To Rev. J. P. Gell.
Patterdale: July 31, 1844.
I came to Fox How about three weeks ago to meet Matt, and stayed one day. Walrond joined us here after the first week; at the end of the 5th I depart, go home to see my father, who has just got home from America, after a visit by the way, superinduced by south-easters, to the vicinity of the Hebrides, and then I go to coach two pupils in Yorkshire for a month or five weeks. The vacation then will be ‘welly’ (as they say here for ‘well-nigh’) run out, and I shall then presently return to my tutorialities at Oxford.
Your request for a sermon cannot be acceded to. I am not, nor am likely as yet, to be aught but a laic, and lay sermons I leave for Johnson and Coleridge. You must, therefore, be content with such poor and scanty sermones repentes per humum as you get in my rare epistles. You shall have one when I go into orders—oh, questionable when!
What, according to your experience, is the best division of the day in this country? The question centres in that other momentous question, ‘What is the properest hour to eat?’ We began with—breakfast, 8; work, 9.30 to 2.30; bathe, dinner, walk, and tea, 2.30 to 9.30; work, 9.30 to 11. We now have revolutionised to the following constitution, as yet hardly advanced beyond paper:—Breakfast, 8; work, 9.30 to 1.30; bathe, dinner, 1.30 to 3; work, 3 to 6; walk, ad infinitum; tea, ditto.
M. has gone out fishing, when he ought properly to be working, it being nearly four o’clock, and to-day proceeding in theory according to Constitution No. 2: it has, however, come on to rain furiously; so Walrond, who is working sedulously at Herodotus, and I, who am writing to you, rejoice to think that he will get a good wetting.
To the same.
Oriel: Nov. 25, 1844.
Your letter reached me just at the time of my father’s death. In August, when I wrote, he was improving, and our alarm had ceased; but he had a relapse not long after, and for a month before the end we were in full expectation of such a result. He died on October 19, a few hours after the arrival of my eldest brother from America.
Your letter was in answer to mine written exactly twelve months before, when I was in doubt about subscription to the thirty-nine Articles. It certainly was very curious getting an answer to feelings which were of a year’s standing, especially as I had pro tempore (perhaps tempori serviens) laid them by almost completely; and indeed you know already that I signed without demur, and have been working away in the thoroughly terrestrial element of College tutorism, not to speak of Mendicity Societies and the like. Nevertheless, I still consider the old scruple to be a sort of St. Paul who ought not to be put off by any, in however high place, to a more convenient season, or at any rate ought to have a convenient season found him before long. And I can’t profess myself one whit appeased by your burst of wonder and opposition. So the sooner you come home the better, otherwise you will perhaps hear of some very desperate step, though of becoming an Independent minister I certainly have no present thought or desire.