April 8, 1825.
Mr. Haygarth is still in a very precarious state. I fear we shall not long retain him. One says that as if one was oneself immortal. Captain Wells is also threatened with a consumption, and forced to leave the house he enjoyed and embellished, from the impossibility of preserving his health, or even life, in the vicinity of the fens. When one is acquainted with them, one learns to respect their relations, the bogs. Only think of a puddle extending miles around, and reaching up to your hall door; of picking out your walk or ride over a quaking surface, where, if you err in your path, it is at the risk of your life; and being paid your rent in wild-ducks. Give me the turf, which blazes so cheerfully in your face as to bring its own apology.
April 24, 1825, Brighton.—My dear ——’s health, which is not alarming, but threatening, has brought us here. None are left among the idlers who embellish a place of this kind, but those who are too sick or too poor to move; but this is bearable. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a flower, not a bud, mark the presence of spring; and the hot sun is reflected from the water, the chalk, the roads, the walks, the quarries, in most unqualified and blinding glare.
TO CHARLES MANNERS ST. GEORGE, ESQ.
London, May 6, 1825.
Your letter found me still inhaling the sea breezes at Brighton, and enjoying the coming in of the tide with its delicious plash, and its endless variety for the eye and for the ear; to please the latter constantly giving models of the fine choruses by Handel, which seem the very echo of its waves. Lord Byron loved not the sea more than I do, except in the degree of his more intimate acquaintance. I, alas! can neither swim nor be shipwrecked; but as far as my knowledge of the ocean goes, I will not yield to man or woman in the sum of my love for it; and I shall love it still more when it has given you a safe passage.
I went yesterday to your nursing-mother, dear Harrow, and heard speeches. We dined with Mrs. Leith, and were delighted with every flower in her pretty garden, and every tree in the hedges, after passing three weeks without knowing whether it was spring or autumn, summer or winter, by any other indication than the atmosphere and the almanack.