I have a hundred times at least wanted to say to you how good I thought
those papers in "Blackwood"--how excellent their purpose, and how
delicately and charmingly worked out. Their subtle and delightful
humour, and their grasp of the whole question, were something more
pleasant to me than I can possibly express.
"How comes this lumbering Inimitable to say this, on this Sunday night
of all nights in the year?" you naturally ask. Now hear the Inimitable's
honest avowal! I make so bold because I heard that Morning Service
better read this morning than ever I have heard it read in my life. And
because--for the soul of me--I cannot separate the two things, or help
identifying the wise and genial man out of church with the earnest and
unaffected man in it. Midsummer madness, perhaps, but a madness I hope
that will hold us true friends for many and many a year to come. The
madness is over as soon as you have burned this letter (see the history
of the Gunpowder Plot), but let us be friends much longer for these
reasons and many included in them not herein expressed.
Affectionately always.
[Sidenote: Miss Joll.]
ROCKINGHAM CASTLE, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE,
_Nov. 27th, 1849._
Mr. Charles Dickens presents his compliments to Miss Joll. He is, on
principle, opposed to capital punishment, but believing that many
earnest and sincere people who are favourable to its retention in
extreme cases would unite in any temperate effort to abolish the evils
of public executions, and that the consequences of public executions are
disgraceful and horrible, he has taken the course with which Miss Joll
is acquainted as the most hopeful, and as one undoubtedly calculated to
benefit society at large.
[Sidenote: The Hon. Mrs. Watson.]
DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _Friday Night, Nov. 30th, 1849._
_A Quarter-past Ten._