To MRS. RUXTON.
WYCOMBE ABBEY, Nov. 2, 1821.
It is impossible to be kinder than Lord Carrington is to us: he wrote to invite everybody that he thought we should like to meet. We have had Mr. Wilberforce for several days, and I cannot tell you how glad I am to have seen him again, and to have had an opportunity of hearing his delightful conversation, and of seeing the extent and variety of his abilities. He is not at all anxious to show himself off; he converses, he does not merely talk. His thoughts flow in such abundance, and from so many sources, that they often cross one another; and sometimes a reporter would be quite at a loss. As he literally seems to speak all his thoughts as they occur, he produces what strikes him on both sides of any question. This often puzzles his hearers, but to me it is a proof of candour and sincerity; and it is both amusing and instructive to see him thus balancing accounts aloud. He is very lively, and full of odd contortions: no matter. His indulgent, benevolent temper strikes me particularly: he makes no pretension to superior sanctity or strictness. He spoke with much respect and tenderness for my feelings, of my father, and of the Life.
We have had, besides, Mr. Manning and his son, very unaffected and agreeable; and Mr. Abel Smith, a nephew of Lord Carrington's; and Mr. Hales, an old bachelor diplomatist, who told me the name which the Abbé de Pradt gave to Buonaparte—Jupiter-Scapin. Does not this name contain a volume?
To MISS LUCY EDGEWORTH.
WYCOMBE ABBEY, Nov. 4, 1821.
God bless Mr. King! My dear Lucy, we have the best hopes now that your admirable patience and fortitude will be rewarded, and soon. We regretted the three-quarters of an hour Mr. King might have spent with you which were wasted at the coach office, but these are among the minnikin miseries of human life. You must often wonder how people in health, and out of pain, and with the use of their limbs and all their locomotive faculties, can complain of anything. But man is a grumbling animal, not woman.
We are reading Madame de Staël's Dix Années d'Exil with delight. Though there may be too much egotism, yet it is extremely interesting; and though she repeats too often, and uses too many words, yet there are so many brilliant passages, and things which no one but herself could have thought or said, that it will last as long as the memory of Buonaparte lasts on earth. Pray get it and read it; not the plays or poetry which make up the last volume—why will friends publish all the trash they can scrape together of celebrated people?
Mr. Hales, my dry diplomatist, tells me that Madame de Staël, he was assured by the Swedish minister, provoked Buonaparte, by intriguing to set Bernadotte on the throne of France, and that letters of hers on this subject were intercepted. You will not care much about this, but you may tell it to some of your visitants, who will be in due time as full of Madame de Staël's Dix Années d'Exil as I am at this moment.
Here is an old distich which my dry diplomatist came out with yesterday at dinner, on the ancestor of Hampden. The remains of the Hampden estate are in this neighbourhood, and as we were speaking of our wish to see the place in which the patriot lived, Mr. Hales observed that it is curious how the spirit of dislike to kings had run in the blood of the Hampdens some centuries before Charles' time: they lost three manors in this county, forfeit for a Hampden having struck the Black Prince.