My dear Hodgson,—Your letter has been too long unanswered, but the only point in it which demanded an immediate reply I knew you could be easily satisfied upon by others, namely, as to the place of payment for the subscription to Byron’s monument. In consequence of my not residing in town, I am not one of the sub-committee; but as well as I can recollect, Ransom’s is the bank where the subscriptions are to be paid. This intelligence, however, will, I fear, come rather late.
I don’t know whether I told you that I passed some days at Methuen’s with John Cam1 this year, and that his conversation about you was everything you could most wish it to be. As to the refusal of Westminster Abbey,2 I know not what to think. One would be inclined to say to the intolerant refuser—
1 Hobhouse. 2 The refusal to receive the statue of Lord Byron, by Thorwaldsen, now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, in Westminster Abbey. |
| LETTERS FROM MOORE. | 165 |
I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel may this poet be When thou liest howling. |
I have been very much retarded and distracted in my operations this summer by excessive anxiety about our little girl, and by the necessity of going backwards and forwards between this and Southampton, where I had her and the rest of my family for several weeks, to try the benefit of the hot salt-water bathing. She is now, I am happy to say, improving, though still but slowly. Notwithstanding all these interruptions, I have managed to get on a little with my work, and still hope to go to press about the beginning of the year. I wish you would tell me whether the details in the letters from Spain, which you withheld from me, related to those ladies in whose house he stayed at Seville, or to the admiral’s daughter, with whom he had some flirtation at Cadiz.
The Editor of the
‘Keepsake’ (my
negotiations with whom I made you acquainted with at Stoke) has played me a
most notable trick. Having this year offered me six hundred pounds for 120
pages, chiefly (as he confessed) to have the advantage of
| 166 | MEMOIR OF REV. F. HODGSON. |
Remember me most cordially to your fair neighbour1 and Mrs. Hodgson, believing me ever, my dear Hodgson,
