IO2 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, vn 



Elizabeth Wedgwood to her sister Emma Darwin. 



MY DEAR EMMA, MAER, Monday [6 April, 1846]. 



We have been talking a little of our plans. I think 

 we shall come to the conclusion that as we must break up 

 from here, there is little use in lingering, and that we shall 

 probably not stay more than a month. I don't feel that 

 leaving the place (though I shall never see another I shall 

 like anything like it) will be much of a grief. How glad I 

 should have been if Jos and Harry would have taken to it ; I 

 can't help thinking Jos will regret it. It is so unlike any 

 other place, so completely its own self, and with alterations 

 it might be made so very nice a one, and he will find it 

 almost impossible to fix anywhere else. . . . Thank you my 

 dear Emma for your invitation, but I think I shall stick 

 by the Langton's at present. Charlotte wishes it, and 

 Charles Langton giyes me great confidence he will like it 

 too. 



It is a great pleasure to see how entirely Charles [Langton] 

 understood and loved my mother how he felt the trans- 

 parent brightness of her character, and how everybody 

 whom we have heard from felt it. There never was any- 

 one comparable to her. Her look and voice are a bright- 

 ness gone from the world for ever. I feel it a comfort that 

 she continued so unaltered to the last. Till that one day 

 of insensibility she had no look of pain or illness, and I have 

 not borne to disturb that image in my memory by any sight 

 since. . . . Charles was mentioning yesterday a circum- 

 stance that I had never heard before, for I think I could not 

 have forgotten it, a dream she had of being able to walk, 

 and what extreme pleasure it gave her. My father was very 

 much affected at hearing it. 



Good-bye, my dear Emma, you may be sure I shall be 

 very glad to go and see you and dear Charles a little further 

 on. Your affect. g g 



Charlotte remarks in the letters they receive how many 

 revert to the charm of her mother's smile. Emma wrote: 



