Here (he writes) we have a famous garden, shady lanes and walks in all their intricacies, and abounding in little surprises of views, a very fair (it is even reckoned capital) neighbourhood, i.e. in a circle whose radius is five miles. Castles entire and in ruins, good modern dwellings, fertility, Dr. Parr, Denman’s fame in all its odour at the Warwick Assizes, Leamington the salubrious, Coventry the manufacturing, disgusting, dishonest, Warwick the gallant, etc., etc., etc. All which being the case, I will come and settle myself in Baker Street, Portman Square, with the first puff of wind that blows me £15,000. And yet, for country, this is really very good. Its only harm, or rather vice, is that it is country.
|
1 Longmans, 1808. |
| 244 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
I have seldom left a house with such regret as I did yours.
At the mercy of respectable country society whenever I sally from my own home
(which is rarely, and against my wish), I leave it to you to judge how new, how
surprising, how entertaining, improving, nay, how impossible the resources seem
to me of a London party; the anecdote, wit, good taste, right feeling,
politeness, good faith, confidence, that form the elements of London societies,
and, to complete the panegyric, the total absence of all respectability, are really my astonishment. I touched, and only
touched, on your coming to see me. I have no prospect of any other mode of
meeting. Stay. Kenilworth, and indeed the tract from Coventry to the Vale of
Evesham, is so pretty that it just touches on the beautiful without attaining
it. My house—would it were mine!—is, with its present improvements,
a very comfortable and convenient sort of mansion. Add to this, I have been
gradually amassing from five to six hundred volumes, my only, and my absolutely
necessary expense. I have much delight in contemplating my shelves, and the
utility of them I daily feel. The walks around are good enough, the people
exorbitantly rich and poor to the most degrading excess. Among the former,
several good-doing TOWN AND COUNTRY. 245
