[108] Characteristic glimpse of this Broadstairs holiday is afforded by a letter of the 19th of August 1845. "Perhaps it is a fair specimen of the odd adventures which befall the inimitable, that the cab in which the children and the luggage were (I and my womankind being in the other) got its shafts broken in the city, last Friday morning, through the horse stumbling on the greasy pavement; and was drawn to the wharf (about a mile) by a stout man, amid such frightful howlings and derisive yellings on the part of an infuriated populace, as I never heard before. Conceive the man in the broken shafts with his back towards the cab; all the children looking out of the windows; and the muddy portmanteaus and so forth (which were all tumbled down when the horse fell) tottering and nodding on the box! The best of it was, that our cabman, being an intimate friend of the damaged cabman, insisted on keeping him company; and proceeded at a solemn walk, in front of the procession; thereby securing to me a liberal share of the popular curiosity and congratulation. . . . Everything here at Broadstairs is the same as of old. I have walked 20 miles a day since I came down, and I went to a circus at Ramsgate on Saturday night, where Mazeppa was played in three long acts without an H in it: as if for a wager. Evven, and edds, and errors, and ands, were as plentiful as blackberries; but the letter H was neither whispered in Evven, nor muttered in Ell, nor permitted to dwell in any form on the confines of the sawdust." With this I will couple another theatrical experience of this holiday, when he saw a Giant played by a village comedian with a quite Gargantuesque felicity, and singled out for my admiration his fine manner of sitting down to a hot supper (of children), with the self-lauding exalting remark, by way of grace, "How pleasant is a quiet conscience and an approving mind!"
[109] "We have hardly seen a cloud in the sky since you and I parted at Ramsgate, and the heat has been extraordinary."
[110] "The green woods and green shades about here," he says in another letter, "are more like Cobham in Kent, than anything we dream of at the foot of the Alpine passes."
[111] To these the heat interposed occasional difficulties. "Setting off last night" (5th of July) "at six o'clock, in accordance with my usual custom, for a long walk, I was really quite floored when I got to the top of a long steep hill leading out of the town—the same by which we entered it. I believe the great heats, however, seldom last more than a week at a time; there are always very long twilights, and very delicious evenings; and now that there is moonlight, the nights are wonderful. The peacefulness and grandeur of the Mountains and the Lake are indescribable. There comes a rush of sweet smells with the morning air too, which is quite peculiar to the country."
[112] "One of her brothers by the bye, now dead, had large property in Ireland—all Nenagh, and the country about; and Cerjat told me, as we were talking about one thing and another, that when he went over there for some months to arrange the widow's affairs, he procured a copy of the curse which had been read at the altar by the parish priest of Nenagh, against any of the flock who didn't subscribe to the O'Connell tribute."
[113] In a note may be preserved another passage from the same letter. "I have been queer and had trembling legs for the last week. But it has been almost impossible to sleep at night. There is a breeze to-day (25th of July) and I hope another storm is coming up. . . . There is a theatre here; and whenever a troop of players pass through the town, they halt for a night and act. On the day of our tremendous dinner party of eight, there was an infant phenomenon; whom I should otherwise have seen. Last night there was a Vaudeville company; and Charley, Roche, and Anne went. The Brave reports the performances to have resembled Greenwich Fair. . . . There are some Promenade Concerts in the open air in progress now: but as they are just above one part of our garden we don't go: merely sitting outside the door instead, and hearing it all where we are. . . . Mont Blanc has been very plain lately. One heap of snow. A Frenchman got to the top, the other day."
". . . Ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil. . . ."
[115] This was an abstract, in plain language for the use of his children, of the narrative in the Four Gospels. Allusion was made, shortly after his death, to the existence of such a manuscript, with expression of a wish that it might be published; but nothing would have shocked himself so much as any suggestion of that kind. The little piece was of a peculiarly private character, written for his children, and exclusively and strictly for their use only.
[116] So he described it. "I do not think," he adds, "we could have fallen on better society. It is a small circle certainly, but quite large enough. The Watsons improve very much on acquaintance. Everybody is very well informed; and we are all as social and friendly as people can be, and very merry. We play whist with great dignity and gravity sometimes, interrupted only by the occasional facetiousness of the inimitable."