My Friends and Acquaintance
R. Plumer Ward XX
Robert Plumer Ward to Peter George Patmore, 18 April 1841
“Well, I have to thank you for a great deal of
good-natured zeal for my author feelings (I will not, after being so hackneyed
in them, call them anxieties), in sending me the ——,
the ——, and the ——.
“In the last, I doubt, there was much more than the
mere transmission; for, besides that I know it is one of your papers, I am well
persuaded that no one but yourself is, or can be, so kind as to write of me in
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manner so forcibly and brilliantly eloquent as that
paper has done. It had all its due effect upon a large party here, and
somewhat, no doubt, upon myself. For, allowing all I could for our friendship,
and knowing your fiertè as to the
independence of your opinions, I could not but believe, as well as hope, that
there must be some merit in what had called forth such an eulogy; and so,
Master P. G. Patmore, I acknowledge
that you have given me very great pleasure by what you have said, even if only
a quarter of it were really deserved, and three quarters set down to the
account of friendship.
“I begin to receive other notices besides those in the
papers. I mean in private reports, which are very comfortable; but I can hardly
hope that, sixteen years (it my age too) after ‘Tremaine,’ what Mrs. Austen says is thought can be true,—that
De Clifford is more
vigorous and equally fresh with ‘Tremaine.’
“And so, repeating thanks and good wishes, I am, as
usual, yours,
Sara Austen [née Rickett] (1796 c.-1888)
After marrying the solicitor Benjamin Austen in 1816 she became an early friend of
Benjamin Disraeli; she was a watercolorist and collector.
Peter George Patmore [Tims] (1786-1855)
English writer and friend of Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt; an early contributor to
Blackwood's, he was John Scott's second in the fatal duel, editor of
the
Court Journal, and father of the poet Coventry Patmore.
Robert Plumer Ward (1765-1846)
Tremaine: or, the Man of Refinement. 3 vols (London: H. Colburn, 1825). The first “silver fork” novel.
