The New Year smiles upon us, and, thank God, finds us all well, except
Henry, and he gains strength. May you see many happy ones and may the
commencing year prove as happy to you as I have every reason to
believe the last was.... You are really, my dear John, the most
_gallant_ son I ever heard of to make such very flattering
speeches.... It is vastly gratifying to a mother to have a son desire
to hear from her so frequently, and such a request must always be
attended to with pleasure.


How assiduously the writer fulfilled her promise is testified by those
packets of letters, dim with the dust and blight of a vanished century,
but in which her reward is likewise attested. "I do not believe," she
affirms proudly, "that there is a man at either of the Universities who
writes so often to his mother as you do, and let me beg you will continue
to do so, for the hearing from you is one of the chief pleasures of my
life." Moreover, that family of eight sons and five daughters, who, at
this date, shared her attention, in their relations to each other were
singularly united. Throughout their lives, indeed, the tie of blood
remained to them of paramount importance, although, as often happens, this
fact bred in them a somewhat hypercritical view of the world which lay
without that charmed circle. Graphic and lively as it will be seen are
their writings, their wit was at times so keen-edged that it is said to
have caused considerable alarm to the dandies and belles of their
generation, who suffered from the too vivacious criticism of their young
contemporaries. This was more particularly so in the case of Marianne, the
eldest daughter, afterwards the anonymous author of the satirical novel
_Almack's_. Brilliant and full of humour as is her correspondence, it