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Samuel Rogers and his Contemporaries
Samuel Rogers to Sarah Rogers, [30 September 1835]
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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Preface
Vol. I Contents
Chapter I. 1803-1805.
Chapter II. 1805-1809.
Chapter III. 1810-1812.
Chapter IV. 1813-1814.
Chapter V. 1814-1815.
Chapter VI. 1815-1816.
Chapter VII. 1816-1818.
Chapter VIII. 1818-19.
Chapter IX. 1820-1821.
Chapter X. 1822-24.
Chapter XI. 1825-1827.
Vol. II Contents
Chapter I. 1828-1830.
Chapter II. 1831-34.
Chapter III. 1834-1837.
Chapter IV. 1838-41.
Chapter V. 1842-44.
Chapter VI. 1845-46.
Chapter VII. 1847-50.
Chapter VIII. 1850
Chapter IX. 1851.
Chapter X. 1852-55.
Index
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[Broadstairs: 30th Sept., 1835.]

‘My dear Sarah,—Many thanks for your kind letter. I was in the very act of writing to you when it arrived. Henry Sharpe I met, half way in my walk to St. Peter’s, between five and six o’clock. He was on the stage box and I was on foot. But he and Sam called in the evening, and I was glad to receive his account and your own.

the Ordnance Survey from 1823 to 1830. In 1831 he was made head of the Boundary Commission under the Reform Act, and his biographer, Mr. E. Barry O’Brien, thinks it was in connection with his services on this commission that Wordsworth speaks of him as ‘of calculating celebrity.’ From 1835 to 1840 he was Irish Secretary, and in a reply to the Tipperary magistrates reminded them, in words which have become historical, that ‘Property has its duties as well as its rights.’ His Irish administration was regarded as, up to that time, the most successful in the history of Ireland.

AT BROADSTAIRS IN 1835139
Maltby left us yesterday, and as he went to call upon you to-day, you will probably, if he sees you, hear more than I can tell you. As I could not take leave of Patty, I wrote to her some days ago, and my letter, I suppose, followed her to Brighton. I slept, coming down, at Rochester and Canterbury, and found when I arrived that I could not have been taken in before the Tuesday, Lord Shaftesbury having vacated the rooms on that day. So I lost only three days. Mr. Talbot and his boy have the next room, and Mrs. Enderby and her twenty girls the next house. The girls sleep on mattresses on the floor and are seldom seen, never I think by me but when a puppet show was exhibited on the grass plot for the amusement of Master Talbot, an exhibition of which the twenty orphans partook, crowding their windows. When they walk I don’t know. My eyes are tolerably well and the inflammation is nearly gone, scarcely perceptible. Once or twice I have been waked by a great smarting and great discharge from the tear vessel, such as I had some years ago, but that I believe to arise from a humour in the lid, not in the eye. In all other respects I never was better, and I wish you could say the same, my dear Sarah. Our weather has been beautiful, and I reproach myself all day, and all night too, the full moon is so glorious, for not enjoying it as I ought to do. One event at Broadstairs I had forgot, and must leave to M. to do justice to—Miss Hale is married. He has never caught a glimpse of her, though she lives at St. Peter’s, but he never passed her door without silently pointing to it and then turning away. Sam and his family I have generally seen every day. They are for ever on the
140 ROGERS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES  
sands, collecting shells and weeds, and he and she are very active, having been up the Lighthouse and up the Windmill, and filling their sketch books with sails and steamers. To-day they have promised to eat goose with me. You will have the traveller, and hear much of Venice and Florence, I hope, and perhaps give some instructions about the house. I am very sorry for you, as nothing is so harassing as doubt and perplexity when even time, the great settler in most matters, can render you no service. Pray give my love to all under your roof, and believe me to be, my dear Sarah,

‘Yours very affectionately,
‘S. R.

‘How long I shall stay I cannot say, perhaps till Wednesday, and then, perhaps, return by Tunbridge. Maltby has become more abstracted than ever. He saw nothing without, as you say. You would think the only child in the world was Master Talbot, whom he met on the stairs and admired over much. T. himself, whenever he comes in, exchanges his coat for a dressing-gown ten times a-day, and drinks wine and brandy all day long. No wonder the two ladies left him. He has been here about six weeks, having left Hastings, as the Nurse told me, in April. The parlour is as full of toys as a toy shop, and the boy utterly spoilt. Lady Ashburnham is at Ramsgate.’