I got down here last night (after a most intolerably wet journey) before
seven, and found Thompson sitting by my fire. He had ordered dinner, and
we ate it pleasantly enough, and went to bed in good time. This morning,
Mr. Yates, the great man connected with the Institution (and a brother
of Ashton Yates's), called. I went to look at it with him. It is an
enormous place, and the tickets have been selling at two and even three
guineas apiece. The lecture-room, in which the celebration is held, will
accommodate over thirteen hundred people. It was being fitted with gas
after the manner of the ring at Astley's. I should think it an easy
place to speak in, being a semicircle with seats rising one above
another to the ceiling, and will have eight hundred ladies to-night, in
full dress. I am rayther shaky just now, but shall pull up, I have no
doubt. At dinner-time to-morrow you will receive, I hope, a facetious
document hastily penned after I return to-night, telling you how it all
went off.
When I came back here, I found Fanny and Hewett had picked me up just
before. We all went off straight to the _Britannia_, which lay where she
did when we went on board. We went into the old little cabin and the
ladies' cabin, but Mrs. Bean had gone to Scotland, as the ship does not
sail again before May. In the saloon we had some champagne and biscuits,
and Hewett had set out upon the table a block of Boston ice, weighing
fifty pounds. Scott, of the _Caledonia_, lunched with us--a very nice
fellow. He saw Macready play Macbeth in Boston, and gave me a tremendous
account of the effect. Poor Burroughs, of the _George Washington_, died
on board, on his last passage home. His little wife was with him.
Hewett dines with us to-day, and I have procured him admission to-night.
I am very sorry indeed (and so was he), that you didn't see the old
ship. It was the strangest thing in the world to go on board again.
I had Bacon with me as far as Watford yesterday, and very pleasant.
Sheil was also in the train, on his way to Ireland.
Give my best love to Georgy, and kisses to the darlings. Also
affectionate regards to Mac and Forster.
Ever affectionately.