[Footnote 33: _Poetical Works_, ii. 248.]


_To Mrs. Martin_
London: August 16, 1837.

My dear Mrs. Martin,--It seems a long long time since we had any
intercourse; and the answer to your last pleasant letter to Henrietta
_must_ go to you from me. We have heard of you that you don't mean to
return to England before the spring--which news proved me a prophet,
and disappointed me at the same time, for one can't enjoy even a
prophecy in this world without something vexing. Indeed, I do long to
see you again, dearest Mrs. Martin, and should always have the same
pleasure in it, and affection for you, if my friends and acquaintances
were as much multiplied as you _wrongly_ suppose them to be. But the
truth is that I have almost none at all, in this place; and, except
our relative Mr. Kenyon, not one literary in any sense. Dear Miss
Mitford, one of the very kindest of human beings, lies buried in
geraniums, thirty miles away. I could not conceive what Henrietta
had been telling you, or what you meant, for a long time--until we
conjectured that it must have been something about Lady Dacre, who
kindly sent me her book, and intimated that she would be glad to
receive me at her conversations--and you know me better than to
doubt whether I would go or not. There was an equal unworthiness and
unwillingness towards the honor of it. Indeed, dearest Mrs. Martin,
it is almost surprising how we contrive to be as dull in London as in
Devonshire--perhaps more so, for the sight of a multitude induces a
sense of seclusion which one has not without it; and, besides, there
were at Sidmouth many more known faces and listened-to voices than we
see and hear in this place. No house yet! And you will scarcely