Had not your second note arrived this morning, I should surely have
written to you; that you might have a little letter for your Sunday's
breakfast. Do not accuse me of growing enamoured of London; I would have
been in the country long ago if I could. . . . Nor do I think I shall
get away till the end of this month; and then I will go. I am not so bad
as Tennyson, who has been for six weeks intending to start every day for
Switzerland or Cornwall, he doesn't quite know which. However, his stay
has been so much gain to me; for he and John Allen are the two men that
give me pleasure here.
Tell Churchyard he must come up once again. . . . I saw a most lovely
Sir Joshua at Christie's a week ago; it went far far above my means.
There is an old hunting picture in Regent St. which I want him to look
at. I think it is Morland; whom I don't care twopence for; the horses
ill drawn; some good colour: the people English; good old England! I was
at a party of modern wits last night that made me creep into myself, and
wish myself away talking to any Suffolk old woman in her cottage, while
the trees murmured without. The wickedness of London appals me; and yet
I am no paragon.
_To F. Tennyson_.
BOULGE, WOODBRIDGE. _June_, 12/45.