_For Captain Lion, Brighton._
My dear sir,
I anticipated a sojournment in your “neat little country cottage” during
your absence, with more pleasure than I expressed, when you made me the
offer of it. I imagined how much more comfortable I should be there,
than in my own out-of-town single-room. I was mistaken. I have been
comfortable nowhere. The malignity of an evil star is against me; I mean
the dog-star. You recollect the heat I fell into during our Hornsey
walk. I have been hot ever since, “hissing hot,--think of that Master
Brook;” I would that thou wert really a brook, I would cleave thy
bosom, and, unless thou wert cool to me, I would not acknowledge thee
for a true friend.
After returning from the coach wherein you and your lady-cousin
departed, I “larded the lean earth” to my own house in town. That
evening I got into a hackney coach to enjoy your “cool” residence; but
it was hot; and there was no “cool of the evening;” I went to bed hot,
and slept hot all night, and got up hot to a hot tea-breakfast, looking
all the while on the hot print opposite, Hogarth’s “Evening,” with the
fat hot citizen’s wife sweltering between her husband and the New River,
the hot little dog looking wistfully into the reachless warm water, her
crying hot boy on her husband’s stick, the scolding hot sister, and all
the other heats of that ever-to-be-warmly-admired engraving. The coldest
picture in the room, to my heated eye, was the fruit-piece worked in
worsted--worsted in the dog-days!
How I got through that hot day I cannot remember. At night, when,
according to Addison, “evening shades prevail,” the heat prevailed;
there were no “cool” shades, and I got no rest; and therefore I got up
restless, and walked out and saw the morning star, which I suppose was
the dog-star, for I sought coolness and found it not; but the sun arose,
and methought there was no atmosphere but burning beams; and the
metropolis poured out its heated thousands towards the New River, at
Newington; and it was filled with men, and boys, and dogs; and all
looked as “comfortable” as live eels in a stew pan.
I am too hot to proceed. What a summer! The very pumps refuse “spring”
water; and, I suppose, we shall have no more till next spring.
My heart melts within me, and I am not so inhuman as to request the
servant to broil with this letter to the post-office, but I have ordered
her to give it to the newsman, and ask him to slip it into the first
letter-box he passes, and to tell him, if he forgets, it is of no
consequence, and in no hurry; he may take it on to Ludgate-hill, and Mr.
Hone, if he please, may print it in his _Every-Day Book_. I dare say he
is too hot to write, and this may help to fill up; so that you’ll get
it, at any rate. I don’t care if all the world reads it, for the hot
weather is no secret. As Mr. Freeling cannot say that printing a letter
is privately conveying it, I shall not get into hot water at the
post-office.