Deal, August 18th, 1801.
MY DEAREST EMMA,
Your dear, good, kind, and most affectionate letters, from Saturday to last night, are arrived, and I feel all you say; and may Heaven bless me, very soon, with a sight of your dear angelic face. You are a nonpareil! No, not one fit to wipe your shoes. I am, ever have been, and always will remain, your most firm, fixed, and unalterable friend.
I wish Sir William had come home a week ago, then I should have seen you here.
I have this morning been attending the funeral of two young Mids: a Mr. Gore, cousin of Capt. Gore, and a Mr. Bristow. One nineteen, the other seventeen years of age.
Last night, I was all the evening in the Hospital, seeing that all was done for the comfort of the poor fellows.
I am going on board; for nothing should keep me living on shore, without you were here. I shall come in the morning, to see Parker, and go on board again directly.
I shall be glad to see Oliver: I hope he will keep his tongue quiet, about the tea-kettle; for, I shall not give it till I leave the Medusa.
You ask me, what Troubridge wrote me? There was not a syllable about you in it. It was about my not coming to London; at the importance of which, I laughed: and, then, he said, he should never venture another opinion. On which, I said—"Then, I shall never give you one." This day, he has wrote a kind letter, and all is over.
I have, however, wrote him, in my letter of this day, as follows—viz. "And I am, this moment, as firmly of opinion as ever, that Lord St. Vincent, and yourself, should have allowed of my coming to town, for my own affairs; for, every one knows, I left it without a thought for myself."