To MISS HONORA EDGEWORTH.
BLACK CASTLE, Sept. 3, 1826.
Thank you for wishing to be with me, but I am sure it will be better for you to be at the sea. Here, though I am obliged to think of actual business between-times, I have every motive and means for diversion for myself, both on my own account and on my aunt's. We run in and out, and laugh and talk nonsense; and every little thing amuses us together: the cat, the dog, the hog, Mr. Barry, or a parachute blown from the dandelion.
Nov. 19.
Bess Fitzherbert has written an entertaining letter to Mrs. Barry, in which she mentions one of the dishes they had just had at dinner at Pozzo, between Modena and Bologna: cold boiled eels, with preserved pears, a toothpick or skewer stuck in each to take them up by, instead of a fork. My aunt's friend, Madame Boschi, near Bologna, offered to send a garden-chair drawn by bullocks for Bess, the road not being passable for common cattle.
To C.S. EDGEWORTH.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Dec. 26, 1826.
I send your account, and have done my best. I have not read Boyne Water, but have got Lindley Murray's Memoir, and thank you for mentioning it. Harriet and Mr. Butler come to-morrow. Sophy Fox and Barry, and their beautiful and amiable little Maxwell, are here. How you will like that child, and make it see "upper air!" How long since those times when you used to show its mother and Harriet upper air! Do you remember how you used to do it to frighten me, and how I used to shut my eyes when you threw them up, and you used to call to me to look? Ah! le bon temps! But we are all very happy now, and it is delightful to hear a child's voice cooing, or even crying again in this house. Never did infant cry less than Maxwell: in short, it is the most charming little animal I ever saw. "Animal yourself, sir!" [Footnote: Mr. Edgeworth, admiring a baby in a nurse's arms, called it "a fine little animal." To which the nurse indignantly replied, "Animal yourself, sir!">[
Pakenham ornamented the library yesterday with holly, and crowned plaster-of-Paris Sappho with laurels, and Mrs. Hope's picture with myrtle (i.e. box), and perched a great stuffed owl in an ivy bush on the top of a great screen which shades the sofa by the fire from the window at its back. I am excessively happy to be at home again, after my four months' absence at Black Castle.
To MRS. RUXTON.