A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, vi 



Fanny Allen to her niece Elizabeth Wedgwood. 



MY DEAR ELIZABETH, COMBE FLORET, Sept. 5 [1844]. 



After all the trouble you have taken about furbish- 

 ing me up fit for a fashionable visit, I owe you the earliest 

 results of my experiment not to let things prized by the 

 world slip from me when an opportunity occurred of my 

 taking advantage of them, and [thus] save myself from 

 future regrets. . . . 



Sydney Smith read us this evening a pamphlet he has 

 written, or is indeed now writing on the Catholic Clergy of 

 Ireland, so clever, full of fun. good sense, and real eloquence 

 occasionally, that the evening has passed off very pleasantly, 

 and has recalled many a pleasant past hour of now nearly 

 forty years' standing that authorises in my mind the extra- 

 ordinary exertion of a long journey to see them. Sydney 

 said to me at dinner to-day, ' ' It is now forty years I think 

 since we have been friends." So these things settle the 

 question of folly which overtook me this morning, and 

 I shall take the good and ill of the hour without a 

 question. 



I got here without any difficulty. The stop of nearly two 

 hours at Bristol was tiresome and disagreeable enough, 

 from thence we came to Taunton in an hour and a half. 

 The country is very rich, and this place is lovely. Sydney 

 was in the flower garden and gave us a hearty welcome. 

 Mrs Smith I find affectionate, but she is very unwell and 

 so is Sydney, though it does not quell his gaiety. Luttrell, 

 the wit, was invited to meet Mrs L., the beauty, but he is 

 in the Channel Islands and there have been no tidings of 

 him. Rogers also was asked, but there has been some huff 

 in the case, and the Beauty stands alone as far as guests go, 

 though Sydney performs his part of talking gay nonsense to 

 her. She is very fashionable and handsome, and as vain as 

 you cannot imagine, though others may who have a spice 

 of the same quality. Yesterday Sydney, she, and I were 

 squeezed into a donkey- carriage to go round the grounds, 



