that the postillion who drove us from
Wolverhampton could neither tell himself, nor learn from any one up the
road, along the heath, at the turnpike, or even in the very suburbs of
Birmingham, the way to Mr. Watt's! I was as much surprised as we were at
Paris in searching for Madame de Genlis; so we went to Mr. Moilliet's,
and stowed ourselves next day into their travelling landau, as large as
our own old, old delightful coach, and came here.
Oh, my dear Honora, how melancholy to see places the same--persons, and
such persons gone! Mrs. Watt, in deep mourning, coming forward to meet
us alone in that gay trellice, the same books on his table, his picture,
his bust, his image everywhere, _himself_ nowhere upon this earth. Mrs.
Watt has, in that poor little shattered frame, a prodigiously strong
mind; indeed she could not have been so loved by such a man for such a
length of time if she had not superior qualities. She was more kind than
I can express, receiving Fanny and Harriet as if they had been of her
own family.
In the morning I fell to penning this letter, as we were engaged to
breakfast at Mr. James Watt's, at Aston Hall. You remember the fine old
brick palace? Mr. Watt has fitted up half of it so as to make it
superbly comfortable: fine hall, breakfast room, Flemish pictures,
Boulton and Watt at either end. After breakfast, at which was Mr.
Priestly, an American, son of Dr. Priestly, we went over all the
habitable and uninhabitable parts of the house: the banqueting room,
with a most costly, frightful ceiling, and a chimneypiece carved up to
the cornice with monsters, one with a nose covered with scales, one with
human face on a tarantula's body. Varieties of little staircases, and a
garret gallery called Dick's haunted gallery; a blocked-up room called
the King's room; then a modern dressing-room, with fine tables of
Bullock's making, one of wood from Brazil--Zebra wood--and no more to be
had of it for love or money.
But come on to the great gallery, longer than that at Sudbury,--about
one hundred and thirty-six feet long,--and at the farthest end we came
to a sort of oriel, separated from the gallery only by an arch, and
there the white marble bust of the great Mr. Watt struck me almost
breathless. What everybody went on saying I do not know, but my own
thoughts, as I looked down the closing lines of this superb gallery, now
in a half-ruined state, were very melancholy, on life and death, family
pride, and the pride of wealth, and the pride of genius, all so
perishable.
_To_ MRS. EDGEWORTH.