I did not find the sea air make me sleep at Lynn, and incline to think that it is you, more than the climate that affects me so soporifically at St. Leonard's.
God bless you, dear.
Your affectionate,
Fanny.
I do not know how right I am in saying Lady —— married because she was jilted, inasmuch as of my own personal knowledge I do not know it; but that she was much attached to Lord ——, whose father would not permit the marriage, I have heard repeatedly from people who knew both the families; and Rogers, who was very intimate with hers, told me that he considered her marrying as she did the result of mere disappointment, saying, "She could not have the man she loved, so she gave herself to the man who loved her." So much in explanation of my rather rash statement about that most beautiful lady I ever saw.
THE VENUS OF MILO. I have seen a good many handsome people, but there was a modesty, grace, and dignity, and an expression of deep latent sentiment in that woman's countenance, that, combined with her straight nymph-like figure, and the sort of chastity that characterized her whole person and appearance, fulfilled my ideal of female beauty. You will perhaps wonder at my use of the word "chastity," as applied merely to a style of beauty; but "chaste" is the word that describes it properly. Of all the Venuses of antique art, the Venus of Milo, that noble and keenly intellectual goddess of beauty, is the only one that I admire.
The light, straight-limbed Artemis is lovelier to me than the round soft sleepy Aphrodite; and it was to the character of her figure, and the contour of her head and face, that I applied the expression "chaste" in speaking of Lady ——. Her sister, who is thought handsomer, and is a lovely creature (and morally and mentally as worthy of that epithet as physically), has not this severely sweet expression, or sweetly stern, if you prefer it, though this implies a shade of volition, which falsifies the application of it. This is what I especially admire in Lady ——, who adds to that faultless Greek outline, which in its integrity and justness of proportion seems the type of truth, an eye whose color deepens, and a fine-textured cheek, where the blood visibly mantles with the mere emotion of speaking and being listened to.
The first time I met her was at a dinner-party at Miss Berry's, before her marriage. She sat by Landseer, and her great admiration for him, and enthusiastic devotion to his fine art, in which she was herself a proficient, lent an interest to their conversation, which exhibited itself in her beautiful face in a manner that I have never forgotten....
You bid me tell you how I am in mind, body, and estate. My mind is in a tolerably wholesome frame, my body not so well, having a cold and cough hanging about it, and suffering a good deal of pain the last few days. My estate is so far flourishing that I brought back a tolerable wage and earnings from my eastern expedition, and so shall not have to sell out any of my small funded property for my daily bread yet a while.