LETTER: To W.D.B. and A.B.
LONDON, April 2 [1847]



Here it is the day before the despatches leave and I have not
written a single line to you. . . . On Friday we dined at Lady
Charlotte Lindsay's, where were Lord Brougham and Lady Mallet, Mr.
Rogers and the Bishop of Norwich and his wife. In the evening Miss
Agnes Berry, who never goes out now, came on purpose to appoint an
evening to go and see her sister, who is the one that Horace Walpole
wished to marry, and to whom so many of his later letters are
addressed. She is eighty-four, her sister a few years younger, and
Lady Charlotte not much their junior.

These remnants of the BELLES-ESPRITS of the last age are charming to
me. They have a vast and long experience of the best social
circles, with native wit, and constant practice in the conversation
of society. . . . On Wednesday, we dined at Sir Robert Peel's, with
whom I was more charmed than with anybody I have seen yet. I sat
between him and the Speaker of the House of Commons. I was told
that he was stiff and stately in his manners, but did not think him
so, and am inclined to imagine that free from the burden of the
Premiership, he unbends more. He talked constantly with me, and in
speaking of a certain picture said, "When you come to Drayton Manor
I shall show it to you." I should like to go there, but to see
himself even more than his pictures. Lady Peel is still a very
handsome woman.