A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1836
Sydney Smith to Lady Holland, 1 February 1836
January 1st, 1836.
My dear Lady Holland,
I send this day my annual cheese, of which I pray your
acceptance. I hope it will prove as good as the last.
The papers all say you are going out; but I don’t
believe a word of it. I am very well, and have no
| MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | 383 |
doubt
you are so also; for there is no disguising the fact, that you are really
recovering your health. I denied it as long as I could, but it is too evident
for discussion. There is no happiness in hard frost; at present there is a
thaw.
The purchase of the “Hole”* is nearly completed. I shall come up a few days before
Mrs. Sydney, to furnish it, and make
it ready for her reception. This will probably be in February. I have fallen
into the duet life, and it seems to do very well. Mrs.
Sydney and I have been reading Beauvilliers’ book on Cookery. I find, as I suspected,
that garlic is power; not in its despotic shape, but exercised with the
greatest discretion.
Antoine Beauvilliers (1754-1817)
French restaurateur; he published
l’Art du Cuisinier, 2 vols
(1814) of which an English translation was made in 1825.
Catharine Amelia Smith [née Pybus] (1768-1852)
The daughter of John Pybus, English ambassador to Ceylon; in 1800 she married Sydney
Smith, wit and writer for the
Edinburgh Review.