“Dusseldorf, June 4th, 1872.
“My dear Mrs. Senior,
“Your very kind letter of the 20th May has just reached me here: and I cannot express in writing one tithe of what I feel. I had no idea of the news it had in store for me; for, having been travelling about lately, I had missed the announcement of the sad loss which we have all had; and so your letter fell on me as a thunderbolt. Poor dear old George! old in the language of affection, ever since we were all at Rugby. Oh! how much I regret now that I never found time in these last few idle years of my life to pay him a visit. And yet, to the brightness and pleasure of my recollections of him, nothing could be added. To the very last he was what he was at the very first: a giant, with a giant’s gentleness and firmness. You may perhaps none of you know that he always felt sure boating was too violent an exercise for anyone. I remember well (and now how sorrowfully) one conversation in which he told me how many of the best oars had fallen in the midst of apparent health and strength. How little did I then think he was to go! and yet I recollect I carried away with me from that conversation an idea that he suspected he had heart-complaint. Was this the case?
“But I will not trouble you to write out to me abroad; for I trust I may soon return to England, and then I shall take the liberty of writing to ask you to see me at Lavender Hill.
“You ask about his stopping the horses at Escrick. It was in 1840 or 1841. He had been left with my two eldest brothers to come home last; and whilst these two brothers were calling at our York Club, George was left sitting alone in the carriage. Suddenly the driver fell off the box in a fit, upon the horses, and they started off. George remembered that in the six-mile drive home there are two right-angled turns; so he determined to get out, run along the pole, and stop the horses. The first time he tried was in vain: steadying himself with his hand on the horses’ quarters, he only frightened them more; so he coolly returned into the carriage again and waited till they had lost some of their speed. He then crept through the window again; ran quicker along the pole, caught their bearing reins, turned them round, and brought back the carriage in triumph to my brothers, who were anxious enough by that time! And then the gentle modest look he had when we all praised him the next morning, I never can forget. Oh, he charmed all: a better creature never lived.
“Tell his boys from me he never could have dreamt even of any divergence from truth. As all men of power, he seemed silent and receptive rather than busy; and where you left him, you picked him up; though the interval might have been ever so long a one.
“I remain, your most sincerely,
“Stephen W. Lawley.”