Writing to his daughter from Alnwick Castle, the seat of the Duke of Northumberland, Prescott gave a little instance of his own extreme sensibility. A great number of children were being entertained by the Duke and Duchess.
"As they all joined in the beautiful anthem, 'God save the Queen,' the melody of the little voices rose up so clear and simple in the open courtyard that everybody was touched. Though I had nothing to do with the anthem, some of my opera tears,[19] dear Lizzie, came into my eyes, and did me great credit with some of the John and Jennie Bulls by whom I was surrounded."
When he left Alnwick:—
"My friendly hosts remonstrated on my departure, as they had requested me to make them a long visit; and 'I never say what I do not mean,' said the Duke, in an honest way. And when I thanked him for his hospitable welcome, 'It is no more,' he said, 'than you should meet in every house in England.' That was hearty."
The letters written by Prescott while in Europe are marked also by evidences of the beautiful affection which he cherished for his wife, of whom he once said, many years after their marriage: "Contrary to the assertion of La Bruyère—who somewhere says that the most fortunate husband finds reason to regret his condition at least once in twenty-four hours—I may truly say that I have found no such day in the quarter of a century that Providence has spared us to each other." In the letters written by him during this English visit, there remain, even after the ruthless editing done by Ticknor, passages that are touching in their unaffected tenderness.
Thus, from London, June 14, 1850:—
"Why have I no letter on my table from home? I trust I shall find one there this evening, or I shall, after all, have a heavy heart, which is far from gay in this gayety."
And the following from Antwerp, July 23, 1850:—
"Dear Susan, I never see anything beautiful in nature or art, or hear heart-stirring music in the churches—the only place where music does stir my heart—without thinking of you and wishing you could be by my side, if only for a moment."
When Prescott returned from this, his last visit to Europe, he found himself at the very zenith of his fame. In every respect, his position was most enviable. The union of critical approval with popular applause—a thing which is so rare in the experience of authors—had been fairly won by him. His books were accepted as authoritative, while they were read by thousands who never looked into the pages of other historians. Even a volume of miscellaneous essays[20] which he had collected from his stray contributions to the North American, and which had been published in England by Bentley in 1845, had succeeded with the public on both sides of the Atlantic. He had the prestige of a very flattering foreign recognition, and his friendships embraced some of the best-known men and women in Great Britain and the United States. It may seem odd that the letters and other writings of his contemporaries seldom contain more than a mere casual mention of him; but the explanation of this is to be found in the disposition of Prescott himself. As a man, and in his social intercourse outside of his own family, he was so thoroughly well-bred, so far from anything resembling eccentricity, and so averse from literary pose, as to afford no material for gossip or indeed for special comment. In this respect, his life resembled his writings. There was in each a noticeable absence of the piquant, or the sensational. He pleased by his manners as by his pen; but he possessed no mannerisms such as are sometimes supposed to be the hall-marks of originality. Hence, one finds no mass of striking anecdotes collected and sent about by those who knew him; any more than in his writing one chances upon startling strokes of style.