My dear Barton,
Before the cavalcade and suite of Hardinge’s (a melancholy procession) reaches you, I think this letter will. You need not envy me my purchases, which are imprudent ones: both because I can’t well afford them, and because I have no house to put them. And yet all this gives a sense of stolen enjoyment to them. I am yet haunted with the ghost of a Battle-piece (little in my way) at a shop in Holborn: by whom I know not: but so good as to be cheap at £4: 10s., which the man wants for it. My Twilight is an upright picture: about a foot wide, and rather more than a foot high.
Mr. Browne has declined taking my Opie, unless in conjunction with some others which I won’t part with: so the Forest Girl must set up her stall at a Broker’s. I doubt she will never bring me the money I gave for her. She is the only bad speculation of the season. Were she but sold, I should be rejoicing in the Holborn Battle Piece. After this year however I think I shall bid complete adieu to picture-hunting: only taking what comes in my way. There is a great difference between these two things: both in the expense of time, thought, and money. Who can sit down to Plato while his brains are roaming to Holborn, Christie’s, Phillips’s, etc.?
My Father talks of going down to Suffolk early next week. Whether I shall accompany him is not
certain. Do you remember what a merry Good Friday you and I passed last year? I suppose I shall find the banks covered with primroses, the very name carries a dew upon it.
‘As one who long in populous city pent, etc.’ [111]
Good-bye. I am going to pay my compliments at Portland Place, and then to walk in a contrary direction to Holborn.
To F. Tennyson.
[31 March, 1842.]
Dear Frederic,