Pray, dear Mr. Reeve, take no trouble to correct the name in Mrs. Palliser's book of pottery. I never was a patroness of the Lowestoft china, know but little about it, and do not wish my name to appear as being in any other way connected with it than as being an inhabitant of the same town.—I am, dear Mr. Reeve, yours faithfully,
P. SMITH.
And the Journal winds up the year with—
December 31st—To Hinton St. George, on a visit to Lord Westbury.
1869. The year opened at Hinton, shooting with Lord Westbury. Montague Smith was there. Nothing ever amused me more than Lord Westbury's society, and I became intimate with him. He was a strange mixture of intellectual power and moral weakness, and his peculiar mode of speaking was at once precise, pertinent, and comical. He had hired Hinton from Lord Paulet, and lived there with a host of children and grandchildren. On Sundays all dined together—I think, thirty-two of them.
From the Duc d'Aumale
Woodnorton, 16 janvier.—… Nous aurons une passable chasse à tir le jour sacramental du lr février. Voulez-vous en être? L'ennui est que c'est un lundi, et que le train du dimanche est d'une lenteur fabuleuse. Voulez-vous venir dîner et coucher ici samedi 30, ou dimanche 31?
H. D'O.
From a later note of the Duke's, it appears that Reeve was unable to accept the invitation to the passable chasse, which he would have enjoyed, especially as after four years there was no longer a question of the 'loose box' or the 'kitchen dresser.'
The next letter, from Lord Westbury, is in evident answer to one from Reeve about Lord Campbell's 'Lives of Lyndhurst and Brougham,' then newly published, of which a very severe—not, it was thought, too severe—article appeared in the 'Review' for April. The article was not by Reeve; but we may fairly suppose that he—to some extent, at least—inspired it; and that—also to some extent—the inspiration was supplied by Lord Westbury.