It is time to tell you that Pakenham is here, and Fanny, and Honora, and Harriet, and Mary Anne, and Charlotte; and we are as happy as ever we can be. Pakenham's tastes are all domestic, yet he has the most perfect knowledge of business, great penetration of eye, and cool, self-possessed manners, like one used to judgment and command, yet not proud of doing either. He has brought with him such proofs of his industry as are quite astonishing; such collections of drawings, both botanical and sketches of country. How he found time to do all this, and spend six hours per day at Cucherry—all as one as sessions—and to write his journal of every day for eleven years, I really cannot comprehend; but so it is.
To MRS. R. BUTLER.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, June 17, 1842.
It is now five o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall have not come. It is Lestock's last day, and he and Fanny and Lucy are so busy and so happy putting the transit instrument to rights, and setting black spotted and yellow backed spinning spiders at work to spin for the meridian lines. I have just succeeded in catching the right sort by descending to the infernal regions, and setting kitchenmaid and housemaid at work. I was glad Mr. and Mrs. Hall did not arrive just at the crisis of the operation—all completed now.
Ask Mr. Butler if there is any subscription necessary or expected from me, now that I have been so honourably made an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy? I would not for the world omit anything that ought to be done now that I am M.R.I.A.
July 8.
I am going literally to beg my bread and lodging at your door on my way to Dublin, and I do so sans phrase. I remember that, when I used to write to offer myself to Aunt Ruxton, I regularly added, "You know, my dear aunt, I can sleep in a drawer;" and she used to answer, "I know you can, my dear, and you are welcome; but write a day beforehand, that I may have the drawer ready."
To MRS. FRANCIS BEAUFORT.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Oct. 27, 1842.
Most kind and most judiciously kind Honora, you have written the very thing I had been thinking as I lay awake last night, I would write to you, but scrupled. I certainly will take your advice, and spend my Christmas at home with Pakenham, although I cannot, nor do I wish to, fill up his feeling of the blanks in this house. There is something mournful, yet pleasingly painful, in the sense of the ideal presence of the long-loved dead. Those images people and fill the mind with unselfish thoughts, and with the salutary feeling of responsibility and constant desire to be and to act in this world as the superior friend would have wished and approved.