À propos du pluie, à propos du beau temps—I think of you and ten thousand times a week. ("I hate exaggeration.") I wish for you when I am in want of some unremembered or disremembered name. I do love that Irish verb disremember, and I conjugate it daily from the infinitive to the preterpluperfect. Last week I preterpluperfectly disremembered when talking to Morris of Fortunio's gifted men, whether the legs of him who outrunneth the hare were tied with green or red? Parties run high for green and for red—please to settle the question.
Fanny has been reading to me Darwin's Voyage; delightful it is.
To MRS. EDGEWORTH.
1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, Jan. 13, 1841.
Most agreeable dinner here yesterday; the convives were: Dr. Lushington, Mr. Andrews; Mrs. Andrews at the last sent a regret—ill in bed with a headache. Honora came in her stead. Mr. Macintosh and Miss Carr; Dr. Lushington beside Fanny, and carving remarkably well and most entertaining and agreeable; he raised the heart's laugh frequently, and the head's by fresh, not old-faded-London-diner-out bon-mots, anecdotes, and facts worth knowing, all with the assistance of Mr. Andrews, so remarkably agreeable and gentlemanly a gentleman; they played into each other's hands and mine delightfully, and Fanny's, and Honora's, and the ball came to everybody pat, in turn. The ball did I say? Boomerang I should have said, for it came back always nicely to the thrower.
I must tell you an anecdote I heard yesterday from Mr. Kenyon, brother of Lord Kenyon's, a saying of Mrs. Brooke, sister of Baron Garrow, who, notwithstanding his bullying manner in court, was a man easily swayed in private, always influenced by the last thing said by the last person in his company—all which was compressed by Mrs. Brooke into: "With my brother presence is power."
To MRS. R. BUTLER.
1 NORTH AUDLEY STREET, Feb. 24, 1841.
My ultimate intention and best hope for my own selfish satisfaction is to go with you and Mr. Butler to that poor uncentred [Footnote: Mrs. Mary Sneyd died at the age of ninety, on the 10th of February 1841.] desolate home at Edgeworthstown.
What an inexpressible comfort that you were with your mother, Lucy, and
Honora, and my dear lost aunt to the last.