122 COUNT RUMFORD. 



In 1793, in a letter to his friend Baldwin, he expressed 

 the desire to visit his native country. He also wished 

 exceedingly to be personally acquainted with his daugh- 

 ter, who was then nineteen. His affection for his 

 mother, which appears to have been very real, also 

 appears in this letter. With reference to the projected 

 visit, he asks, ' Should I be kindly received ? Are the 

 remains ot party spirit and political persecution done 

 away ? Would it be necessary to ask leave of the 

 State ? ' A year prior to the date of this letter, Rum- 

 ford's wife had died at the age of fifty-two. On January 

 29, 1796, his daughter sailed for London to see her 

 father. She bad a tedious passage, but soon after her 

 arrival she writes to her friend Mrs. Baldwin, 'All 

 fatigue and anxiety are now at an end, since my dear 

 father is well and loves me.' 



In a history of her life, written many years after- 

 wards, she, however, describes the disappointment she 

 experienced on first meeting her father. Her imagi- 

 nation had sketched a fancy picture of him. She 

 ' had heard him spoken of as an officer, and had attached 

 to this an idea of the warrior with a martial look, 

 possibly the sword, if not the gun, by his side.' All 

 this disappeared when she saw him. He did not strike 

 her as handsome, or even agreeable a result in part due 

 to the fact that he had been ill, and was very thin and 

 pale. She speaks, however, of his laughter * quite from 

 the heart,' while the expression of his mouth, with teeth 

 described as 'the most finished pearls,' was sweetness 

 itself. He did not seem to manage her very successfully. 

 She had little knowledge of the world, and her purchases 

 in London he thought both extravagant and extra- 

 ordinary. After having, by due discipline, learnt how 

 to make an English courtesy, to the horror of her 

 tjither, almost the first use she made of her newly- 



