A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith
Letters 1844
Sydney Smith to Georgiana Vernon Harcourt [Malcolm], [July] 1844
Combe Florey, 1844.
My dear Georgiana,
I set off in despair of reaching home, but, on the
contrary, Mrs. Sydney got better every
scream of the railroad, and is now considerably improved. Many thanks for your
kind and friendly inquiries. I was confined three days in London waiting for
Mrs. Sydney’s recovery: they seemed months.
Nothing can exceed the beauty of the country; I am forced to own that.
I have been reading Arnold’s Life, by Stanley. Arnold seems to have been a very pious, honest, learned, and
original man.
I hope the Archbishop has resumed the use of his legs; for if an
archbishop be a pillar of the Church, and the pillar cannot stand, what becomes
of the incumbent weight? And neither of us, dear Georgiana, would consent to survive the ruin of the Church. You
would plunge a poisoned pin into your heart, and I should swallow the leaf of a
sermon dipped in hydrocyanic acid. —— would probably
rejoice in the loss of us both, for in her Church the greater the misery, the
greater the happiness; they rejoice in woe, and wallow in dolours.
Be a good girl, and write me a line every now and then, to
tell me about my old friends; and believe me to be always your affectionate
friend,
Thomas Arnold (1795-1842)
Of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; he was headmaster of Rugby School (1827-42) and father
of the poet Matthew Arnold.
Edward Venables-Vernon Harcourt, archbishop of York (1757-1847)
The son of George Venables-Vernon, first Baron Vernon, educated at Westminster and
All-Souls College, Oxford; he was prebendary of Gloucester (1785-91), bishop of Carlisle
(1791-1807), and archbishop of York (1807-47).
Georgiana Malcolm [née Vernon] (d. 1886)
The daughter of Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, bishop of York; in 1845 she married
General George Alexander Malcolm, son of General Sir John Malcolm.
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.
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881)
The son of Edward Stanley, Bishop of Norwich; he was educated at Rugby under Thomas
Arnold and at Balliol College, Oxford; he was regius professor of ecclesiastical history at
Oxford (1856) and Dean of Westminster (1863).