A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1809
Sydney Smith to Lady Holland, [21] September 1809
Heslington, Sept. 20th, 1809.
My dear Lady Holland,
I shall be extremely happy to see ——, and will leave a note for him at the
tavern where the mail stops, to say so. Nothing can exceed the dulness of this
place: but he has been accustomed to live alone with his grandmother, which,
though a highly moral life, is not an amusing one.
There are two Scotch ladies staying here, with whom he will
get acquainted, and to whom he may safely make love the ensuing winter: for
love, though a very acute disorder in Andalucia, puts on a very chronic
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shape in these northern latitudes; for, first, the lover
must prove metapheezically that he ought to succeed; and then, in the fifth or sixth year of courtship
(or rather of argument), if the summer is tolerably warm, and oatmeal plenty,
the fair one is won.
Henry Vassall Webster (1793-1847)
The second son of Godfrey Webster and Elizabeth Vassall (afterwards Lady Holland); a
military officer, he was aide-de-camp to the Prince of Orange at Waterloo. He died a
suicide.