198 A Century of Family Letters [CHAP, xiv 



stronger. London is full of dirt and ugliness and vulgarity, 

 but London is London after all, and it is something to have 

 the freshest news and the freshest fish, and to see everybody 

 and everything. Here am I, a Staffordshire man 150 miles 

 from home, and yet of Staff ordshire people alone I have 

 seen and heard of I don't know how many. Is it nothing 

 to have Mr and Mrs Tomlinson and Miss Tomlinson, of 

 whom Jos himself said that she was no worse than other 

 young ladies ? What greater advantages should I enjoy 

 at Hanley or Cowbridge or Burslem or Tunstall ? The 

 country is a very good place to see good company in, but 

 is very blank by itself, and so I daresay Jos and Allen have 

 found it by this time. What brilliant evenings they must 

 be spending together, what a flow of soul ! I pity even 

 Squib when I think of it. We have all been stirring about 

 here in town, plenty of dinners, plays, and operas, but all 

 in the family way as Matthews says, which I think a very 

 pleasant way (whatever Mrs Alderson does at this time). 

 It must be confessed Mrs Holland's family dinner was tant 

 soit pen ennuyeux. Nobody shall persuade me that Dr 

 H. is either the most agreeable or the cleverest man 

 in London. If he was he would not have shocked Charles 

 Darwin by saying that a whale has cold blood, or the uni- 

 verse by eating with his knife, or me by the patronising 

 manner in which he mentioned what he had done with 

 Ministers in favour of Sir J. Mackintosh. He said Lord 

 Lyndhurst had asked him as to Sir J.'s health and capa- 

 bilities, of which he had made as favourable a report as he 

 could; and Ld. L. had also, I think, said something about 

 making him a Baron of the Exchequer; but that is out of 

 the question, for though the work in London is nothing, 

 and therefore he might easily do that, neither his health nor 

 his legal knowledge can be fit for circuit. 



Fanny Mackintosh, Charlotte and I went with Mrs S win- 

 ton Holland and her two daughters to [Rossini's] Semira- 

 mide, for reports of which I refer you to Charlotte, only it 

 was a sort of music in which I could have whistled a part all 

 through, so that it cannot be very original. Mile Pasta's 



