"October 18. 1814.
"My dear Drury,
"Many thanks for your hitherto unacknowledged 'Anecdotes.' Now for
one of mine--I am going to be married, and have been engaged this
month. It is a long story, and, therefore, I won't tell it,--an old
and (though I did not know it till lately) a _mutual_ attachment.
The very sad life I have led since I was your pupil must partly
account for the offs and _ons_ in this now to be arranged business.
We are only waiting for the lawyers and settlements, &c.; and next
week, or the week after, I shall go down to Seaham in the new
character of a regular suitor for a wife of mine own.
"I hope Hodgson is in a fair way on the same voyage--I saw him and
his idol at Hastings. I wish he would be married at the same
time,--I should like to make a party,--like people electrified in a
row, by (or rather through) the same chain, holding one another's
hands, and all feeling the shock at once. I have not yet apprised
him of this. He makes such a serious matter of all these things,
and is so 'melancholy and gentlemanlike,' that it is quite
overcoming to us choice spirits.
"They say one shouldn't be married in a black coat. I won't have a
blue one,--that's flat. I hate it.
"Yours," &c.
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