Photogravure after the painting by Clairir
To Mrs. Robinson. “Sandleford, July 14, 1787. ... That I was delighted at becoming a grandmother, for such I account myself to the dear babe, cannot be doubted; and surely it is the most agreable and becoming office of old age. I have always wonder’d at the wild and rash ambition which impell’d men to wish and seek for conditions and offices to which they were not by talents or circumstances well adapted; but I may say without vanity, I have the age, the experience, the wrinkles, the foibles which form the compleat character of grandmother; and I long to be in full office, but it will be above a fortnight before father, mother, child and cradle will be fix’d at Sandleford.... I should have been under dreadful anxieties if she had not been so well; for she is the most amiable, agreable, and valuable young woman I ever knew. She is a mere mortal, and, I suppose, she must have some faults; but tho’ I have watched her continually, I have never been able to discover any in her.
“... I am not interested in the Christmas quarter. When one is too old to play at blind man’s buff and hunt the whistle, I think one cannot pass a merry Christmas in the country.
‘Tower’d cities pleased us then,
And the busy haunts of men.’
Good society and the animated circle of a great town supply all that the winter season deprives us of.
“... I was much pleas’d with a work of Mr. Morgan’s, your son’s tutor, which he had the goodness to send me. I think it not only very ingenious and well written, but that it will have a very good effect upon the shallow wits and foolish pedants who affect to be infidels by way of showing their parts and learning.... I have visited and been visited by the Pocock family, settled here. They seem very good kind of people.”
“Friday, September ye 14th, 1787. To Mrs. Robinson at Mr. Baker’s Circulating Library, Southampton.—I think there is greater variety in the environs of Southampton than in any part of England perhaps; and all in the noble style,—the great ocean, the wide forest, and scenes of rural beauty are all within reach of our airing. So, as the humour points to the allegro or the penseroso, you may direct your jaunts, and find the nereids, or the dryads, or Pomona receive you with their best graces and softest smiles.
“... The lord primate departs from Bristol to-day, and intends to come to Sandleford the beginning of next week. His grace had appointed a day for doing me that favour six weeks ago; but the journey caused a return of the gravel, and he was oblig’d to stop at Marlbro’, and sent a servant to tell us of the disappointment. So Mrs. Scott and I went to him and staid two days, at the end of which he was able to return to Bristol by gentle journeys, and return to the use of the Bristol waters, which, indeed, his physician was very loth he should quit; and, thank God, he has not since had any return of the complaint.
“... I have had a succession of company in my house; attention to them, and morning airings and domestick business have engross’d my time. In the present state of my house, I have only one spare room, which was first occupied by Doctor and Mrs. Wharton; then by Doctor Beattie; then by Mr. and Mrs. Smelt and their neices.