I am just going to write to Lady Lansdowne how much I was delighted by seeing her and Lord Henry Petty, but especially herself, mentioned exactly in the manner in which I thought of her and of him, when we first became acquainted with them, which was just at the very time of which Mr. Horner speaks. Lady Lansdowne gave me a drawing of Little Bounds, which is now hanging up in our library unfaded. It is a gratification to me to feel that I appreciated both her talents and her character as Horner did, before all the world found out that she was a SUPERIOR person.
My brother Pakenham was delighted with his tour in Scotland, and with his renewal of personal intercourse with his dear Scotch friends: all steady as Scotch friends ever are and kind and warm—the warmth once raised in them never cooling—anthracite coal—layer after layer, hot to the very inside kernel. Pakenham is now in London with my sisters Fanny and Honora—Fanny has wonderfully recovered her health. She has several Scotch friends in London, of whom she is very fond, from Joanna Baillie to her young friends, Mrs. Andrews and her sisters. Mr. Andrews is a very agreeable, sensible, conversable man; I saw something of him when I was last in London, and hope to see more when I return there. If I continue as well as I am now I intend, please God, to make my promised visit to London some time this autumn, when the hurly-burly of the fashionable season is over.
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While at Trim, Maria received the announcement of her youngest sister Lucy's engagement to Dr. Robinson, which gave her exquisite pleasure: "never," as she wrote at the time, "never was a marriage hailed with more family acclaim of universal joy." The marriage took place on June 8.
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MARIA to MRS. R. BUTLER.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, August 1, 1843.
I have just wakened and risen from the sofa rejoicing, like a dwarf, "to run my course." I was put to sleep, not by magnetism, but by the agreeable buzz of dear Pakenham's voice reading out a man's peregrinations from Egypt to Australia—"the way was long, the road was dark," and the reader declares I was asleep before we got to Egypt.
Mr. Maltby is wondrous tall, and Pakenham has had the diversion long-looked-for of seeing "Maltby hand Maria in to dinner." Mr. Maltby is a very gentlemanlike man, every inch of him, many as they are, and very conversable—really conversable, he both hears and talks, and follows and leads.
To MRS. BEAUFORT.