The concourse was immense, but I was much surprised at the entire want of excitement and enthusiasm in the vast multitude who thronged and all but choked up the Queen's way. All hats were lifted, but there was not a hatful of cheers, and the whole thing produced a disagreeable effect of coldness, indifference, or constraint.
REV. W. HARNESS. Harness said it was nineteenth-century breeding, which was too exquisite to allow even of the mob's shouting. He is a Tory. T—— M——, who is a very warm Whig, thought the silence spoke of Paisley starvation and Windsor banquets. I thought these and other things besides might have to do with the people's not cheering.
E—— (who, bless her soul! has just been here, talking such gigantic nonsense) must have misunderstood me, or you must have misunderstood her, in supposing that I made a distinct promise to answer four crossed sheets of paper to four lines of yours. I said it was my usual practice to do so, and one from which I was not likely to depart, because I hate writing a short letter as much as I hate writing any letter at all....
Have you received one letter from me since you have been in Mountjoy Square? I have written one to you there, but, owing to the habit of my hand, which is to write "Ardgillan Castle," the direction was so scratched and blurred that I had some doubts whether the letter would reach you. Let me know, dear Harriet, if it does....
E—— must have made another blunder about Lady Westmoreland and my sister. It is not the Duke of Wellington's money, in particular, that she objects to receiving; she does not intend to sing in private for money at all, anywhere, or on any occasion; which I am very glad of, as, if she did, I think social embarrassments and professional complications of every sort, and all disagreeable ones, would arise from it.
We were all very cordially invited to Apsley House by Lady Westmoreland, before my sister stated that she did not intend to sing there for money.... Besides this, there came a formal bidding in the Duke of Wellington's own hand [or Algernon Greville's, who used to forge his illustrious chief's signature on all common occasions], with which we were very well pleased to comply....
A—— has been trying to inoculate me with Paul de Kock, who, she assures me, is a moral writer, and with whose books our tables, chairs, sofas, and beds are covered, as with the unclean plagues of Egypt. I read one of the novels and began another. They are very clever, very funny, very dirty, abominably immoral, and I do not think I can read any more of them; for though I confess to having laughed till my sides ached over some parts of what I read, I was, upon reflection and upon the whole, disgusted and displeased....
I have precisely your feeling about Mrs. F—— in every particular; I think her the funniest and the kindest old maniac I am acquainted with, and my intercourse with her is according to that opinion. Good-bye, my dearest Harriet; God bless you. I wish I was where I could see green fields. I am in miserable spirits, and would give "my kingdom for a horse," and the world for an hour's gallop in the country.
Ever yours,
Fanny.