You will think I have forgot you. I spent four pleasant days with Donne:
who looks pale and thin, and in whose face the grey is creeping up from
those once flourishing whiskers to the skull. It is doing so with me. We
are neither of us in what may be called the first dawn of boyhood. Donne
maintains his shape better than I do, but sorrow I doubt has done that:
and so we see why the house of mourning is better than the stalled ox.
For it is a grievous thing to grow poddy: the age of Chivalry is gone
then. An old proverb says that 'a full belly neither fights nor flies
well.'
I also saw Geldart at Norwich. He paints, and is deep in religious
thoughts also: he has besides the finest English good sense about him:
and altogether he is a man one goes to that one may learn from him. I
walked much about Norwich and was pleased with the old place.
Here I see my old friend Mrs. Schutz, and play with the children. Having
shown the little girl the prints of Boz's Curiosity Shop, I have made a
short abstract of Little Nelly's wanderings which interests her much,
leaving out the Swivellers, etc. For children do not understand how
merriment should intrude in a serious matter. This might make a nice
child's book, cutting out Boz's sham pathos, as well as the real fun; and
it forms a kind of Nelly-ad, {174a} or Homeric narration of the child's
wandering fortunes till she reaches at last a haven more desirable than
any in stony Ithaca.
Lusia is to be married {174b} on the 2nd, I hear; and I shall set out for
Leamington where the event takes place in the middle of next week.
Whether I shall touch in my flight at Boulge is yet uncertain: so don't
order any fireworks just at present. I hear from Mr. Crabbe he is
delighted with D'Israeli's Coningsby, which I advised him to read. Have
you read it? The children still wonder what Miss Charlesworth meant when
she said that she didn't mean what she said. I tell them it is a new way
of thinking of young England. I have exercised the children's minds
greatly on the doctrine of Puseyitical reticence (that is not the word)
but I find that children, who are great in the kingdom of Heaven, are all
for blurting out what they mean. Farewell for the present. Ever yours,
E. F. G.
If war breaks out with France, I will take up arms as a volunteer under
Major Pytches. Pytches and Westminster Abbey!
LEAMINGTON, _Sept._ 28/44.