On July 20th he writes:—
“A few days after my arrival in town, the Duc de Grammont dined at Gore House. He is on a visit to Lord Tankerville.… D’Orsay has just finished an exquisite painting of the Duchesse.”
Then on September 7th:—
“I arrived at Gore House early on Monday. In the morning, beside Lord Allen and some other people, there called Lord Auckland.… At dinner the Duc de Guiche, Sir Francis Burdett and Sir Willoughby Cotton.… Those were bright hours; even my presence could not interrupt their brilliancy.… The Duc de Guiche left us this morning to shoot with his cousin, Lord Ossulton.[18] We miss the liveliness of his conversation—he talked Memoirs.”
When he was not at Gore House he kept up a very lively correspondence with his two friends, some of which it will be useful to quote, for in familiar letters we become almost on speaking terms with their writers, and who of us would not be glad to chat with Lady Blessington, Landor and D’Orsay?
This from her to him, when sending him her portrait:—
“I send you the engraving, and have only to wish that it may sometimes remind you of the original. You are associated in my memory with some of my happiest days; you were the friend, and the highly-valued friend, of my dear and lamented husband, and as such, even without any of the numberless claims you have to my regard, you could not be otherwise than highly esteemed. It appears to me that I have not quite lost him, who made life dear to me, when I am near those he loved[19] and that knew how to value him. Five fleeting years have gone by since our delicious evenings on the lovely Arno, evenings never to be forgotten, and the recollections of which ought to cement the friendships then formed. This effect I can, in truth, say has been produced on me, and I look forward, with confidence, to keeping alive, by a frequent correspondence, the friendship you owe me, no less for that I feel for you, but as the widow of one you loved, and that truly loved you. We, or more properly speaking I, live in a world where friendship is little known, and were it not for one or two individuals like yourself, I might be tempted to exclaim with Socrates: ‘My friends, there are no friends.’ Let us prove that the philosopher was wrong, and if Fate has denied us the comfort of meeting, let us by letters keep up our friendly intercourse. You will tell me what you think and feel in your Tuscan retirement, and I will tell you what I do, in this modern Babylon, where thinking and feeling are almost unknown. Have I not reason to complain that in your sojourn in London you do not give me a single day? And yet methinks you promised to stay a week, and that of that week I should have my share. I rely on your promise of coming to see me again before you leave London, and I console myself for the disappointment of seeing so little of you, by recollecting the welcome and the happiness that await you at home. Long may you enjoy it, is the sincere wish of your attached friend,
“M. Blessington.”
He to her, in the shape of “bits” out of a long letter written from Florence in March 1835:—
“Poor Charles Lamb, what a tender, good, joyous heart had he! What playfulness! what purity of style and thought! His sister is yet living, much older than himself. One of her tales is, with the sole exception of the Bride of Lammermoor, the most beautiful tale in prose composition in any language, ancient or modern. A young girl has lost her mother, the father marries again, and marries a friend of his former wife. The child is ill reconciled to it, but being dressed in new clothes for the marriage, she runs up to her mother’s chamber, filled with the idea how happy that dear mother would be at seeing her in all her glory—not reflecting, poor soul, that it was only by her mother’s death that she appeared in it. How natural, how novel is all this! Did you ever imagine that a fresh source of the pathetic would burst forth before us in this trodden and hardened world? I never did, and when I found myself upon it, I pressed my temples with both hands, and tears ran down to my elbows.