A. H. C.
To T. Arnold, Esq.
University Hall, Gordon Square: March 16, 1851.
I sent you five or six copies of the poem you were so friendly as to like so well. By the time they reached you, you would probably have been properly disenchanted, with a view to which contingency I fortified them by two Idylls of a truer pastoral poet or poetess. These you may accept, for the lack of better, as my wedding-present. The following you may accept or not, as you please:—
On grass, on gravel, in the sun,
And now beneath the shade,
They went in pleasant Kensington.
Let it remind you of the ancient Kensington Gardens, Fresh from the oven, it is, I assure you, tibi primo confisum. I am still resident in Gordon Square, and very little certain whether I shall or not continue so. The work does, however, well enough.
May 16, 1851.
This has lingered, I believe, chiefly because I desired to add some self-introducing phrase to your wife, the precise form of which was difficult; so pray give what you think becoming an ancient ally of her husband’s—best wishes—submission? For to a certain extent, even at this distance, old friends have to make their graceful withdrawal. It seems to me, at any rate on this side the water, that a wife is a sort of natural enemy to a man’s friends.